Many restaurants have websites, but who wants to dig around for one, especially if you’re on the go? MenuPages lets you scour your town for a specific restaurant or cuisine and then shows you what’s on the menu and how much it costs. The app covers eateries in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and South Florida. Maps, reviews, and ratings make for a full-course menu app.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND: MenuPages finds and maps restaurants based on your location. If you’ve got a specific craving, search for types of foods (“salmon”) in particular neighborhoods (“Midtown”). MenuPages displays the matches on a map. Tap through the list horizontally to see addresses, price ranges, and ratings.

ON THE BILL: Once you finish a first-level search, say for cuisine, MenuPages lets you refine your results. If you favor New American food, for example, you can further filter your results by restaurants whose dishes fall within a certain price range. Once you select a restaurant, tap “Menu” to see its fare.

Tired of chain restaurants? Fire up LocalEats to find one-of-a-kind chow houses in dozens of cities in the US and Canada. You can search by restaurant name, type of food, neighborhood, or feature. Alternatively, check out LocalEats’ top 100 restaurants by city or its “Best of” picks for meal (say, best breakfast) or category (best diner). Choose “Nearby” if you have to eat now. In many cases, you can make reservations with a few taps.

GOING NATIVE: Whether you’re scouting for a new place to eat in your home town or on the road in a strange city, LocalEats guides you to unique neighborhood hot spots from its database of 5,000 eateries. With an account on the app’s website, you can add your own reviews and pictures to the mix.

HOMETOWN FAVORITES: Tap a restaurant name to find out which meals it serves (breakfast, lunch, or dinner), its price range, and its services (bar, parking, accessibility, and so on). You can also get directions to the place and see its location pinned to a map. Make a reservation with the tap of a key.

Time-weary wine conventions, like drinking reds only with beef, limit your ability to discover new, inventive food-and-vino combinations. Pair It expands your horizons no matter what you’re having for dinner. The app suggests 20,000 wine-and-meal pairings, and maintains details (description, flavor notes, pairing tips) on 180 wines. The app’s free, ad-supported Lite version is less expansive than the full version.

SHAKE IT ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT: Can’t decide what to eat, let alone what wine to pair with your meal? Tap the Swirl button and shake your iPhone to let Pair It offer suggestions. Never heard of a dish? Tap its name to get more information. As a plus, Pair It gives you the recipe for many dishes right there in the app.

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Illustrated with big color photographs sure to get you thirsty, iPairings is a good app for beginners still puzzling over the difference between chardonnay and sauvignon blanc. It also delves into lesser-known varietals, like viognier and albariño. You can sort wines into reds and whites, and have the app pair food and cheese dishes with both flavors. The free Basic app offers 100 pairings, while the full version has more than 1,400 suggestions.

If your knowledge of cheese barely goes beyond Velveeta and you want to broaden your palate, Fromage is a worthy guide. This dairy database profiles more than 750 cheeses from France, Spain, Italy, the US, and Canada. It also offers impressively extensive wine-pairing lists. If you discover a cheese not in the app, snap a photo, type up a description, and email it to the developer for the next edition of the app.

SAY CHEESE: Fromage lets you search and sort cheeses several ways. You can find them by name, browse the cheeses of different countries, and sort by type of milk (cow, goat, and so on) or by the texture of the cheese (soft, semi-hard, and so on). Tap the + button to add an entry for newly discovered cheese to your Favorites list.

PAIR OR SHARE: Tap the name of a cheese to see suggested wine pairings. Tap the button for a fuller description of the chosen cheese. To add a cheese to your Try or Buy list, tap the Add Notes button, where you can also add comments or mark a cheese as a Favorite. Tap the Share button to email the cheese profile to friends.

If you didn’t pay much attention in grade-school math class, you may be stymied when it comes to divvying up the dinner bill and tip for a party of six. Luckily, CheckPlease Lite, a free, beautifully simple app, can help. Type in the total amount of the bill and dial in a tip percentage (which you can tell CheckPlease to round up, or not) or a dollar amount. Then enter the number of people sharing the tab and let technology do the math.

