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Work Work — A Still Life, originally uploaded by _mpd_.

My desk.

So, I decided to replace my Razr with an iPhone (given I had probably fried the new battery for the Razr, why not). It’s probably horribly bad form to review something with such a short time with it, but …. drool. Seriously, more drool than is possible. This is the best tech gadget I’ve seen in a long time and I’m really not having any hard time with the interface either.

So far as have various apps downloaded to it:

• TwitterFon — still trying out Twitter
• Yelp and UrbanSpoon — restaurant apps, I like Yelp a little better.
• AccuWeather — seems a minor bit better than WeatherChannel’s app and WeatherBug
• Kindle — drool, I am suprised this actually works as well as it does and is free. Kindle reading for when you forget the Kindle. This is going to make me late for everything. Kindle is still better for trips, planes, and the couch, but I can see wanting to read something for a few minutes here and there, especially if you’re early for an appointment.
• Shredder (not free) — a darn good Chess client with auto-adjusting ELO, hints, and takebacks. It also tells you when you make stupid moves. In other words, you can learn from it.
• Things (not free) — a simple/decent TODO list app, which I wanted since I miss the Handspring I had back in college.
• WhitePages — does what it is supposed to do
• NYTimes — seems everything is free and better than the Mobile Site. Very nice.
• Wikipanion — This one is not much more than Safari
• ATM Hunter –Mastercard wrote an ATM Hunter. Maybe useful someday.
• Now Playing — A really nice movie app that links to theaters and Rotten Tomatoes
• DirectTv –Remote show search and scheduling. Testing now to see if it actually works.
• Pandora — Used to like Pandora a lot, but I bet this slurps juice
• Google Earth — It’s Google Earth, on a phone. Probably won’t use it much.
• Flashlight — Probably won’t use it much
• Planets — Astronomy app, probably won’t use it much
• Shazaam — This was on the commercials, and seems to work for popular songs, but don’t through WKNC at it! Neat trick regardless.

Apparently two other apps I am interested in, the WordPress app, and Noise.IO (apparently a pretty good synth) are still working out fixes for OS 3.0

Random comments:

• That’s a nice set of apps for only having to buy a few things.
• I am really glad I wanted until the one with the GPS feature. It seems nearly everything is location aware and makes FANTASTIC use of it.
• The Sound Activated calling also works really well too.
• Calendar sync with Google seems great — though Contacts kept deleting my contacts periodically. I don’t recommend turning that part of it on.
• Sound quality is also well up to expectations for music — so the previous reports about the Touch don’t seem to apply here. (I have a pair of Shure e4c’s for my earphones of choice).
• I kind of hoped the GPS would do turn-by-turn navigation, but it’s still nice for when you don’t have the car GPS.
• Though lots of apps are simple shells around webpages, it’s really nice to not have to fire up Safari to use them. Easier than using an actual computer, even.
• AT&T’s number transfer service worked flawlessly as soon as I plugged the phone in and it automatically cancelled by other account. Brilliant.
• Ugh, now the fun of adding all my contacts to my Address Book app so I can sync them — and the same for Safari bookmarks (I use Firefox)

Yeah it would be nice if it ran Linux, but it’s a sexy beast and so far I really really like it.

Other app recommendations and such welcome.

Gov’t Mule, Lincoln Theatre, 7/23 (outside on the street like last year, which was great)

Queensryche (”To Perform Extended Suites: Rage For Order / America Soldier / Empire”), Lincoln Theatre, 10/21 … w00t for old stuff and Empire.

It hit me like a two ton heavy thing

(People I know: I’m going and those are GA shows, so ping me if you want to go)