Not too long ago, I was admittedly indifferent to this mobile thing, even as a professional digital dude. This was because:
- I had BlackBerrys for work and found them useful but nothing revolutionary;
- I mistakenly chalked the iPhone hype up to characteristic Apple-fan hyperventilation;
- I stuck to my old clamshell phone because I’m really cheap.
Now that I’ve jumped to an Android smartphone, this HTC Incredible is practically grafted onto my hand. Why? It’s the dope applications. My friend Ben recently got one and asked me which ones to load up on his phone, so to spread the love around, I went with 16 of my favorites here to fill up your home screen. So load up your Android phone with these mugs — all of them free — and you’ll be set:
Gmail: Awesome job replicating the web experience. I also like using this app separate from the main mail app to keep my work / personal email divide simple.
Twitter: They hooked up their Android app. The HTC Peep app is kind of weak, and the native Android Twitter client does a cool job of syncing with your contacts, but this thing is well done. Each new release updates the functionality nicely, including a pretty well-done widget.
Yelp: No need for Google Maps when you hook this app up – finds local stuff based on your location, and the ratings make it easy to narrow down which one you want to try. It’s weird now to think of city life without Yelp – nice work, Eric.
Dolphin HD: It took three Android browsers before I settled on this one. The native Android browser is displays Flash and has good graphical capabilities, but it’s slow; Opera Mini is fast but can’t do Flash and isn’t great for images or fonts; but Dolphin HD is just right. I also like the gesture interface.
NPR News: You get the major news without headline overload in an easy-to-read text format, plus hourly audio news summaries and easy audio download for other pieces. Haters can hate, but I give props to NPR as a rare non-hyperbolic news outlet.
BBC News: With this and NPR, apparently I’m a sucker for taxpayer-funded news, but I reach for this app when I want to remember that there’s a world of news outside the United States. Thanks, hyperbolic news cycle.
Chicago Tribune: Finally, a news outlet that can stay afloat without government money. (Wait … nevermind.) This app is apparently still in beta, but I love it. I’ve been looking for a solid Chicago-centric app for my phone, and this one nails it – breaking headlines, further in-depth local news from the paper, the Opinion section that I now read a lot more often (even as John Kass’ political nicknames irk me) and handy weather on the app homepage.
The Weather Channel: Loads better than the crappy HTC weather app that comes loaded with the phone, and stays in your status bar for a constant look at the temperature. Could use some cooler animation, but has all the info I need heading out the door.
BeyondPod: Tried several podcasting clients; this one’s easily the best.
ESPN Scorecenter: I should probably look beyond ESPN for potential sports-score apps, but when this one has everything I need and a super-intuitive interface, there’s no point in bothering.
Out of Milk: Solid shopping-list app, and I’ve tried several. You can scan barcodes, easily sort your items and cross them off with a single long press.
WordPress: For maintaining an entire site on a 3×5 screen, you can’t beat this one.
Facebook: Gets all your FB needs in a FB-branded package that looks exactly like you’d want the mobile-fied version of Facebook to look. I also like that the widget is just status updates — FB’s made it hard to find those anymore.
Chase: I mentioned these guys as a positive example for work recently, because in digital-consultant speak, they’ve got the multi-channel touchpoint optimization thing down. You can get the same banking done whether you’re at the teller, ATM, website or phone site/app, each one in a channel-friendly format. The deposit-by-photo thing doesn’t work that well, but it’s still a cool idea.
People: It’s a native app, but I love the automatic Facebook and Twitter syncing, the ease of importing contacts from Google, and the contact formatting. (Though why can’t I enter a letter and jump ahead when browsing the list?)
NY Times: I might read NPR, the Trib and the BBC more often than the NYT these days, but I can’t hate on these guys’ ability to be out in front of the news industry on almost every interactive count. This is an even better newsreading experience than nytimes.com on the PC.
Bonus 17th item: Angry Birds: The rest are all apps, so I’ll justify squeezing one more in because it’s an awesomely addictive game. You just can’t front on the blue splittable bird flying out of the slingshot.
Also-rans: Pandora, Google Translate, American Express, Tumblr, Astro, IMDB, Epicurious, Kayak.
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I posted this comment to the anti-”dibs” article on Slate, but I am pro-dibs enough that I will also post it here:
I grew up in Pittsburgh and now reside in Chicago, so I am intimately familiar with dibs. (I’ve only heard it called “dibs” in Chicago, though — in Pittsburgh, just mentioning lawn chairs in a winter context is the accepted nomenclature.)
After reading the first part of this article and reflexively bristling with the anti-carpetbagger sentiment Tom identifies, I thought the piece was going to take a promising turn in favor of dibs when Tom went into between difference in theory and practice, yet the piece ended anti-dibs. I agree with Nancy that lawn chairs are a symbol of internalized community order and fairness — a shared respect for the value of hard work and earned reward. If value is created by the ability to drive one’s car around the city and partake in economic activity, potential value is destroyed by incentivizing everyone, including those willing to shovel, to leave cars in place until the snow melts and cut back on their potential economic activity. By respecting dibs, we create value for those who’ve earned it by shoveling and for those community members who are on the other end of now-possible economic transactions.
I’m just glad we found a place with an attached garage.
UPDATE 6/11: Obviously this was the year to be a Blackhawks fan. I will say I was happy, but I wish it had been the Pens — last year was total euphoria. I’m on my way to the parade, though — gotta see that Cup when you get a chance.
