My iPhone Uses - Part 1

On any given day, I have my iPhone in my hand and/or at my side 12-15 hours. Sounds excessive, but I am still in iPhone Nirvana after four months. A couple of weeks ago I started to track the ways I use my iPhone on a daily basis, but last week I realized that my iPhone has changed my life even when I am on vacation. It certainly possesses some capabilities that I now find almost as essential as oxygen.

I have started a list of the tasks and activities for which I use my iPhone regularly and semi-regularly, and where applicable, I have added how I used my iPhone while on vacation last week.

Standard-Any-Smartphone-Would-Do Tasks
Phone Calls – Let’s get the bleeding obvious out of the way! I make phone calls with my iPhone every day. I have a phone at my lake house, but no long distance. I’m not really sure why I need a phone to make and receive calls with neighbors, but…I use my iPhone for almost every call I need to make at the lake.
E-mail – Unfortunately, I can’t yet access my corporate e-mail, but I am able to check my Yahoo and Gmail accounts. This was a good thing last week when I was on vacation. I love the way my iPhone buzzes when I receive new e-mail. Each night, e-mails came in and every morning I would check and delete inconsequential e-mails. I could also check throughout each day for e-mail and my inboxes have never been more organized right after vacation. Enterprise e-mail is on the horizon.
Camera – I forgot my camera, so all vacation photos were taken and e-mailed to flickr with my iPhone.

iPhone Web Browser Tasks
The web browser on my iPhone is truly phenomenal. If you have not seen it, check out the demo on the Apple website.
Declaration of Independence – As the school year was wrapping up, my daughter was learning about the Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. I asked her in the car late one afternoon of as part of their study the class had read the Declaration of Independence. I told her to search for it on my iPhone. She found a link and read almost the entire digital document the rest of the way home.
Recipes – Coincidentally, my iPhone is about the size of recipe card and it great for setting on the kitchen counter with a recipe displayed from the Rachel Ray of All recipes website. I used my iPhone for recipes three times on vacation.
Actors/Movie Trivia – My husband and I are movie trivia freaks and spend way too much time quoting lines from movies, especially from the 80’s. We also try to figure out “what’s that guy/gal been in” a lot. I used to fire up my laptop to go to IMDB, but now I just look for the answer on my iPhone.
Put Salt On Its Tail – Last week with friends at Captain Hooks http://www.vacationlaneresort.com/restaurant.php, we saw some blue-tailed skinks on the parking lot. The five-year-old with group wanted to catch one. Her father told her to put salt on its tail. This of course led to a conversation about the origin of putting salt on a bird’s tail to catch it. I being the “gadget girl” in the group googled “putting salt on a bird’s tail” and found out that it comes from a Swedish folk tale in which Ollie puts salt on a magpie’s tail. Now you know.

iPhone Web Applications Activities
JustUpdate – By far my favorite web application is JustUpdate for Twitter. I didn’t update much on vacation. How many times could I say that I was relaxing on the deck and reading my book while (sometimes) having a beverage?
IM+ for Skype – I can Skype chat with anyone from my iPhone.

Very Cool iPhone Features Tasks
iPhone Maps – find the best route and step-by-step directions. One the trip home from the lake, we were about an hour or so from St. Louis near Union, MO when the right rear tire on the boat trailer had a blow out. Yeeesh! It was 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Who’s going to fix a tire then? Wal-Mart, of course. My husband removed the blown tire while I tried to find the nearest Wal-Mart. I search for my location and mapped the route to the Wal-Mart in Union. The new 3G iPhone has GPS, but my 2G iPhone gets very close when finding my current location. We left the boat on the side of Interstate 44 propped up on a jack and three tires. The Wal-Mart in Union does not have a Tire & Lube Express, but my husband went in to see if by some miracle a tire could be had. I stayed in the truck and looked for other Wal-Marts with my iPhone. I called the Sullivan, MO location. They had a two hour wait time, but the manager told me I was actually closer to Washington, MO. I called there and they had a tire that was similar and would work, so I mapped the route from the Union Wal-Mart to the Washington Wal-Mart. All told, in less than two hours we were back on the road and now have a spare tire.
SMS – I have friends older and younger that I now text message with regularly. When I need to check my babysitter’s availability, I send a text message to her. I get almost immediate responses. While I was on vacation, two work colleagues and one lake friend texted me. My iPhone organizes text messages like a chat http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/sms.html and is really easy and fun to use.

I just need to decide whether or not I want to upgrade to a 3G iPhone.