reDesign

June 14, 2010

iPad puts on its business suit

Filed under: apple, foursquare, ipad, iphone, local search, mobile, social networking — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:40 pm
An iPad used in place of a cash register at Sightglass Coffee. Photo courtesy Tony Conrad.

An iPad used in place of a cash register at Sightglass Coffee. Photo courtesy of Tony Conrad.

Most of the discussion around Apple’s iPad has been about what a great consumer device it is. It’s a book reader, movie player, newspaper, photo viewer, RSS reader and more.

But the iPad has a lot to offer businesses as well. Sightglass Coffee in San Francisco is using an iPad, with Square’s payment system as a point-of-sale system. A restaurant in Australia is using iPads in place of printed menus and wine lists. Patrons can drill down on items that interest them for more information. Mercedes Benz is using iPads to allow customers to start their credit application while still intoxicated by the new car smell. The Plaza hotel in NYC will soon use them for concierge services and room service ordering.

As companies like Twitter, Groupon, Living Social, foursquare and Yelp focus on the small business market, it’s easy to see the iPad becoming an essential tool for small businesses.

I cringe every time I go to a business with a Groupon and see the clerk pull out a binder and manually cross out the Groupon on the list. An iPad app would reduce the transaction time and provide the business key metrics such as how many redemptions are outstanding and how much people are spending beyond the Groupon value. It would also reduce mistakes and fraud.

Other possible applications:

  • Reputation management with live feeds from Twitter and Yelp, with the ability to quickly respond to applications.
  • Check in information from sites like foursquare to show who is visiting right now and keep track of frequent customers. An alert could appear when the mayor/duke/etc. checks in.
  • Frequency programs to replace traditional punch cards.
  • Real estate agents could use iPads to show off alternative properties and keep track of reactions from buyers.

iPads could also interact with mobile devices such as iPhones to receive payments.

Of course, all of these things can be done with a computer. But the iPad offers a number of advantages:

  • It takes less space. All of this power takes less space than a computer monitor, much less a PC.
  • It doesn’t create a barrier between you and the customer. The tablet feels more collaborative versus using a laptop.
  • Fewer maintenance headaches due to viruses and malware.
  • It shows innovation and forward thinking.

See also:

June 9, 2010

EVO vs. iPhone

Filed under: android, apple, facebook, flickr, google, iphone, mobile — Tags: — Rocky Agrawal @ 10:21 am

I’ve been using an HTC EVO since last Friday. As an iPhone user for the last two years, this is the first Android phone that has appealed to me.  CrunchGear has a good comparison of the technical specs of the iPhone and the EVO.

The two biggest complaints others have voiced about the EVO are bulk and poor battery life. Yes, it is bulky. It’s the heaviest phone I’ve had in at least 5 years — at 6 ounces, it’s 25% heavier than the iPhone 4G. It’s width makes it more awkward to hold than an iPhone, but not uncomfortably so. But it also has a big, beautiful screen. Life is a tradeoff.

I haven’t had issues with battery life, but then I don’t talk a lot on my phone. Unlike with the iPhone, you can carry around a spare battery.

The other issue that has been mentioned regularly is the on-screen keyboard. The iPhone’s keyboard is less complicated, but the EVO let’s you accomplish more tasks (like entering numbers) without leaving the main keyboard. The one issue I’ve definitely noticed is that some keys on the left side haven’t been registering consistently. (e.g. “A” and “S”)

While others have railed against one or the other, the phones are different enough that they’re likely to appeal to different people. I’ve tried to identify those below.

For typical consumers, my recommendation would be the iPhone, provided that you’re in an area where AT&T’s network isn’t saturated. For me? I’ve got three more weeks to decide.

If you…

… have a lot of music or photos and like iTunes.

Go with the iPhone. I haven’t been able to find a decent media synchronization experience for EVO. I used my iPhone frequently for podcasts and those are easy to set up and synch with iTunes. I also synch photos from my computer to my iPhone. Again, not something I can do with the stock EVO.

… want to customize your phone experience.

Go with EVO. You can customize a lot of elements of how the phone operates. You can create themes for different uses, e.g. a work theme, play theme and travel theme. Each theme can have different applications, shortcuts and widgets. It’d be even nicer if you could change themes automatically based on time of day or location. (e.g. work theme while at the office)

… don’t want to know what a task manager is.

Go with iPhone. Ordinary users should never have to see things like com.google.android.apps.googlevoice. It’s difficult to figure out what apps are running on the EVO. That’s problematic because you could easily have an unknown app running down your battery.

