A little diversion

WARNING: this has little to do with knitting.

As I'm knitting my new iPhone case, I find myself compelled to extol the virtues of what I consider one of the best pieces of portable technology mankind has thus far created. I just got the iPhone 3G a few days ago, and every day I find myself amazed by the wondrous things I can do with it. Most of these features have been written about in one blog/site/review or another, but I wanted to put together my own reaction based on my own creative, tech-loving, expat lifestyle and the unique combination of features I use. Everything I currently use on my iPhone is free - I have yet to pay for a single application or feature.

The phone already comes with good built-in notes, email, real web browser, and calendar applications to keep you organized and in touch right out of the box. Then, with a WiFi connection and the App Store that comes with your phone, you can download all kinds of amazing stuff. I have the complete works of Shakespeare; audio phrasebooks in the major European and Asian languages (so far I have German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, plus Jim Breen's wwwJDic (Japanese dictionary)); Wikipedia's iPhone formatted version, 'Wikipanion'; three days at a time of current New York Times headlines; Evernote, which allows you to create text, photo, or audio notes; a small on-screen ruler for quick measurments in metric or standard (perfect for knitting gauges); local and international weather, etc. The possibilities are endless. Then, of course, you have an iPod built in with music, podcasts, and video. There are thousands of great podcasts out there; for little kids, Sesame Street even has some free video specials you can download through iTunes.

Then there's the sudden availability of English-language reading material. eReader, available throught he App Store, gives you access to a great selection of paid books, as well as the complete Project Gutenberg collection, all of which are free and downloadable in eReader format from manybooks.net. ManyBooks is even so kind as to offer up an iPhone-formatted catalog (certain features of their regular site are incompatible with eReader's browser). Project Gutenberg books include titles by Jane Austen, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carrol, Henry David Thoreau, and many more. They have, I believe, around 15,000 free titles to choose from, and in many languages. I now have dozens of books, all in one convenient device that's barely bigger than the palm of my hand.

No iPhone review would be complete without mentioning the hundreds of fun gadgets you can get your hands on - Othello, Tetris, a virtual cowbell to play along with your iPod music (the application opens with Chrstopher Walken saying "I gotta have more cowbell!"), bubble wrap that you touch to pop, sudoku, Mastermind, a magic 8-ball, and even a flashlight. I have an application that tells me the London tube status (closures, delays, work, etc). I can upload photos to Flickr with one application, post to Twitter with another, chat and IM, control movies and music on my PC wirelessly like a regular remote control, doodle, make digital flipbooks, and even update and check my MySpace page and messages.

And let's not forget SodaSnap! Let's say you're in Paris for the weekend, and you want to send your sucker friends back in the States a postcard to make them jealous. Just open SodaSnap, click a picture with your phone's camera, and enter an email address and some text to go with it. Your iPhone's built-in GPS will stamp the postcard with your current location, in the form of a Google Maps link with a little pin showing where you are.

The absolute coolest thing I downloaded: an old-fashioned labyrinth game. Remember that old game that had a steel ball in a wooden labyrinth, and you had to tilt it around to guide the ball to the end of the maze? They've got one for iPhone. The phone has what they call an 'accelerometer' in it, which is just an odd way of saying it responds to shaking and movement and whatever angle it's held at. For example, if you're browsing the web with your phone held upright, you can turn it onto its side and your browser will automatically rotate with it. With Labyrinth, you hold the phone flat and tilt it to move the little ball, just like the old wooden box (the game also responds well to how much you tip it - the ball will speed up or slow down in a very realistic way depending on the angle of tilt).

Finally, the all-important criteria: can it keep small children entertained on long trips? Absolutely. Movies, music, games, and more will keep even the pickiest hyperactive kid busy for hours.

Overall rating: 9 out of 10
Price: 80 euros for the 8GB model at Dutch T-Mobile stores, with a contract - not bad at all

Now, back to my knitting.