I got into a debate on Facebook a few weeks back on whether it’s OK to have a second-favorite team in any given sport. This is particularly relevant for me these days.
While the Penguins are hockey team No. 1 for me, I’ve had a bizarre second-favorite thing going for the Chicago Blackhawks since I was ten. Though I had nothing to do with Chicago until college, this random second-place fandom was due to an older kid I knew liking them and the fact that, unlike Pittsburgh, Chicago was a playable team in Blades of Steel. (At least an 8-bit, gray-and-red team called “Chicago” was playable.)
(I realize I sound like a Cubs pink-hat using some forgotten trip to a great-aunt in Skokie at age 4 to justify getting hammered at Wrigley, but I’m for real in not being bandwagon. Ask G, considering I used to drag her to games in the Bill-Wirtz-era 2000s, when the Blackhawks truly sucked.)
With the Pens eliminated two rounds ago, I’ve been hoping for a Chicago Stanley Cup. I say having a second-favorite team in sports is OK, so long as you follow these rules:
- There’s an unquestionable hierarchy of Nos. 1 and 2. You can’t go mixing things, or you’ll get in trouble if the two teams play each other. What did I do when Pittsburgh played Chicago in the 1992 Cup finals? Dropped the Chicago sympathies faster than BP’s stock price yesterday.
- Your No. 2 can’t be a historic, regional or otherwise bitter rival of No. 1. Chicago and Pittsburgh rarely play each other, so I’m good here. You can never, ever like your favorite team’s archrival. If Baltimore gave me a key to the city and renamed itself Patstackiswesomeville, I would go buy one of those window stickers with Calvin peeing on the Ravens logo and tattoo it to my face just to make sure everyone knew how I really felt. (Luckily the first one will never happen, because that would be a pretty awful tattoo. The point is, Ravens suck.)
- You can’t be elated if your No. 2 wins, just happy. Elation is saved for No. 1 only. If a No. 1 championship is “OMG AWSUM!!!1!”, then a No. 2 championship is, “Hey, alright, I like it.” No couch-burning or things like that allowed when it’s not your true favorite.
- No. 2 fandom is usually preferable if your No. 2 is in the city where you currently live. You get the benefit of a happy populace, which means happy neighbors. But per Rule No. 3, don’t think you are allowed the same enjoyment as the true natives.
- Temporary No. 2s are perfectly OK when No. 2 is playing a team you hate. The Blackhawks get to embarrass the Flyers? Double win!
So there you have it. In conclusion, I would like to say Go ‘Hawks (with no exclamation point, per Rule No. 3) and Ravens suck. Thank you.
Strangely my East Coast friends got a lot bigger snowfall so far this year than we did out here in the Midwest — it’s snowed a bit in Michigan, but today in Chicago is the most this year that I’ve seen. Works for me; I’m on break now and got nothing better to do than stare at it while I down mugs of Barry’s tea.
Well, that and getting ready to beat up the field at trivia tonight for the first time since summer.
Damn, I felt today like I was in the boat scene from The Dark Knight.
Most of you dudes know I split my time these days between school in Ann Arbor and home in Chicago. The best way to get back and forth is Megabus, which I took yet again today.
(For anyone interested, here’s a quick cost-benefit analysis of the transportation links between Ann Arbor and Chicago:
- Megabus – Cost averages $25, mostly comfortable, takes 4.5 hours including stop for food — though sadly, only at Hardee’s. Nasty.
- Amtrak – Cost is $29 on weekdays but $75 on weekends. Most comfortable option, but delayed so often that it averages six hours per trip.
- Driving – Cost depends on MPG (about 3/4 tank when I take the VW) but you can’t really do any work. Takes about four hours, and you then have to find parking.
- Greyhound – Hellz no.)
To finally get to the point of my post, today we hit the food break at the Love’s truck stop — the one with the Hardee’s — at mile marker 110, which not only has just one fast-food option but also plays Fox News in the dining area. (Megabus used to stop at the truck stop in Sawyer, Mich., which has a Popeye’s, BK, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut Express. Now that is a quality junk-food spread. I think Love’s must have started paying them to subject us to Hardee’s.) I ate a Thickburger anyway and we left 30 minutes later.
Next up was the exercise in group morality: The driver came on the intercom about 20 miles past Love’s and announced that a passenger was left behind at the truck stop. Whoops. The driver had made several announcements when we stopped that everyone had to be back on by 3 p.m. EST, but whoever this person was somehow failed to note the time. The driver initially said he was going to turn around despite his anger and pick up the person, which would have resulted in us being about 40-50 minutes late in arriving. A bunch of passengers told the driver to keep going anyway — because hey, screw that anonymous guy — so he then announced he was not turning around.
I and the passengers around me found this a bit heartless — anybody who plans an urgent event based on a bus’s on-time arrival is an idiot — so I went downstairs and told the driver he should go back, and despite us both being pissed at the passenger, I could tell he felt the same way. He went on the intercom one more time and said he was turning around, but then enough people howled in protest that we ended up heading to Ann Arbor as scheduled, leaving the unknown passenger to fend for him/herself until the next Megabus comes through. With that bus not leaving Chicago until 4:45 p.m. CST, that comes out to an almost six-hour wait at the truck stop if there isn’t some other ride available. Ouch.
So what was the right course of action? After all, the passenger was at fault for not paying attention to the multiple announcements about being back to the bus on time. How would have you voted? Drop some ethical knowledge in the comments section and let me know. Also, give me a ride next time so I can avoid these philosophical quandaries.