… want something that looks pretty.

Go with iPhone. It’s hard to top Apple design. The EVO is bulkier and certainly looks more utilitarian than iPhone. The EVO screen also shows fingerprints a lot more than my iPhone 3G.

… give out your Google Voice number to friends, family and colleagues.

Go with EVO. The Google Voice integration is incredible. Calls you make can be routed through GV automatically. Calls are logged correctly in the phone and on the GV site. Voicemail is also seamlessly integrated. Text messages aren’t integrated into the phone’s messages app.

… want a broad selection of apps.

Go with iPhone. Yes, it’s not open and yes, Apple can arbitrarily reject apps. But iOS has many more apps written for it. While many of the major apps are on both platforms, I couldn’t find equivalents for flickr or Zipcar on Android. Google Voice is the key exception of an app that’s on Android but not iPhone.

For gamers, the iPhone advantage is even stronger. With the gyroscope on iPhone 4, gaming will only get better.

…  like flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

Go with iPhone. The Facebook and Twitter apps for iPhone are much more polished than their Android counterparts. For example, on the Facebook app, clicking on a link someone has shared sends you on an infinite loop between the shared item and the person’s wall.  (Google VP Vic Gotundra recently gave a Facebook intern an HTC Evo in hopes of getting a better experience on Android.) I couldn’t find an official flickr app for Android.

HTC includes some tools for all three networks that integrate them into the phone’s UI. For example, contact lists from all three can be integrated with the phone’s main contact list. This sounds great — and is the right direction for phones — but the software isn’t ready for prime time. I often see the same people listed 3 or 4 times. (You can manually consolidate these for each person, but that’s a lot of work.) If you set up favorite people, you’ll see when they’ve updated their social networks. Background downloading of status updates also takes a toll on battery life.

… have terrible AT&T coverage.

Go with EVO. AT&T’s networks in SF and NY are overloaded and getting data connections or making a call can be a real challenge.

I’ve had few issues with Sprint’s network. Sprint also includes roaming on Verizon’s network.

… want something that “just works” out of the box.

Go with iPhone. The stock EVO is much more customizable than a stock iPhone. With customization always comes complexity. When iPod came out, a lot of techies criticized it for being a dumbed down MP3 player. Other MP3 players of the time had FM radios! They didn’t tie you into one company! But by stripping away all those extra features, Apple created something that just worked for the most common tasks for most people.

Same is true with iPhone. Owning the entire stack gives Apple a huge advantage in creating a user experience that just works across its enormous userbase. Video calling will work the same across all iPhone 4s. Not true with Android.

With HTC’s Sense UI, Android, Sprint customizations and apps all playing a part, the EVO experience doesn’t hold together.

Although features like social networking integration will be important, what HTC has done with EVO is too confusing for most people.

… want to be able to connect your laptop, iPad or other devices.

Go with EVO. Although AT&T is now offering tethering, they’re charging an extra $20 a month and the usage still counts against your 2GB data limit. For$30 a month, Sprint offers unlimited data and a wireless hotspot that supports up to 8 devices simultaneously. If you don’t need that, you might be able to use an app like PDANet to tether your laptop without paying the $30 a month.

… talk a lot, text a lot, use a lot of data or use navigation and want to economize.

Go with EVO. Sprint’s pricing plans are generally cheaper than AT&T for heavy users. For $80, Sprint includes unlimited nights (beginning at 7pm vs. 9pm for AT&T) and weekends, unlimited calls to any mobile phone (vs. just AT&T customers), unlimited texting (an additional $20 on AT&T) and navigation (extra $10 on AT&T). Sprint also has generous corporate discounts that can knock up to 25% off the bill. Low volume users who can get by with less than 250MB of data a month are better off with AT&T.

… are a world traveler.

Go with the iPhone. With GSM, you’ll at least have the option of international coverage in most countries, even if you have to pay exorbitant roaming rates. Of course, it’s best to unlock your phone and use local carriers if you’re spending any amount of time outside the country.

… are uncertain.

Try EVO. Sprint offers the most generous return policy in the business. You have 30 days to decide whether you like it. If you don’t, you can take it back and you won’t pay anything. They won’t even charge you for the service you used. AT&T will charge you for the service, plus the activation fee, unless you return within 3 days. Sprint’s early termination fee is also lower, $200 vs. $325.

NOTE: Comparisons here are based on a stock iPhone vs. a stock EVO.

