Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Sounds like this aren’t supposed to happen. Since I made this recording, I’ve heard more sounds like this happening during all kinds of functions: even just switching between apps. I closed all the apps sitting in the “multitasking” bar at the bottom, and it’s still happening.

If anyone is experiencing this or knows a fix, let me know. If it continues, might be worth a trip to the Genius Bar. I don’t like it, I tell you!

I recently posted two lists on Twitter:

1. iPhone Photo Apps I Like: CameraBag, Hipstamatic, QuadCamera, AutoStitch, TiltShift Generator, Cross Process, Best Camera, Incredibooth (iPhone4 only)
2. Best ToDo Apps: Appigo, Zenbe, Nozbe, Google Tasks (part of Google Apps), Reqall (speak to text). Best = Toodledo < < syncs with everything

Here’s the rest. If I mention them, I like them. If you want to know more, find them in the App Store:

• AppAdvice – For news and reviews about the best apps!
• MoodAgent – Scans your music and creates playlists based on certain moods, tempos, etc. Hard to describe, but COOL!
• Instapaper – OMG, so many kinds of awesome. Reformats articles from anywhere for easy reading on your iPhone.
• Remote (for iTunes) – Control iTunes on your main computer from your iPhone.
• Rowmote (for Hulu) – Control Hulu from across the room!
• Reeder – The slickest RSS reader for iPhone I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot!)
• Cleartune – Tune your guitar!
• Shazam – Find out what’s playing right now (SoundHound is good, too.)
• Kindle for iPhone – Read books you buy on Amazon on your iPhone. There’s iBooks, too, but I’m a long-time Kindle fan.
• Recorder – Much better than the native recorder. Trust me.
• AudioBoo – Record sound snippets and upload to Facebook or Twitter instantly.
• AT&T MyWireless Mobile – Pay your bill right from your iPhone. Check your usage.
• DailyBurn – Watch your weight if you watch calories. There’s a matching app for scanning food in using bar codes!
• CarbsControl – Watch your weight if you’re a low-carb person.
• Delivery Status Touch – Input packages you’re expecting and get notified when they will be arriving.
• Charlie – A Flickr app you don’t hear much about. I hate the Flickr app for iPhone. I usually check Flickr using Safari for iPhone (the mobile site), but for uploading, this is nice. It’s not bad for checking, either.
• CardStar – Instead of all those cards on your keychain, make them scan your iPhone instead. Yes, it works.
• Evernote – If you use Evernote, the app is awesome.
• foursquare – The more popular location check-in app.
• Gowalla – The BETTER location check-in app (because the icons are like a MILLION times cuter, and when I get back from a trip, I like to see that set of icons!). Plus, you can “drop” random crap and pick things up, and how fun is that?!
• Google Mobile App – Gmail, Reader, Google Earth, Google Voice Search, it’s all here.
• Dropbox – If you use it, then you should be using the app. Access any of your files any time from anywhere and share them with anyone. Awesome!
• GoodReader – Connects with Dropbox and any site where there are PDF’s to be found. Basically, you can download entire PDF’s and keep them stored on your phone. Then later, you can look at them, even if you have no service. Once you work out the ways it’s useful, there are a MILLION ways to use this.
• Grocery Pal – I used to be a big fan of a different grocery app, but this one has a REALLY nice feature that trumps all the rest. It connects to the specials at my local Harris Teeter, so I can quickly see everything that is on sale there and add those things I want to the list without having to check the specials online in some other way. It’s VERY handy!
• How to Cook Everything – The entirety of the How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman in an app. Very thorough, and there are timers built into the app!
• Last.FM – Great site. Great for listening. You can check your gig calendar.
• Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals – This app takes up a lot of space. It’s filled with video and beautiful photography, a grocery list maker, WONDERFUL recipes (I’ve made several), and it’s just a masterful thing to behold. Kind of the state of the art when it comes to apps. Totally worth it’s slightly higher cost.
• Movies by Flixster – I’ve always found Flixter to be evil, but this app won me over because of its integration with Rotten Tomatoes. Also, I can keep a list of movies I want to see.
• Period Tracker – If you’re a woman and for any reason, you want to track your menstrual symptoms (moods, cycle, physical symptoms), this is a really impressive app. You are even reminded to backup your data, which is easily done by clicking a button. You end up with a text file you can print and bring along with you to the doctor’s office.
• Skype – Got people you need to talk to in other countries? Get Skype. Spoke to a friend who was in China once while I was sitting underground at Foundation bar. Have you been in there? It’s all stone. We had WiFi only. It’s like THE FUTURE!
• Trip Journal – This didn’t work at all on my 3G because my GPS was borked, but it’s a REALLY nifty little app to track where you’ve been with pictures and little notes, and you end up with cute little maps. It’s fun if you’re traveling.