SPLIT THE BILL: CheckPlease Lite’s clean design makes it easy to calculate your (and everyone else’s) share of a dinner bill. You can specify how much of a gratuity you want to leave (a percentage of the tab or a hard number). The spinning dials make it easy to divide the check evenly, whether you have one or 100 dinner companions.

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Utterly devoid of flashing graphics—as well as flashing ads—humble little Propina calculates bill divisions and tip amounts with a minimum of fuss. Just start up the app and type in the bill total. Tap the Next button and type in the percentage tip you want to leave. Hit the Next button again and type in how many people are splitting the bill. Propina then presents you with the amount each person should leave on the table.

Spanning the realm of cocktails from elegant pre-Prohibition classics like French 75 to the modern Peach Passion Jell-O shot, Mixologist brings a lot of boozy bang for your buck (or for free, if you don’t mind ads). The app includes recipes for more than 7,900 concoctions, including nonalcoholic drinks. If you run low on ingredients, the app can locate nearby liquor stores or come up with drinks based on what you have on hand.

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED: If you’re in a rut of always mixing the same old cocktails, have Mixologist broaden your repertoire. Tap the Random button and give your iPhone or iPod Touch a shake. The app emits the soothing sound of ice tinkling in a glass and presents you with a randomly selected drink recipe. If you don’t care for the suggestion, give it another shake.

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With a playful interface evoking the swinging ’60s and huge color photographs of the featured drinks, Pocket Cocktails is bound to make you thirsty. The app includes hundreds of recipes, plus tips, tricks, and trivia for the home bartender. Tap Pocket Cocktails’ Random button and shake the screen for a spontaneous drink suggestion. If you need a more informed selection to pair a wine with a meal, use the app’s Pocket Sommelier.

Social networking has spawned the now-ingrained custom of sharing your everyday experiences with friends. A number of apps enhance the experience. Gowalla, like Foursquare on the opposite page, lets you find, visit, and share info about local spots, from ice-cream stands to funeral homes. When your network of friends does the same, you not only keep up with what they’re doing, you discover new places to go.

TOUR MOBILE: Gowalla shows you the restaurants, nightspots, stores, and other points of interest around you, but it also offers unique suggestions, including specialized tours of certain cities that point out the cool things in town. You can “check into” each stop on the tour, collect a virtual passport stamp, and share your experience with friends.

GAME ON: While much of the activity on Gowalla involves discovering new places and sharing your adventures with others, the app has a game element that lets you collect virtual objects at certain locations and leave them for your Gowalla friends to find when they check in to the same place. You earn bonus awards by completing Gowalla tours.

Foursquare, too, is a city-guide-meets-social-network app, but it emphasizes competition between you and every other Foursquare fan who leaves their home. Through the app, you “check in” to places you visit, see where your friends have checked in, and try to unlock special badges that show everyone just how social you are. You can even compete to be the “mayor” of a certain location—not by election, but by repeated visits.

FRIEND FINDER: So long as your friends use Foursquare and check into places as they arrive, you can quickly tell who’s where. Tap the Nearby button to see which pals are geographically closest to you. You can see your Foursquare friends in list mode, or tap the globe icon to see them as dots on a Google map.

FLASH YOUR BADGES: Like the Boy Scouts, Foursquare encourages participation with rewards, in this case colorful little badges you collect to document your social accomplishments. If you want to extend your bragging rights, publish your check-ins and badge awards to your Facebook and Twitter pals.

Covering hundreds of cities worldwide, NileGuide’s What’s Next presents a neatly organized list of your entertainment options in foreign lands and provides a handy button to add the most intriguing ones to your to-do list. In addition to nightlife, the app lists local hotels, restaurants, and touristy things to do. Built-in filters let you screen out the stuff you may not care about, like “boating.”

EVENT PLANNING: Tap an icon at the top of What’s Next’s screen to see recommendations for restaurants, hotels, nightlife, and other activities. If you don’t like scrolling through lists, tap the Map button to see the nightspots spread out geographically. As with most iPhone apps, you can tap the Near Me button to see the bars, clubs, and other places closest to you.

