All Things Chill

I think now’s a good a time as any to post a refresh of my current iPhone homescreen on the blog for prosperity. Let me say this first: I *love* my iPhone. It’s an extension of my hand and honestly gets me through EVERY girlfriend-related restaurant table debate now and until eternity.

I’m on my phone constantly (lol not making phone calls) to check information at work, change songs on the audio system at home or update my life whenever the mood suits me – and there’s an application for all of those things and more.

If you own an iPhone / iPod touch, you’ll be very familiar with the top screen:

Remote: If you have an open session of iTunes, you are able to change songs on the fly via your phone. If you have an Apple airport express (wifi router), you have the option of connecting that to a speaker system and have multiple “rooms” of audio. Awesome stuff.

Located on the second row, Twitteriffic released its 2.0 upgrade on May 7 – and it is heavy. HEAVY. Multi-account use, color-coded markings, easy user-interface and lots of filtering. I didn’t bite when Tweetie came out (although a lot of people love it), but I like Craig Hockenberry, the guy who made Twitteriffic, and that’s good enough for me.

If you’ve been through the “droughts” that happen on this blog from time to time, you might not know that I share OOOODLES of information through my Google Reader “Shared Items” link at the top of this page. There, I feature articles / posts from around the Internet that I find are suuuper-dandy and even through in a few lines of comments here and there. If I’m not posting *here*, you can always see activity THERE. (To put google reader on your iPhone screen, save as a bookmark and “add to homepage” and the icon automatically pops up!)

Wordpress recently updated their app as well and it’s a bit easier to check comment activity, rather than jumping on Safari and checking it there. I hardly ever write posts on there since it’d be a headache trying to link to anything or add a perfectly cropped picture, but whattaya gonna do. OCD users will notice they change the shading and color scheme every update. Annoying. Hee hee.

Audioboo is my newest addition to the front page. I’d love to write more, but maybe it’d be easier for you to listen:

(I’m assuming if you’re reading this on the iPhone, the flash module is disabled. Simply put, you download the Audioboo app, record a <3 minute audio clip and publish for everyone to hear. Perfect for street musician archiving or important speaking notes! Hee hee.)

Epicurious’ new application is a gift from the heavens. If you’ve ever tried to navigate Epi’s website on the Safari iPhone browser, you’ve felt the urge to crack the damn thing in half. It’s too big, clunky and refreshes at the most random times.

All that’s been replaced by a soothing UI, fast loading times and a filtering ability that’s beyond my expectations. It’s completely easy to use and is a great resource for flavor combinations. If you don’t get a search result for “Mexican chocolate and bitter melon,” you’re really ON TO SOMETHING or in for a culinary disaster. The app has advertisements, but they aren’t obtrusive at all. Let me reiterate: shear breadth of knowledge in this app far outweighs anything Visa can make me read for 3 seconds.

I have a love / hate relationship with Yelp (to explain would require longer than few paragraphs), but their new update has a lot more functionality that I have yet to take advantage of. I don’t think I ever will, but HEY who knows! I do however use it VERY frequently to find addresses of cafes, restaurants and shops then have it pop me over to the Google Maps application for precise directions.

I cannot express how much I use the calculator on this damn thing. It is the best damn calculator in the entire world. Maps gets me around EVERYWHERE and has sadly replaced my GPS. Zenbe is a lists app that I’m to lazy to find a replacement for and 1337pwn is an Xbox360 application that allows me to see who’s playing what online before I even turn the damn thing on.

This turned into a big post! LOL. If you have ANY questions, let me know. As a disclaimer to the previous sentence, I have NEVER jailbroken my iPhone – but Gizmodo has tons of info. I’d like to think I’ve maximized what this lil’ gadget can do. I want you to heart your iPhone too!

YAY IPHONEZ.

~Spec

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 10:13 am and is filed under Apple Culture, Computer Nerd Ramblings, Streaming Conciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.