When we rounded the tip for this check, CheckPlease rounded down to $3 each so we didn't have to go searching for coins. The service wasn't that great anyway!

The only thing worse than eating out in a group with one of those people who only orders a green salad--dressing on the side--and tap water--no ice--is figuring out how to get that person into the group tab when the check comes. Now that the economy's taken a dive, however, I'm going to stop getting annoyed by that person (you know who you are) and make sure I always have my iPhone and the free app, CheckPlease, on me when I eat out with friends. Of course,  we should all start tightening our belts, but in an urban foodie capital like the San Francisco Bay Area, it's nearly impossible avoid eating out at least a few times a month, no matter how much you try to cut back to save cabbage.

The nice thing about CheckPlease is that you can pretty easily subtract the $4.95 for the skinflint's green salad from the total, add the desired tip, and divide the total by the remaining number of people. This feature's not really built in to the app (maybe it will be someday?), but if you do the subtraction with the iPhone's calculator first, you can get a pretty accurate total to divvy up among the others in your party. They're the ones who understand that group dining etiquette demands that the check be divided evenly among everyone--even if it means that the surf and turf one person ordered will artificially inflate the cost of the cup of minestrone selected by another. Added since CheckPlease first hit the App Store, diners can now round the tip and/or the total to avoid having to ask people to dig around for change. This also covers those random instances when a member of your party might want to cover the tip with cash rather than a credit card.

A simple interface and extra features make this dining calculator tasty. You can easily change the number of people in your party by "scrolling" on a two-sided, slot machine-style window. You adjust the tip percentage with the scroll window on the far left. And CheckPlease integrates directly with Cantamount's $9.99 app Pocket Money, which lets you keep track of your finances on the go.