ON THE LIST: Some larger cities have so many things to do you need to pace yourself. As you find places to check out, tap the Add to List button to send items to the app’s Quick List feature so you can find them easily. If you’re new in town, tap the Snapshot icon to find articles on the area’s history, local trivia, and seasonal weather patterns.

If you find yourself having nightmares about parking tickets, forgetting where you left your car, or marauding tow trucks, you probably live in an urban area with limited parking and lots of competition. And you would probably sleep a lot better with Parking Mate around. The app lets you set alerts so you can go feed the meter, jot down notes about street-parking schedules, and mark reliable spots on a map so you can find them again.

A METER FOR THE METER: Don’t keep checking your watch and jiggling a handful of quarters during a meal, fretting over the time left on the parking meter. Set Parking Mate’s timer before you leave the car. The app alerts you in plenty of time to stroll back and feed the meter. You can set the alert to go off from 5 minutes to 2 hours before the time expires.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: Parking Mate lets you drop pins to mark the location of your favorite parking spots around town. Thanks to the iPhone’s location services, you can tap the Drop Pin button to mark where you left the car if you’ve had to park in an unfamiliar area. If your spouse is using the car next, email the location information from the app.

Unlike some ATM apps, which look for cash machines only in the United States or only for specific banks, ATM Locator lists about a million money dispensers around the world. The app covers bank machines, independent ATMs (the standalone ones that sprout up in delis and grocery stores), and the popular surcharge-free robot tellers that don’t charge you $3 to take your own money out of your own checking or savings account.

MONEY, THAT’S WHAT I WANT: If you’re strapped for cash and in the middle of nowhere, tap ATM Locator’s button to find the closest source of cash. You can also search by typing in the town name or ZIP code. Tap the Showing All button to filter your results to show just bank and independent ATMs. If you need written directions, tap the first icon in the bottom toolbar.

For some people, coffee is a vital part of the day, from that first morning blast to a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. If you’re on the road or away from your usual coffee shop, CoffeeSpot Pro comes to the rescue with a list of alternatives in the area. If you have a brand allegiance no matter where you are, set the app to show you only nearby Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Peet’s, Caribou Coffee, or other chains.

COFFEE BREAK: If you want a less predictable java experience, CoffeeSpot Pro seeks out independently owned caffeine emporiums. When you tap a shop’s name, you get a detail screen. Tap the relevant icon to see where the shop is and get directions, call the store, mark it in your list of favorites, or even email a pal to join you there for a coffee break.

Desperate times call for truly helpful apps like SitOrSquat, which identifies and rates public rest rooms around the world based on its database and plenty of user contributions. Tap to see all the lavatory facilities around you marked on a map or in a tidy, organized list. You can filter the set of results to display just bathrooms that are currently open or facilities that include changing tables for the little ones.

RELIEF MAP: SitOrSquat lets you search for relief by neighborhood or current location, then draws up a list of potential potties. Tap an entry to get more info and see it on a map. The red, yellow, and green markers tell you if a loo is currently open; red means closed, yellow means the hours are unknown, and green means go—to the bathroom, quick!

The App Store has dozens of movie mini-programs for finding current releases and reviews, buying tickets, and trivia quizzes, but if you want one that trumps them all, try Flixster’s Movies. It offers local theater listings and showtimes, synopses, trailers, viewer reviews, and more. Film fans staying home for the night can also manage their Netflix queues and buy or rent movies from iTunes right from the app.

MOVIE NIGHT: Tap the Box Office button, and the Movies app shows you what’s playing near you or in a neighborhood of your choosing. Each listing provides information like the MPAA rating, running time, reviews, and release date. Tap a title to view the trailer, find out where the film’s playing, and add your own rating.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Going to the movies is just part of an evening out for many people. Once you pick a movie you want to see, use Movies’ detail screen to see what you can do in the area before or after the show, courtesy of Yelp’s neighborhood restaurant reviews and Bing’s nightlife search listings.

TICKET MASTER: If the theater you’re going to works with movietickets.com, you can buy your tickets right from the Movies app. Some theaters, however, work with a different online service, so if you don’t see a Buy button here, you may want to download the Fandango and Moviefone apps as ticket-snagging alternatives.