I just did some things on Facebook because of their recent fall from grace with regards to respect for privacy:

• Went to my Profile page
• Under Friends on the left, I right-clicked on the number of friends I have, and opened that in a new tab
• In the new tab on the left under Lists, I can see Pages with a little yellow flag. Clicking on that shows me an interesting list: (1) Everything that used to just be a narrative of interests in my profile, but was recently changed to clickable links that I “Like” a few weeks ago, including movies, musical artists, etc. So since I’ve done that, bands I “like” who have pages have started popping up in my stream – This morning, Regina Spektor posted a cute picture of herself in Tokyo. While this was a cute picture that I enjoyed seeing, I want control over what content like this I see. (2) Everything I’ve clicked a “Like” button for during the past few weeks. I think “Like” or “Pages” are the new “Groups” … or something like that.
• I want to choose who markets at me and who doesn’t.
• I’ve now added all these “Pages” to a personal list of mine – also called Pages. I’m going to change the permissions on this list so that those Pages cannot see any of my information. I mean, there could be a million other people who like, say, the movie 500 Days of Summer. For all I know, Facebook is making it possible for anyone in that group to click over to me from there. I am assuming they aren’t, but JUST IN CASE, I’m taking some precautions.
• In some rash moments, I’ve “Liked” some things like “I don’t feel like folding my laundry so I just restart the dryer.” I can probably just leave that Page and feel all the better for it.

I get a lot out of Facebook. I am not ready to leave. I am MIGHTILY annoyed by them for making me work so very hard to keep my privacy, but I’m not ready to bolt – not even close, because of the good I get from it. I’m loyal to a fault sometimes, but I feel like they will eventually get this thing straightened out to a level I can deal with.

Do you have an iPhone? If you do, do you further understand the awesomeness that is Instapaper? If you have an iPhone, you really should start to get it. It’s awesome like RSS feeds are awesome. It’s awesome like GMail conversation threading is awesome. If you get why those are so awesome, then I urge you to consider that there is another kind of awesome that you may not quite get yet.

In Instapaper’s own words:

Instapaper facilitates easy reading of long text content. We discover web content throughout the day, and sometimes, we don’t have time to read long articles right when we find them. Instapaper allows you to easily save them for later, when you do have time, so you don’t just forget about them or skim through them.

In the above audio recording, I explain why, for iPhone users,

Take a listen, try it out, and see if you agree. That trio along with the Kindle app for iPhone means I am reading MUCH more than I did only a few months ago. It’s a no-brainer and easy as pie. It makes it more possible to read all those articles you’ve kept in open tabs. There will be a useful place to put them; a place where they may actually get read!

Ginny asked me about my favorite iPhone apps this morning. I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d just share my answer to her in a blog post. Thanks for the inspiration, Ginny. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while!

• Feeds is awesome if you use Google Reader, and just awesome for RSS feeds in general.
• eBuddy is new, free, and AWESOME. It’s an IM app that uses push, so you can set it to wait for 5, 10, or 15 minutes after you exit it so stop being “on.” Hard to explain, but it’s really good. Interfaces with all the popular chat clients.
• ReQall is badass for speaking to do lists and converting them to text. Worth experimenting around with. I love it for talking in things I need to do when I’m driving!
• My favorite Twitter app is Tweetie. Tweetdeck is nice, but crashy sometimes.
• Camerabag and Autostitch are the shit for photography fun.
• Audioboo lets you post talking directly to Twitter.
• Are you a Last.FM user? If so, the app is great. (For the record, these are so easy to find by looking them up on your iPhone or in the iTunes app store, that I’m going to stop doing all the leg work at this point in my blog post!)
• I have three radio apps I use: Slacker, Public Radio (for listening to Tara on WCPE!), and Radio Paradise.
• For reading when I’m out, I have the Kindle app, Instapaper (free AND paid are both good – takes a little learning to get going, but it’s so badass, it’s ridiculous).
• Do you use Tumblr? If you do, then the app is excellent. I recommend it highly, for posting and reading.
• Shazam is fun to have, cuz why not? And it’s free.
• Card Star will blow your mind. You won’t have to carry around those little keychain cards anymore. It really works.
• Shopper is good for grocery lists.
• Evernote is handy as hell.
• Local Picks is (to me) the most useful of the location-based sites (better than Yelp or Urban Spoon if you ask me)
• Produce Guide and Locavore are good for being healthy. I love the little quiz in Produce Guide.
• Birdhouse is good if you have a bunch of things you want to tweet, but you don’t want to flood your stream. You can save as many as you want. I don’t use it a lot, but when I need it, I’m glad I have it.
• iMapMyRide is great for biking, and I know you can use it for walking and running, too. It tracks your route, speed, etc.
• Now Playing is so good when you are thinking of taking yourself to a movie. It interfaces with Rotten Tomatoes, which is my favorite movie site online. It’s purely data based. So instead of averaging the reviews, it simply culls all reviews of a given movie. Each review is considered GOOD or BAD. Then it gives you a percentage of how many reviewers liked it and how many hated it. If more people hated than loved a movie, I’d rather not waste my money!
• i.TV is good for finding when stuff is on TV. I use a TiVo, and I can schedule recordings right from my phone.
• Bebot is silly and fun and awesome and just a trip to play with.
• Games I dig are Solitaire City Spiderette, Peggle, Quordy, and Drop7. The kids are really into Flight Control, but I’ve been trying to resist addiction to another game.

There are many more I love and have on my Mac at home for when I feel like adding stuff back, but I don’t like more than 4 pages of apps at any given time. More than that, and I can’t find anything. My main rule for myself is to keep the stuff I use most on page one. Page Two is for Camera Apps, Audio Apps, and Reading Apps. Page Four is for Games and Entertainment Stuff (TV/Movies). Page Three is all the other Utilities I use.

My Current Page One

That’s my iPhone way. Everyone’s is different, but mine makes me superhappy.