Things you can do with an iPhone

Using the GPS, you can drop a pin on the Google map when you get off the bus or train in a new city. Then you can wander to your heart's content, confident that the map will lead you (shown as a blue dot) back to the pin whenever you're ready to leave.

Things I can do with an iPhone:

Make phone calls.
Send text messages.

Let's hope your iPhone finds YOU more useful.

If it didn't vibrate so nicely in my pants, I'd go back to a land line.

I've been using the phone for months to listen to NPR feeds from other cities, so I can get the 7:00 pm programs on my 5:00 bus. PRI's "The World" is a much better program than "All Things Considered."

There's also a great classical station in Portland OR -- not on the NPR network unfortunately, because all they do is classical music -- much better programming than Seattle's own rather crappy KING-FM -- which unaccountably broadcasts in MONO over the Internet (!). A couple months ago I looked for and found a new iPhone app for All Classical Portland, so have been enjoying glorious stereo high fidelity music on earphones on the bus and through my car stereo when I drive.

When we leave for work we usually turn on the radio in the house. This scares burglars and entertains the cat & dog (!). With the Apple TV box my TV sound system will stream content from Apple devices, which I use to watch YouTube in Hi-Fi on the big screen. Sometimes I stream music (or nature sounds) from my iPad to the TV when I'm reading in the living room.

Tonight it occurred to me to look for an All Classical Portland iPad app, so I could stream it to my TV for reading and when we're at work. Not surprisingly there was one, which not only streams the music in glorious stereo high fidelity but also provides a wealth of written information like composer bios, Portland music calendar, radio schedule, playlist (with buy links) of everything they've ever played, etc.

All for free and continuous.

I let it run all night, just to see if it would (Pandora, being an individualized service, shuts off after 8 hours or so if you haven't given it any feedback). As a radio station, All Classical Portland just keeps chuggin' along, 24/7.

When driving, listening to my iPhone over the car stereo, I'll get a bong if there's a new incoming e-mail. I can then activate Siri and say "read new e-mail." It will pause the music and read my new e-mail to me,over the car stereo, before resuming the music. All hands-free.

Just downloaded a new app, called One Bus Away which is enabled for Seattle, Atlanta and Tampa. Provides real-time GPS tracking information on all(?) busses in the city, with route information and posted schedule. It uses your phone's GPS to direct you to the nearest stop for a bus that'll take you to wherever you want to go, and tells you how long you'll have to wait.

Pretty slick.

They've even turned it into a readerboard.
\http://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2014/01/29/campus-parkway-gets-real-time/

I quit programming many years ago, but have been thinking about getting back into it to write applications for phones.

The first one will an application that tells you how to do common things without using your phone. I think it is desperately needed.