EVERYONE’S A CRITIC: Thanks to its integration with RottenTomatoes.com, Movies compiles all the reviews from professional critics into an average rating. You can publish your own thoughts on the film by posting a review to Facebook from the app or by signing up for an account at Flixster.com.

HOLLYWOOD IN HAND: Tap a name in a movie’s cast list to get a bio, photos, and filmography for that actor. The Movies app has other ways to help you kill time while you’re waiting for the usher to remove the velvet rope, like taking movie-themed quizzes or browsing streaming video trailers of upcoming film and DVD releases.

Originally known for its little red DVD envelopes and speedy mail-order service, Netflix’s movie rental business got even faster when the company introduced streaming video. With the official iPhone and iPod Touch app, you can browse and watch Netflix movies and TV shows wherever you can get a network signal. Although the service works either over a 3G or Wi-Fi link, go with the faster, cheaper Wi-Fi if you can.

MOVIES ON DEMAND: Sign up for an unlimited membership at Netflix.com (prices start at $9 a month), and you can instantly watch as many hours of online video as you want. The app displays new arrivals to the Netflix library and you can search for films by name or genre. This same plan lets you rent one DVD at a time the snail-mail way, too.

PUSH PLAY: Tap the Play button to start streaming your movie. Spin the iPhone or iPod Touch into landscape mode and grab some popcorn. You can fast-forward, rewind, and pause a movie at any time. When you pause a film on your iDevice, you can pick up the stream later—right where you left off—on a Netflix-enabled TV set or on the Netflix website.

You’re not really buying that overpriced giant cup of soda at the concession stand so much as you’re renting it. When nature calls on speed dial, this handy app tells you when you can duck out of a movie to go to the restroom without missing anything important on-screen (according to others who have seen the film). To avoid the wrath of your fellow audience members, check RunPee’s cue sheet before the lights go down.

RUN TIMES: RunPee updates itself to keep its film list current. Tap a title to see where the breaks are in the movie’s narrative action, their duration, and how far into the picture they occur. Want to know what you’re missing? Bring your iPhone into the can with you—RunPee provides a brief plot summary of what happens during each break.

POTTY TIMER: If you don’t want to fumble with your phone after the lights go down, set up a silent PeeTime vibrate-mode alert within the app. After you check the cue list and calculate how long your bladder can last, tap the timer icon in the upper-right corner. Tap the pencil icon to record the chosen cue time, then tap the clock icon to schedule an alert before the cue.

Depending on where you are, you may be surrounded by museums and not even realize it. Mused reveals the educational opportunities around you, or in any other location you’d like to look up. The app points you to a variety of destinations, including art, history, and science museums and galleries, as well as larger installations, like the 301-acre re-creation of Colonial Williamsburg in southern Virginia.

GUIDED TOUR: Sure, you’ve heard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but Mused covers both iconic museums and lesser-known collections, and tells you how to get there with help from the iPhone’s Maps app. Despite its Mona Lisa logo, the original of which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, Mused currently covers attractions in the US only.

LOCAL BROWSING: If you want more information about a museum, tap its name in the search results, and then tap the View Website button on its Details screen. Instead of booting you into the Safari browser to complete your search, Mused takes you to a mini-version of the museum’s website right in the app itself so you can quickly decide if it’s worth a visit.

Goby does its darnedest to give you multiple answers to that age-old question, “Whaddya wanna do?” Its simple, three-button main screen gets right to the point, asking if you want to see “cool stuff today,” make weekend plans, or see events in a different city. Choose one and Goby displays an impressively comprehensive list of local events in 350 categories (nightlife, family fun, outdoor recreation, and so on). So far, it covers the US only.

TO-DO LIST: Tap through Goby’s menus to see more than 350 event categories, activities, and places to visit. Dog parks, wineries, casinos, spas, and recreational facilities are among the places the app keeps tabs on. If you’re trying to keep the kids entertained, Goby has a whole section of youthful diversions, like water parks and bowling alleys.

RANK AND FILE: Goby sorts your results into a list, with numbered rankings based on your preference of relevance, date, distance, or name. Tap one of the buttons to resort the list to, say, find the events closest to you or that fall on a certain date. If you don’t want to drive too far, tap the Filter button to change the distance radius of the events displayed.