April 15, 2009

How the AP blew it

Filed under: google, iphone, journalism, media, newspapers, yahoo — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:17 pm

In the most recent round of AP getting in a huff about search engines and aggregators stealing traffic that they feel rightly belongs to them, there’s a fundamental problem they’re ignoring: AP chose not be in the online news business. More than a decade ago, AP made two crucial decisions: to not create a destination site and to license its content to news portals. Either of these decisions on their own would have been damaging, but the combination of the two has been nearly deadly.

Screenshot of AP's iPhone app

Screenshot of AP's iPhone app

As a member-owned cooperative, the AP has catered to its members, which includes newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets. Even now, if you go to AP.org, news is a footnote. Contrast that with the front page of Reuters. Instead of displaying AP content on the AP-branded site, you get AP content in obscure brands like the Lake County Record-Bee, High Desert Daily Press, Citizen-Times.com and GazetteXtra.com. AP is still hosting the content, but the strong national AP brand is subsumed by a large number of brands that have no meaning outside their region.

This might have worked if newspapers had assumed the role of the default home page and people sought out their local brands. Some papers, including the Washington Post and New York Times tried to create all purpose portals; those efforts have been abandoned.

AP also decided to license content to online media outlets. Yahoo! was an early licensee; Google struck a deal with AP more recently. Yahoo! was able to take the AP content and create a leading news destination site without employing hundreds of journalists.

Not only do Yahoo! and Google license AP content, they are doing a better job presenting it than AP. Compare this story on the AP’s site (branded oanow.com) with the same story on Yahoo! News. The Yahoo! story loads a lot faster and the layout is cleaner. On AP-hosted pages, I sometimes get pop up ads. It’s a much worse experience than Google or Yahoo! News.

The fact that AP doesn’t have a destination site presents another big problem in today’s PageRank driven environment: because the same story can be presented at hundreds of different URLs, they don’t rank highly in search results.

It’s not impossible for AP to get back in the game. But they have to play the game as it exists today, instead of trying to reset the calendar to 1995. They’ll need to focus on the things that any Web business needs to focus on today: simplicity, performance, community, analytics and search engine optimization. And they must do it under the AP brand.

One hopeful sign is AP’s Mobile News iPhone application. The app provides a solid user experience, incorporates photos and videos effectively, has acceptable levels of advertising and looks like it was designed this decade. You can even send in news tips. My only real complaint is that the AP brand is buried in favor of a generic “Mobile News Network” brand. (Probably to placate member companies.)

AP has a lot of assets that even now aren’t fully exploited by Google or Yahoo! With some creative thinking and Web-focused talent, they could use those assets to build a killer destination site. It won’t be anyone’s home page, but it can be successful nonetheless.

More on: newspapers.

January 6, 2009

Tech lessons from a trip to Borders

Filed under: customer service, iphone, mobile, mobile search, search — Rocky Agrawal @ 10:42 pm

On my way home from work today I decided to stop by Borders to pick up a guidebook for my birthday trip to Mexico City.

Step 1: Figure out if the Borders near my house is open. I called 1-800-555-TELL using my car’s Bluetooth to get the phone number. Tellme connected me to my neighborhood Borders. “Thank you for calling Borders… for our store hours and locations press 1.” FAIL. With more people relying on cell phones and increasing legislation requiring hands-free systems while driving, Touch Tone-only systems need to go away. After 2 1/2 minutes and three full loops of the menu I was finally connected to the store.

SnapTell screenshotStep 2: Arrive at the store and look for a guidebook. No one was behind the information desk. Two computer terminals allowed me to search for a book. The search results include books that are only available online, aren’t yet published and a few that are “likely available in store” in a seemingly random order. FAIL. Gee, wouldn’t you want to sort the books that I can walk out with first? Otherwise, why am I here? The screen says my book is in section “B020,” with no indication of where that it is.

Step 3: I notice on my way out of the store a book in the bargain bin on Sonoma wineries. I figure this is the perfect opportunity to try out SnapTell, an iPhone comparison shopping application. Take a picture of a book, CD or DVD and SnapTell shows you how much that item sells for online. (It’s like Shazam for shopping.)

My first picture wasn’t good enough; I got an error message. Second time was a charm, despite taking a picture of a book that was too wide to fit in the frame. I could scroll through a list of prices from online merchants.

While I was impressed with the image recognition, the data quality needs work. The results included older editions of the book; the 1 cent price shown on the summary screen was for an older edition. Even when the current edition was shown pricing didn’t correlate to the merchant. Clicking on the $1.99 link pictured shown showed a price at the merchant of $6.99.

