There are so many great apps out there in the iPhone/iPod ecosystem right now. The variety is amazing; this is the sort of thing that the mobile device platform has needed — an easy, inexpensive, foolproof way to extend your device. I’d like to single out DataCase from Veiosoft for kudos. A really innovative app, a way of using the device as a wireless memory key…take a look…and if you have an iPhone/iPod Touch, it will be $6.99 well spent.

A while back, probably sometime in late 2006 or early 2007, I uploaded pictures to Picasa from my July 2006 canoe trip into Quetico Provincial Park with my scout troop. It just sat, and I’d not done anything with it. However, earlier this summer, a colleague sent me a Picasa album link from a conference he was attending, and he had used the map tagging features that Google has added. This got me to thinking that I ought to, before my memory completely passes on that trip, try to tag locations on the map for this set of pictures. That’s what I’ve done in this Picasa album. I’d done a fairly detailed writeup of this trip back in 2006, but it was fun to try to tag exact picture locations. I’m close with a lot of them, but some are a bit of a WAG ;-). It’s an interesting feature. Now, hmmm…seems like that thinking about my last blog post on MobileMe, and the galleries, that an iPhone could get GPS info and automatically tag a picture in a map overlay…heck, maybe this feature is already there! I dunno…no iPhone for this boy for a while…about 6 months left on my Alltel contract with my current phone 😉 and while $200 for a termination fee isn’t a lot, it irks me to pay that, so I won’t!

I’m sitting here this evening happily listening to the rain; it’s been dry here in Central NC and rain is good! I’ve been playing a bit with Apple’s MobileMe. I was a dotMac subscriber, but didn’t use it much except for file storage, and synching contacts & calendars between my home and work Macs. I like MobileMe, and am using more and more of it. It’s a more focused tool, with mail, contacts, calendar, photo gallery (more on this in a bit), and files (iDisk). One thing I like is the ability to allocate the 20GB of storage between files and email; if you don’t have much in your @mac.com or @me.com mail account (like me, as I don’t really use it), you can shunt more of the storage over to files. I’ve also started connecting my iPod Touch to MobileMe for its contacts & calendar; works very well with the 2.0 software. I’ve put a couple of photo collections in the gallery tool, and it’s a very nice way to present pictures; very flexible end user experience. Here are two examples, Bassclave 2005 and Bassclave 2007. I also have some miscellaneous flyfishing pictures in another gallery, and I’ve now found an app feature that really gives me a Jones for an iPhone…you can take a picture and immediately load it to a nicely formatted gallery on the web (via email upload). With my iPod Touch, I can upload pictures in the same way over email, but only pictures that are already on the device, obviously, as it doesn’t have a camera ;-). The updated Facebook App for the iPhone/iPod Touch (v1.1) also allows uploading of pictures, and that’s cool, but that’s outside of the focus of this post.

I have an iPod Touch, so I don’t get all the benefits of the new software, but there is some cool stuff enabled by the update. The app store seems to be really taking off with the apps multiplying like proverbial rabbits. Like many folks, I think that the Remote app is just such a great concept. For those who’ve been under a rock, this free app (from Apple) lets you control the iTunes library on a machine reachable with the wifi connection. As I’ve written in this space before, I’ve got a Mac Mini as a media center computer in my den, hooked up to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. Really works well for controlling that. It’s easy to switch to another library on another computer, such as the one on my iMac. Just a really great concept; kudos, Apple!

OK, I got a little cash for my recent birthday, and I decided to get an automotive GPS system…I looked around, talked to some folks, and ended up buying a TomTom GO 730. It came today; I’ve not driven anywhere with it yet, but I think I’ve figured out the operation, I’ve got it synced to my Mac, and I’ve got it paired with my work Blackberry and my personal Motorola phone, and have tried calling with each phone (yeah, I really wish I had an iPhone, but that’s still off in the future…or Android?). I really like the way the applications work on the TomTom; it seems quite easy and intuitive. I’ll try it out driving around tomorrow — it claims to know where I am, and has acquired appropriate satellites. More tomorrow!

A cool development…Google has opened up Google Sites to anyone with a Google account, not just Google apps customers. This is the old “JotSpot.com” that Google bought, and has wrapped in the look & feel of “Googleness.” This really puts wysiwyg web editing in the hands of virtually any web user, including wiki/blog-like functionality. Try it out! Their video does a much better job of describing it than I can here…see the Google blog post on this…

OK, I’m liking twitter…I’m enjoying both keeping up with a couple of my colleagues, and the programs for posting “tweets” make it very easy! I’ve installed twitterific and twhirl. I’ve got halo on my iPod Touch. I’ve got my phone hooked up for text messages. I’ve got my facebook status updating with my tweets. A virtual colleague just picked up on a tweet to facebook and sent me a message…

This stuff has possibilities! I may be a slow adopter, but I do eventually get there 😉

Well, I have been spending the afternoon catching up a zillion emails. At the beach right now, spent a great morning walking several miles, bright sun, if somewhat cool & windy. The expected cold front is finally beginning to sag across the area now, and soon it will be time to go get a peck of steamed oysters for dinner. But before that…those zillion emails…

One was from a colleague who’s really into web 2.0, social networking, etc. He shared his FriendFeed with me a couple weeks ago, and I finally had a few minutes to check it out…I did and then set up my own. Decided to set up a Twitter account as well…will give it a try. Don’t know if I have the energy for all this “lifelogging”…

Now about those oysters…Jimmy Buffet once said “…give me oysters & beer, for dinner every day of the year…” 😉

Later!