The Best iPhone App Review Site, Reviewed

Actually, it's not just the best iPhone app website, it's also the only one I've seen that's any good at all. One might imagine that anyone setting out to help users sift through the 85,000+ programs now available via Apple's app store would take a cue from the gadget itself by creating a website that's reasonably simple and intuitive. Instead, pretty much all of the dedicated app review sites available are bloated, hard to use, and ugly.

In contrast, First & 20 takes a simple idea and executes it beautifully: it has asked a growing collection of "designers, developers and tech writers" to provide a pic of their iPhone home screens and to write a little about some of the apps they use most. The website's simple design also takes many cues from the iPhone's user interface. But most of all, it answers the first question if want to ask anyone with an iPhone: what apps do you like and use the most?

Of course, it would be even better if the net was widened a little to include people from some other, less techie industries. Judging by the choices up there right now, you'd be forgiven for thinking that everyone who uses an iPhone is also obsessed by Twitter (the two most popular apps are Tweetie and Birdfeed). And the running count of white/black phones seems rather superfluous. But, these small grumbles aside, I love it simply for introducing me to a bunch of excellent apps people with brains actually use.

The Last Post: When and How to Close a Blog

I've just posted the final entry on my other blog Strange Things Will Happen. I started it a couple of years ago when I moved to the States from Britain, and it was my first adventure in blogging. Closing it was therefore a difficult decision to make, but ultimately the central idea -- me writing about life on the wrong side of the pond -- had run out of steam. Over time, the lack of desire to write fresh posts tells its own story. But, after realizing that it's time was up, I decided to finish with a definite full stop rather than just let it die through neglect alone: hence the concluding post.



Still, I feel slightly weird that it will continue to be available online for the foreseeable future. Part of me wants to delete it now, rather than let it grow old and stale in plain sight. But I realize that this is just my inner print journalist talking. Sure, libraries always do their best to make sure printed copies of newspapers and magazines don't ever disappear completely, but prior to around 1996 the effort you would have to make to find any publication more than a few months old meant that, to all intents and purposes, it had ceased to exist. The same is still true for many print-only publications. Being put in an archive box or relegated to microfiche may not be death, but it's close enough.

Here online, everything stays as it is -- or at least it's supposed to. Google is even digging up old books and resurrecting their pages through the god-like power of scanning. Soon nothing will disappear, and everything will be available with a few taps of a keyboard -- unless one of those taps is marked "delete," that is.

Euphemism Watch: Working for Free

As a freelance writer and an editor, I feel a strange compulsion - no, a duty - to check the writing/editing job listings on Craigslist on a regular basis. It has become a depressing and humbling ritual in recent times. In fact, about the only pleasurable part of it for me is marveling at all the creative ways the only prospective "employers" left these days attempt to infer that working for them for nothing is somehow a lucrative opportunity, while simultaneously avoiding any explicit mention of, you know, having to work for them for nothing.

Indeed, I heartily recommend this sleazy exercise in euphemism-spotting to others. Rubbernecking through these lonely missives from a dying industry can be a darkly amusing experience, especially if you're the kind of person who greets news of any major disaster by packing a picnic and loading the kids into the car, or if you enjoy seeing the English language being abused to within an inch of reality.

To give you a taste, today I saw perhaps my favorite attempt yet at turning a lack of meaningful pay into a benefit. This ad seeking a voluntary editorial manager for some unnamed, underfunded internet startup helpfully mentions "... if you happen to be on unemployment insurance, this work will not jeopardize your benefits." No, and it won't trouble your bank balance either.

Interviews will be taking place soon; please leave your dignity at the door.

How Stupid Is the US Postal Service?

This letter arrived at our house yesterday. I've messed around with the photo a little (to protect our privacy), but on the original you can clearly see our house number and street address, under a long-departed previous resident's name. Well, you can as long as you ignore the large black cross my wife added to the envelope the first time it passed through our mailbox about a week ago, along with the big circle round the return address and the lettering that says "return to sender addressee unknown."

Maybe we missed some detail of the US Postal Service's protocol for correctly marking return mail, but the intention seems fairly clear. While I realise that much of the sorting system is automated these days, I was still labouring under the delusion that someone human would look at a letter before it gets delivered. Perhaps not.

We've now released this salmon-like letter back into the wild, intrigued to see if it manages to find its way to the wrong destination for a third time.

Stationery Porn 2: Black n' Red Notebooks

I blame Moleskines. I had never even though about notepad brands until I picked up one of those expensive little tarts in a store. Then I saw the little sticker they all have that boasts about how they were once the workbook of choice for Hemingway, Picasso, Jesus, or whoever. I wasn't immune to the romance of the idea. In that moment I suddenly had a vision of a bookshelf loaded with pleasingly battered-but-matching notebooks, each filled to bursting with my scribblings. What could be better?

Well, them not being Moleskines for a start. Regardless of their rather ridiculously high price, I discovered that I don't much care for them. The paper is too shiny and doesn't seem to absorb ink very well (an important factor when you're trying to write in a smudge-prone hurry). Plus, they make you look, well, a bit pretentious.

So now I'm going steady with the Black n' Red notepads pictured above instead: hardback, casebound, A5, ruled.

As well as being pleasingly European, the A5 size (148 x 210mm, or slightly wider than a sheet of letter paper folded in half) is just right for my needs. The books are small enough to be portable, but big enough to make writing on my lap reasonably easy. I'd already discovered that smaller pocket-sized pads are hard to write in when you don't have a desk handy as they offer no wrist support, which is the same reason a hard cover is also essential.

Black n' Red offers similar books with a spiral wire binding, but I've never really cared for these: the pages can be ripped out too easily (often by accident) and the looser binding makes the whole thing feel flimsy and cheap. In contrast, these casebound pads have proper sewn-in pages, as well as a handy marker ribbon to make up for the lack of a place to store your pen.

But the thing I really love about these notebooks is the way that, as they wear and get scuffed around, the black around the edges rubs off to reveal red colouring underneath; sometimes it's the little things in life that are the most pleasing.