Data errors like this aren’t unusal in large databases, but I suspect will improve over time.

SnapTell is an interesting tool for research. And with access to location information, they could build a nice database of what people are searching for and from where.

That’s assuming that stores like Borders improve service to the point that I’ve got other reasons to come in than “I can’t wait for shipping.”

Disclosure: I work for Tellme, a company that makes speech recognition systems for many large companies. I have a bias against poorly implemented telephone systems.

September 20, 2008

iPhone design pet peeve #2: moving app icons

Filed under: apple, iphone, rocky's iphone pet peeves, ui, usability, wireless, wireless data — Rocky Agrawal @ 1:53 pm

The App Store is one of the key strengths of the iPhone. You can easily find, purchase and install applications that increase the utility of the iPhone. Steve Jobs claims that more than 100 million downloads have occurred in the short time that the App Store has been around. I’d bet that if you were to take all of the other smartphones and add up every download, you still wouldn’t hit 100 million.

My nit with the design is that when you update applications, the app icon on the phone doesn’t stay put. In fact, the iPhone 2.1 update scrambled the order of all my applications. That’s the kind of detail I’d expect Apple to get right.

See more iPhone design pet peeves.

September 19, 2008

iPhone design pet peeve #1: address book access

Filed under: apple, iphone, rocky's iphone pet peeves, ui, usability, wireless, wireless data — Rocky Agrawal @ 1:25 am

I’ve had the 3G iPhone for a couple of months now. During that time I’ve had the same complaints that most others have had: virtually nonexistent 3G coverage, anemic battery life and frequent crashes.

But there are also details of the UI that have bothered me; some big, some small. This is the first in a series of posts about iPhone pet peeves.

Pet peeve #1: Apple allows developers to access the address book without asking the user’s permission. Apps can copy your entire contact list to their servers and you wouldn’t necessarily know. Early versions of the Loopt application abused this to send spam text messages to your contacts. Apple knows better: applications have to ask for permission when accessing location.

September 10, 2008

You too can be Rand McNally

Filed under: city guides, flickr, geotagging, google, gps, iphone, lbs, local search, maps, satellite navigation — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:01 pm

How long does it take to get from Pike Place Market to Mount Rainier National Park? According to Google Maps, it’s a 5 minute walk; less than 1/3 of a mile. Pretty easy, huh?

Mount Rainier looks an awful lot like an office tower to me.

Mount Rainier looks an awful lot like an office tower to me. That'll be one steep climb!

In reality it’s a 2 1/2 hour drive.

This error is the result of a fundamental challenge in how data is collected for online navigation and local search products: all of the major services use data that weren’t originally collected for navigation. The typical source is phone books listings, which were originally compiled by companies like InfoUSA to sell mailing lists. In this particular case, the national park likely has a business office in Downtown Seattle.

Einstein monumentThe data have a distinct bias: toward places with phone numbers. While you can get exact driving directions to a local ball bearing distributor, look for a park, landmark or trailhead and you’ll often get erroneous data or no results at all. Occasionally, you’ll luck out and there will be business names nearby that incorporate the place name.

Just for fun, try finding the Albert Einstein statue in Washington, DC using an online mapping service. (If you can’t find it, click on the image to see the answer.)

On Sunday, I was looking for Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. Yahoo! Maps struck out entirely. Mapquest delivered a bunch of unrelated results.

An answer lies in another Yahoo! property: flickr’s database of geotagged photos. Although flickr’s search tools aren’t optimized for local search, it’s content is a great data source. The first search result in Google Maps for Hippie Hill is spot on; it came from Google indexing flickr’s geodata. The commercial results on the same map (the red markers) are mostly garbage.

Flickr is just one tool. As more people adopt GPS-enabled phones like the iPhone, we’ll see more and more user generated data. Enabling mobile data collection is reason enough to build an iPhone app.

Developing countries have the potential to leapfrog the developed world in data quality. Google’s Map Maker allows anyone to populate data in countries without large commercial data providers. You can pull up a satellite view and trace roads. Zoom into buildings and add local businesses. Find a park and add in key features. Because the content is user generated, the places that people look for the most will be added first, as opposed to the local ball bearing distributor. Places with colloquial names will become findable.

User-generated content has its challenges, of course. In the initial stages, tools like Map Maker will attract the community organizers who are passionate about their neighborhoods. Once the data start getting even modest usage, spammers will attack. But many of the standard spam fighting techniques can be used to deter them.

OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia offer similar functionality. OpenStreetMap is focused on creating and editing roads; Wikimapia is focused on places of interest.

Google Map Maker’s user interface is more intuitive than OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia. Unfortunately, Google is being hypocritical in how it treats the data. While Google Maps combines data from other sources, such as indexing geodata from flickr,  it is keeping content generated by Map Maker users locked up. Users can’t even download the data they create.

More on: geotagging, local search, maps

I am here, where is everyone else?

Filed under: apple, facebook, flickr, gps, im, instant messaging, iphone, lbs, mobile, social networking, twitter, where, yelp — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:02 am

Since the iPhone app store came online, I’ve been playing with a number of mobile social networks. There’s no shortage of them: Limbo, Loopt, Where and Whrrl are all attempting to play in the space.

The central idea of mobile social networks is to connect you with your friends while you’re out and about. Unfortunately, they all require you to rebuild your friend list. Early versions of the Loopt app went so far as to spam people in your iPhone’s address book with text messages.

Local events on Where

Local events on Where

Here are some of the keys to success in mobile social networks:

  • It’s the network, stupid. Getting people to create Yet Another Network won’t work. I’ve already created my network. Use it. My only friend on the iPhone version of Loopt is 2,500 miles away — hardly someone I can run into when I’m out in San Francisco on the weekend. Loopt and Where have Facebook apps, but their iPhone versions don’t seem to tie into them.
  • Let me control when I update my location. Location is very personal. Don’t automatically update my location just because I’ve launched your application. I may just want to check something.
  • Let me publish beyond your app. Early adopters who try your app are willing to accept that there is a ramp up period, but they aren’t going to do work for zero return. If I my update my status and no one is there to see it, have I updated my status? Let me automatically publish the information I collect using your app to Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Not only does it give me a reason to use your app, it becomes a distribution vehicle for you, providing exposure to my friends who just might say “How’d he do that?” I taught a lot of my friends about Facebook mobile simply by updating my status from my phone. (Facebook puts a mobile phone icon next to such updates.)
  • Seed your app with other content sources. If I don’t have friends, at least give me other content that makes your app worth using. Where does a good job of this, pulling in content from Yelp, eventful and Zipcar. If you can, get ego bloggers like Scoble to use your app.
  • 128 King St is not a place. Pete’s Tavern is. Whenever posting information, it should include a human understandable version. You’d never post a location of 37.778911, -122.391223; a street address is marginally more helpful. With the margin of error built into GPS and density of urban areas, place names are critical.
  • Let me take pictures. For a long time, mobile developers haven’t had access to cell phone cameras. With the iPhone, they do. The ability to take and send a picture makes it easier to communicate a lot of information quickly. And it adds life to your application. (Bonus points for dropping a copy of the picture in my flickr account.)
  • Tie into IM and SMS. Loopt claims that the most commonly asked question via SMS is “Where are you?” That claim is probably made up marketing b.s. without any hard data. Nevertheless, it is a frequent question. Make it easy for me to answer it. Let me send an SMS or IM that includes where I’m at (Pete’s Tavern, 128 King St.). To anyone. Include a URL with a map and optionally a picture.
  • Don’t spam my friends. What you do with my friends’ contact information reflects on me. If you spam my friends, I will never use your application again. And I will tell everyone you’re a spammer.

Tying into the various APIs I mentioned may seem like a lot of work — and it is. But the alternative is spending a lot of money on distribution and marketing.

See also:

July 14, 2008

Technology moves on, language doesn’t

Filed under: apple, fun, iphone — Rocky Agrawal @ 10:04 pm
Screen grab of Rotary Dial app for iPhone

Screen grab of Rotary Dial app for iPhone

One of my favorite iPhone apps is Rotary Dialer. There’s just something fun about making the latest and greatest device act like something from the 60s. Rotary Dialer isn’t like the “classic” phones from Pottery Barn, where the buttons are just laid out like a rotary phone. You have to make a circular motion from the number you want to the metal thing at the end. (Anyone know what that’s called?) And just like on real rotary phones, if you slip you have to start all over. It took me 1 minute and 2 seconds (and three tries) to dial my own number.

“Dial” is one of those words that still hangs in there, despite a lot of changes in technology. Most people haven’t “dialed” phones in this country in two decades. When I was in Minnesota, the local phone company made it impossible. It was costing them too much to maintain the equipment to detect the pulses, so they forced everyone to Touch Tone.

