My fondness for my iPhone is well-known, an enjoyment only enhanced by the version-3.0 update.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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Further Confessions of an English iPhone Addict
- Date:
- Wednesday, 24 Jun e 2009 - 11:45 UTC
I have used this to great effect, sending pictures along with text messages, and the cut-and-paste function means that it’s possible to use the ‘Notes’ app as a word processor, to draft short items of text – book reviews, rude letters to customer services and so on – for later download and editing. What with the web functionality, I now rarely need to take my notebook computer on the road with me.
Once my new iMac is delivered – hopefully next week – I should be able to make full use of the calendar and contacts functions, which, as Dr R. P. G. of Rotherhithe so sagely noted elsewhere, are so seamlessly integrated that they are actually useful.
The most-used apps currently on my iPhone include
SimpleDraw – great for doodles which you can save as photos;
TweetDeck – the iPhone version of the PC twitter aggregator thing;
Boatie – an app for people who like pottering about in boats in inshore waters. I use it for the handy tide tables, which tell me what the tide and sea state will be off Cromer beach – which is great for scheduling walks;
Fart Machine – does what it says. Downloaded by special request of Gee Minor;
Google – bundles a load of Google functions together, making it a doddle to get at my gmail account;
Ellatron – wonderful evocations of Mellotrons and other classic keyboard sounds (as recommended, I believe, by Mr G. S. of Glasgow);
and most of all
Scrabble – the iPhone version of the famous wordgame, now licenced to Electronic Arts. This is horribly addictive. You can play with other people (Gee Minor likes this) but also against the iPhone. The problem is that the skill levels are insufficiently finely divided. It’s either far too easy – or uses all kinds of words of which I have never heard. The latter setting stimulates my competitive instincts, and although it almost always thrashes me, it’s improving my game immensely.
However, I am not sure that even I would ever have need of this app, in which your iPhone can be used as a remote to run your bath for you, so that it’ll be just right when you come home from work.
What puzzles me is the final sentence, promising a shower version of the app, coming soon. I can’t see what possible use this would be. Can you?
Last updated: Wednesday, 24 Jun 2009 - 11:45 UTC
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Comments
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The shower app could be useful for watering the flowers. if you can persuade them to line up to go into the shower.
Henry – I agree with all your enthusiasm. Something I haven’t managed to check – my contract has unlimited texts, but I can’t see any reference to MMS. Are you charged extra for these?
@ Bob – thinking laterally, I’;d like an app that controlled one’s plant irrigation system or fed the chickens over the 3G network. That would be useful. Interestingly, Apple no longer bundle the Apple remote with their computers – you have to buy it as an extra. This is because Apple reckons that most Apple users will have an iPhone or iPod touch they can use as a remote instead.
@ Brian – that’s a good question. I’d imagine MMS would be lumped in with texts.
The coolest thing ever I used my iPhone for (apart from not getting lost in London) was to control my MacBook when I keynoted at the RIN away day. Bloody cool.
I have no games on my iPhone. Stanza is a good application for reading Epub docs, and I heart this software upgrade. When I grow up I want to be a footballer and play for England.
Is it a typo for showier app?
So when you get it, it will have pink carnations all over it, or something like that?
(just joking)
“I keynoted” – a verb?!
Got a problem with that, Ma’am Editor? grin
‘Keynoted’ isn’t highlighted by this spill chucker: and I like verbing nouns.
I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Oh! So you folks across the pond can actually use that new MMS functionality? The
demonscorporate types at AT&T here in the states have tightened their grip once more and refused to allow this feature until late summer. Maybe.As for apps… I’m so far a huge fan of epicurious which allows me to make a swiping attempt at making something apart from mac and cheese.
I’ve noticed that I haven’t heard anybody from the UK mention Urban Spoon, even though that’s pretty much everyone’s favourite over here:
tish and pish HG! This from the man who disembogued cthonic, preternatural and eldrich in a News & Views! I’ll not believe a word of it!
I have a T-mobile G1, somewhat like an iPhone meets a
BlackcurrentGooseberryBlackberry. Aside from a poker game, I love the ASL (American Sign Langauge) app. Presents the sign + instructions, plus memory cheats. Good fun, and useful. If you’re learning ASL, that is.As for your shower app, certain farmer chums of mine in Arkansas (jolly near to me over the Mississippi, so we drink in the same pub) have marvelous wossnames on their phones for controlling their irrigation systems (for the fields, Grant. Get your mind out of the gutter). A sensor on the irrigation system lets them know when it’s too dry/humid etc., and they can activate the damn thing from across country via WiFi and wireless!
@ Ian: certain farmer chums of mine in Arkansas … have marvelous wossnames on their phones for controlling their irrigation systems
I think Apple should have a Custom Shop full of backroom geeks who might engineer an app designed just for you. If Apple had such a facility, I’d like an app, please, called iHouse. This would
…in the middle of iStreet ?
Madness.
@Henry No need to keep an eye on the house. The bunny would be sentinel enough. That is unless of course someone got a hold of the Book of Armaments…
I suppose there is the killer guinea pig.
“Where?! Behind the rabbit?”
Isn’t there some app that lets you use the thing as a level? That would come in very handy for when you want to hang your cover publication in
ScienceNature on your office wall.@ Robert: it is the rabbit.
@ Richard – yes, there is, and I have it. The problem with it is that it’s disconcertingly precise. There you are, with a shelf that looks level, and which your analog air-bubble-in-oil spirit level says is level, but which the iPhone says is up to five degrees out. Or perhaps it’s the app that’s crap. A crap app? Surely not.
I’m not sure which is more frightening: The glowing eyes or the apparent faux-hawk down its spine…
It occurs to me that I should have linked faux-hawk you know, for illustration porpoises… And what do I find in my search? This horrifying tidbit.
The internets truly do plumb the depths, don’t they?
The fur on that particular g-pig grows like that naturally – in all directions. Must be some crazy mutant. I did do the eyes, though.