AN EVENING WITH IPHONE APPLICATIONS

By Peter Quain

My job requires me to travel and every so often I find myself getting stuck overnight in a city where I don’t know anyone. Last week it was Philadelphia. Normally I would have spent a quiet evening in the hotel room and flown out the next day but with the help of a few applications on my Iphone I was able to have a great meal, catch up with an old friend, and even get home a little earlier than expected. I was sitting in my hotel when I remembered my friend Dominick saying he went phenomenal restaurant in Philly a few months back. I tried to call him to find out the name but the call went straight to voicemail. I decided to check on Goodrec.

Goodrec is a social networking application that allows you to post and share reviews and experiences you have had at bars, restaurants, movies, books, and more. The great thing about this application is that you have the option to only view the recommendations of friends whose taste you know and like. This application can also use your phones GPS to find recommended places near your current location.

If you live in a big city fun way to use the application is to have competitions to see who can find the cheapest happy hour in your area. Due to constantly changing happy hours the winners invariably will change on a weekly basis. When I played this game the losers would pay for the winners beers at the happy hour. It is also great for finding authentic ethic foods to impress dates and business associates.

I logged on to Goodrec and within minutes found out that name of the restaurant was 10 Arts and the dish he loved was the striped bass. Goodrec also supplied me with address and phone number of the restaurant. I had to call a cab but I only had fifteen dollars on me and didn’t know if it was enough to get me to restaurant. Luckily I had recently downloaded Rocket Taxi to my phone.

Rocket Taxi is an application uses your phones GPS or WiFi to save local names and numbers of over 14,000 taxi companies in over 2,800 cities in the US and Canada. This application is great if you are traveling out of town because it’s quick and easy and only requires the internet for the initial download and occasional updates. According to Rocket Taxi’s trip calculator my ride was only going to cost about nine dollars so I called up a taxi and didn’t worry about making a trip to the ATM. (*Note: An internet connection is needed to use the trip calculator function.)

On the ride to the restaurant I wanted to go on instant messenger to see what some of my friends were up to. I like many people now have friends on more than one instant messaging program. Currently I use both Yahoo and AIM. The IM+ application for Iphone has kept me from having to sign on between the two.

IM+ is the a mobile All-in-One Messenger for chats within AIM®/iChat, MSN®/Windows Live™ Messenger, Yahoo!®, ICQ®, Jabber®, Google Talk™ and MySpaceIM from any iPhone and iPod Touch. For me the best feature of this application is that you can run more than one messenger at the same time.

While I was on IM+ I noticed that my old friend Pat was on and after a bit of chatting I came to realize that he was actually living in Philly. Pat had some other things to do but we agreed to meet up later in the evening for drinks. During dinner I received an e-mail from a customer asking me for a quote ASAP. I had created the quote earlier but unfortunately the file was still on my laptop. Normally I would have had to rush back to the hotel and get my laptop but recently I had downloaded RDM+ or Remote Desktop for Mobiles.

iPodTouch to conveniently manage your email, files, programs and network resources. This program has served me well when I want to link up to my office computer however it doesn’t currently support Mac operating systems so I am unable to link it to my home Mac computer.

I used the RDM+ to pull the file off my PC and e-mail it to my customer. After dinner I used Goodrec to find a bar near by and used IM+ to instant message Pat and let him know where I was. When Pat showed up at the bar he apologized for not calling and explained that awhile back he lost his cell phone and was still working on getting all of his numbers back. Since we knew a lot of the same people I told him I would give him some of the numbers. He thanked me but asked if he could get them later as he didn’t feel like entering them all individually. That is when I showed him IBeam.

IBeam is an application that allows you to instantly send contact information and photos directly to another iPhone over wifi, to any other device via email, or use a barcode to optically transfer contact information. iBeam fills the need of many iPhone users by allowing them to instantly "Beam" contact information or photos directly to each other. Currently iPhone users have to type in or write down contact info and it can be frustrating. Other smart phones have had "beaming" ability for years and until now it was lacking on the iPhone.

Pat thanked me for updating his contacts and we got a drink. We caught up for a bit but then Pat explained that his girlfriend was on the way to pick him up since they had to be in NYC in the morning for a wedding. When I told him I was living in NYC he offered me a ride. We used Rocket Taxi to get back to my hotel and grab my things and before long Pat, his girlfriend, and I were headed toward NYC on 495. It was almost 2am and I was tired but before I drifted off in the back sleep I took out my IPhone one more time so I could utilize Inap.

Inap is an application that uses your phones GPS to notify you when you are approaching a specified destination. Finally when someone asks, “Are we there yet?” the phone will answer. This is a great application if you ride a bus or carpool to work and want to take a power nap however, it’s not a good on the subway as the GPS has difficulty pick up your location underground. Within three hours I was back at my apartment. As I walked in I realized normally at this time I would just be getting up to go to the airport in Philly. I sat on the couch and turned on the News. A bad storm had just hit Philly and all outgoing flight had been canceled. Thank you iPhone applications.