Ed Gutman

Here are 10 of my favorite iPhone apps that make certain parts of my life a little easier. I often wonder what I’d do without some of them, but then again I seem to remember this business of using a pencil and paper in a previous life. Ah well.

I’m excluding the built-in apps here, since any of you that have an iPhone would have those too.

	Tweetie: Hands down the best Twitter client available on the iPhone. It’s simple and fast, has a slick UI, and all the functionality of the web app and then some. Since I’m quite the twit, this is where I do most of my tweeting.
	Facebook: For those of you with an active account, it’s a no-brainer. As an added bonus for those of you who don’t like the new Facebook, this is reminiscent of the old one.
	Air Mouse: Powerful mouse alternative. A portable touchpad with full keyboard functionality. If I’m in the kitchen and need to open a program on my laptop, this program helps me do it.
	Jaadu VNC: For something a bit fancier than Air Mouse, this lets you remotely connect to your computer, with full functionality. Think of it as adding a screen to Air Mouse. Expanding on the previous, if I’m in somebody else’s kitchen and need to open a program, this helps me do it.
	OmniFocus: For the uber-organized, this is the ultimate task manager/planner. It uses the “Getting Things Done” system of task management and works better than any planner I’ve had in the past. Requires sync with the OmniFocus desktop client.
	Yelp: Helps me find decent restaurants (or whatever else you need) within the area, thanks to the GPS locator. Now all I need it to do is get me a reservation a la OpenTable’s app and I’m set.
	Shazam: Extremely powerful song recognition app. I can’t get over how great this is for finding song titles I thought I never figure out outside of a lyric search. This plus Youtube makes for an excellent way to find the tunes on that commercial you’ve been wondering about.
	BeeJive IM: So far the only decent all-in-one chat client on the iPhone which can sync all major chat protocols. Still, it’s a bit pricey and needs background operation capabilities. Once push is available with 3.0, this will be an even better app (at least until Adium comes out with their own).
	1password: This program comes close to replacing my wallet. Syncs with the desktop client to store every password/info you could ever use online. Just make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
	Edge: The best game you can buy for the iPhone, in my opinion. I’ve gone through quite a few, but this one is the only one I keep playing over and over. Great graphics, great music, great control, and a great idea!

Lastly, here are five I’m supposed to be able to live without. There’s no straightforward way to put these on your iPhone, so I’ll leave it to you to find out how.

• Netatalk + OpenSSH: Allows your iPhone to talk with other computers making the following apps possible:
• MobileFinder + MobileTerminal: Thanks to the above, you can command line or use the finder on your iPhone.
• SBSettings: Makes actions such as turning on/off wi-fi and airplane mode happen literally at the swipe of a screen.
• Cycorder: Recording video on the iPhone for the win.
• PDANet: Allows you to tether your internet connection to another computer (the 3.0 update will cut into this a bit).

I’ve been getting some flak lately for my seemingly excessive usage of Facebook, and it’s getting a little old. You know how much time I spend on Facebook per day?

About 10 minutes. Tops.

That’s spread out over the day, including my iPhone app. It really doesn’t take long to glance at what people are up to. I’ve found that my community of friends (especially those in tech) are a lot quicker at finding relevant news than the mainstream media is. Plus, I like keeping up with friends I don’t normally see a lot of; in the Lindy community where many of us are spread out across the world, it’s a great communication tool.

A lot of what I do content-wise is done through third party apps posting to my Facebook profile, much like FriendFeed does. I write a blog post, it’s on Facebook. It’s pretty easy to ignore things on a feed; you can click on any item’s option and choose “Less about [username]“. Or you can delete me altogether. Pretty simple, and I won’t be heartbroken.

I’m a social networking power user. I’m fascinated by them and how they are moving toward uber-inter-connectivity. Most successful web applications today have the option to, among other things, post or receive a feed from some other app such as Facebook. I’ve done that on this blog to an extent with Google Connect and Disqus.

Many of the things we do in everyday life may end up connected in some way; this guy hooked up his laundry machine to send Twitter updates. I know many people are uncomfortable with this level of intimacy into our personal lives, but our shift to a more voyeuristic society seems to be becoming a more common phenomena. Our children won’t care as much as we do today.

I must admit, I do spend a lot more time reading my Twitter feed than I’d like, but that’s a different story.

Dear Bay Area Traffic Engineer,

What are you thinking? Yes, I know it’s hard to coordinate hundreds of thousands of drivers every day. I get that. But I’ve seen better. Much better. And since we live in a place where the attention span of the average driver is somewhere around 2.1 seconds*, your job is as important as ever. Let’s discuss.

courtesy aqui-ali via Flickr

Light scheduling. Why is it on a super busy expressway, that it takes merely one car, in a matter of seconds, to trip a light on a small cross street? The timing of these lights are atrocious. There are even some lights in Sunnyvale which do not have a working trip altogether.

Carpool lanes. They don’t work, at least not here. This isn’t really specific to the Bay Area, as they work counter to the flow of traffic. That’s one extra lane everyone else could be using in an area where lane real estate is at a premium. Check out 101 when the carpool lane ends after Redwood City. Traffic is smooth, until the carpool lane picks up again. Get rid of them.

Freeway ramps. No, it is not a great idea to have a singular off ramp for off and on ramp traffic (ex: 262 to I-680). It’s an accident waiting to happen.

Crosswalks. Blind crosswalks do not work. (ex: Mountain View) It’s a constant game of chicken. Heck, those yield signs are better than nothing. 9 times out of 10, I can’t see the pedestrian, so there needs to be some sort of flashing light signifying there’s a pedestrian crossing (see any central coast town for examples). There are even some cases where a stop sign altogether is in order.

Long islands. Given that most people here can’t make a U-Turn to save their lives, there should be more options to make left turns on to crossing streets. There are some stretches of El Camino which go on for almost a mile without being able to make a left.

Construction. No, it is not acceptable to close off an entire freeway for construction before 12am. Why I see this happen is beyond me.

Public transit. This is technically another issue, but I just wanted to quickly point out that public transit options here are far from optimal. It really shouldn’t take me an hour to get across San Francisco. In fact, anything going East-West in the Bay Area is fairly sketchy. I guess we’re afraid of throwing off the Earth’s orbit by traveling along the latitude.

The Drivers. What can I say? This one isn’t your fault.

This is really just the short story. I can go on, but I won’t. There are things here which should have been fixed yesterday. I hope there’s room in our new-fangled budget to hire more you (or at least fire some of you).

Sincerely,

Ed Gutman

*Based on personal observation.