Some other words and phrases that are hanging in there:

  • Film, rolls. We film events, even though a lot of that is actually on DV tape or recorded on an SD card. Hollywood still makes actual films, but many of those are now going digital. Apple refers to the recent pictures on the iPhone as the “Camera Roll”.
  • Rewind. Back in the day, the VCR had to physically rewind the tape to show a scene you missed. Now you hit rewind, but you’re probably just going back through a buffer.
  • Albums. Vinyl has all but disappeared, but album art is still with us.
  • Turn off the the TV. With no more knobs to turn, we’re actually pushing it off.
  • Washboard stomach. I think I might have seen a washboard in a museum, but I can’t be sure. At least we still have six packs.

Unlocking the creativity of the masses

Filed under: apple, apple tv, facebook, flickr, geotagging, gps, iphone, ipod, lbs, local search, mobile, mobile search, photography, social networking, twitter, where, wireless, wireless data, yelp — Rocky Agrawal @ 9:26 pm

With the launch of the iPhone last year (and the millions of dollars in ad spend around it), Apple did more for wireless data adoption than wireless carriers had in the last 10 years. With Thursday’s launch of the App Store, they’re doing it again by unlocking the creativity of the masses.

Wireless carriers had long held on to core cellphone features with an iron grip. Want access to the camera, GPS, microphone or address book? Good luck. It usually involved spending a year or more negotiating with a carrier and then writing and (rewriting) your app to work on dozens of phone models. And when you were all done, you brought it to a market with little distribution support at a price few people would pay.

In the last couple of days, I’ve downloaded more apps than I had in my entire history of cell phone usage (dating back to 1996). There’s one big reason: once developers had access to features like GPS and the camera, they created compelling applications.

The most compelling apps have come from independent developers or startups. Some have used public APIs for other products; although there isn’t an official flickr app, there are several apps that interact with flickr. AOL is the lone exception among large companies, with apps for AIM and AOL Radio.

Here are some of the apps that caught my eye. With the exception of iMilk, all are free. That’s another refreshing change: Apple is making it easy for application developers who want to distribute free applications. Even paid apps can be relatively cheap, with a one time price of $3-$10 being common. (Versus the previous $3-$5 per month.)

All is not perfect in app land, of course. Much like when Facebook launched their app platform, some developers are having a hard time keeping up with the demand. I’ve also had my phone reboot at least half a dozen times when using various apps.

The functionality in some of these apps is limited compared with their other incarnations. For example, in Jott, you can’t send Jotts to others. As these apps are revved, they’ll become even more compelling.

Jott

Jott allows you to record a voice “note to self”. The note is then transcribed and put in your Jott account, which is available by phone or Web. It isn’t as robust as Jott’s

Where

A mobile social network that lets you plot friends on a map, look for restaurant reviews, find and reserve Zipcars and even look at a map of the night sky where you are with the constellations plotted. (Video of the app.)

There are a number of players looking to create mobile social networks. Whrrl, Loopt and Limbo offer somewhat similar apps. Where offers a range of features beyond social, while Limbo is the most social.

(Disclosure: I did some consulting for Where last year.)

Facebook

Facebook took an early lead with the iPhone 1.0 by having one of the best iPhone optimized sites. The lead developer released a toolkit that was used by other developers. The application version adds the ability to upload photos and IM, but lacks some of the features found in the browser version.

AirMe

Upload pictures to flickr (or an AirMe account). The pictures are automatically geotagged with your location. AirMe also tags you pictures with the current weather conditions.

NearMe

See pictures from Panoramio of places around where you are.

Twittelator

See and update Twitter. Post pictures and location updates. Twitterific has less functionality and also has ads.

Urbanspoon

Kind of like a Magic 8 ball to decide where to eat. Uses GPS to find where you are. Shake your iPhone and it will select a place for you.

iMilk  ($2.99)

“Drink” virtual milk. Uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to empty the glass. If you prefer, you can pour it into a glass before drinking.

Remote

Control your Apple TV or iTunes. Play songs, see album art and search your iTunes library. Works over Wifi, so you don’t have to be in line of sight. Much better than the flimsy remote that ships with Apple TV.

Pandora

The world’s greatest music discovery service now streams to iPhone. The app is beautifully simple. Add in an aux in jack or FM transmitter for your car and say goodbye to the $14 a month you’re paying to XM or Sirius.

Yelp

Why settle for the hand-picked (usually glowing) reviews displayed in the restaurant window? Pull out your iPhone and check Yelp. My favorite feature is a filter that limits the search to restaurants that are open now. Very helpful for those midnight cravings.

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