Reading: old SF fanzines
Music: Madness
TV/Movie: Return of a Man Called Horse
Link o' the Day: Mandolin Cafe

This week's mini review is actually going to be made up of five mini-mini reviews of iPhone apps I find myself using the most.



Twitterific: I've been getting addicted to Twitter lately. The recent Comic-Con in San Diego really highlighted for me how entertaining the whole Twitterverse can be given the right circumstances. Seven or eight of the folks I "follow" on Twitter were at SDCC as either attendees or guests and I got an interesting perspective of the cultural event from the point of view of folks on the floor--as they were happening. Pretty cool. I'm also using Twitter to keep abreast of local and national news, traffic reports, and what certain publishers are up to. Then there are the folks I know from facebook--some of who have Twitter accounts--and I'm seeing a whole different level of social networking in action. Fascinating stuff, but probably not for everyone.



Facebook: There is a specific app for Facebook users on the iPhone that integrates smoothly with your Facbook account and is a lot faster than trying to access Facebook through the browser. Granted, the news feeds and such aren't as complete, and navigating some of the thread conversations are a little awkward, but it handles the photos real well and I love the feature where I can use the iPhone's camera to take a photo and immediately upload it to Facebook. I don't know if you can run Facebook's plethora or games and quizzes, but those aren't something I do anyway.



Simplenote: I'd been looking for a simple To Do sort of program that was a.) free and b.) something I could sync with a desktop computer so I could use a real keyboard instead of trying to key everything in on the iPhone's keyboard. Simplenote pretty much fits the bill. It wasn't free, but 99 cents is almost free, and it comes with free registration to the webpage which allows you to compose your notes online (so you can use any computer anywhere so long as there's web access) and your notes sync online. There's no "check box" feature where you can easily check off or cross out items--but you can edit your documents on the iPhone and come up with your own system of checking off items. And you're limited to To Do lists. I've loaded a few short stories and other useful documents. Good stuff.



Guitar Tab: This program is very similar to Simplenote although the connection isn't through the Internet, but via a WiFi connection to your desktop computer. It's also designed more for readers of tabulature. While the name denotes guitar, you can use pretty much any kind of tab text file such as banjo, tenor banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and so on. You can rotate and zoom which is a nice feature.



Stanza: I'm not ready for Kindle. Too expensive, for one thing. And it sounds like Amazon is still working out some bugs internally. For a portable book reader, though, I'm enjoying Stanza. There's a great online browser for books--both free and fairly cheap. It integrates well with my Fictionwise account, and by using a separate program on your desktop, you can download other book files directly to the iPhone. The default setting for text size and lighting make for easy reading. There are settings for different lighting conditions, bookmarking features, and a neat little page flip. Oh, and it's a free download. Gotta love that.

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Today's link takes you the Mandolin Cafe, a website devoted to all things related to the 8-string instrument. This is a fine site for folks looking for bluegrass and Irish tabs (note that many can be easily converted for use for the tenor banjo or fiddle). Lessons. History. Loads of articles. Much fun to be had here for mandolin and other related-instrument players.

Cheers!