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So there’s this iPad thing… I just bought one.

I’ve been throwing around the idea since they came out. In my head it could just be another cool toy to occasionally play with but I’m hoping I can find more value in it than that. I knew I couldn’t just go buy one randomly and be like “wow, I have an iPad… now what?”

I needed to at least make an attempt to justify it to myself. The best I could come up with is to use it to replace my laptop (currently a late 2007 Macbook). I really only use the Macbook when I’m on the couch – checking email, tweeting, some occasional video editing with iMovie. And that’s about it. I do take it with me when I have personal travel (I take my work laptop any other time). But it mainly just sits there on the couch, doing not much of anything. If I have any graphics or photo work to do, I still have a Windows 7 desktop that I use. And that certainly is not going anywhere.

Well with this recent surplus of overtime and other potential bits of income, I figured it was time to look into this iPad thing. I started reading around the internet and a lot of people swore up and down it would not be a laptop replacement. There’s just no way.

Thing is, the iPad is to be used for what you need it for. If all I do with my Macbook is surf the internet, read some news, check email, tweet a bit… then those are things the iPad can handle quite well – and did I mention the games? Ya, it can do those too.

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I’m sure I haven’t even touched close to half of the actual location-based or checkin-based games/apps/whatever that are out there. And I’m starting to get overloaded.

Currently I’m a regular on Foursquare and have started playing around with Miso and MyTown. Foursquare is fine. It has become my default. But it also has competitors (mainly Gowalla and Britekite – neither of which I’ve touched at all). Foursquare just seems to be the most widely used at this point. So why bother with the smaller ones when barely anyone around here is even using the biggest one?

Miso is basically Foursquare for movies and TV shows. You “checkin” to report what you are watching. It seems OK. The concept is cool enough to be able to share what you are watching and what you enjoy. They’ve even worked in Foursquare’s “badge” idea – though I’m yet to unlock any other badges except the newbie TV and newbie Movie badges. So there is a minor incentive to play. It really seems to be in its infancy though. There’s no actual website side of things (other than a place to download the app). No profile online yet. No apparent use for points that you earn. But you can have friends.

MyTown is almost another Foursquare competitor. But I don’t want to say that’s what it is. It feels like it at first because you check into places as you go out… but it is a LOT different. It takes Foursquare and builds a much larger “game” out of it where you can buy and sell the locations (“shops”) that you check into, upgrade them, and collect rent on them (ie, makes Foursquare more complicated). What the “end goal” would be is anyone’s guess. I suppose maybe just to compare/compete with your friends. Ya, I have one friend on both Miso and MyTown: my girlfriend. I have a few more on Foursquare, but none of them really use it as much as Jen and I do.

Which brings me to another point… all of these checkin services are more than happy to link up with your Twitter and your Facebook to share all of the wonderful places you’re going and things you’re doing. Now consider the three services that I use… could you imagine my Twitter feed or Facebook wall if I were to allow all of them to publish everything all of the time? HELL NO.

I cannot imagine being a friend of someone on FB that publishes ALL of that stuff. Or following someone on Twitter to only see checkins all day. Why bother? I’d just unfriend you or unfollow you. By default I have ALL of those things turned off. As I checkin somewhere I enable certain things certain times depending on where I am or what I’m doing. If I’m checking into a car wash (don’t judge me), I don’t need to let my friends and followers know about it, now do I?

What this all comes down to is taking up my time. Not a huge deal… I mean, it does give me something to do some of the time I’m out. But when I go somewhere now and have to remember to check into Foursquare and MyTown (cannot imagine if I were using Gowalla and Britekite as well, omg), even those two services take time and effort. One is no problem. Open the app, checkin, move on. Now I have to open a second one, checkin, make sure it recorded, collect the rent on the shops I bought, make sure I apply the right bonuses to my next checkin, etc, etc, etc.

I’m not sure how long I’ll continue all of these. I feel like I’ll keep up with Foursquare for quite a while. I don’t know too much about the others… just have to wait and see how I feel about them.

FOLLOW UP (5/10/10): I quit MyTown. It was pointless. You can just checkin all you want, anywhere, and still get points and bonuses and whatever you want. No wonder I read that they just imposed a checkin limit per day. I can’t imagine the point if there wasn’t one at all. You’d just play for like an hour, check into everything, buy as much as you can and be done. Game over. No fun at all.

I’ve been trying to be consistent about my workouts at the gym. That includes knowing what weight I’ve been lifting, how many reps, and which machines I regularly use. So far I’ve been tracking all of this with iFitness (iTunes link) on my phone (started some time mid-March). I think it works OK. Not exactly what I’d like out of it – but from what I saw of some of the other apps, this fits most of my needs the best. Eventually I’m sure I’ll find something different, but I just don’t feel like looking yet.

So far, if my numbers are correct, I’ve been to the gym about 38 times since February 1st. And even though I’ve been out of town for nearly 3 weeks total in that time frame, it somehow still works out to about 3 times per week. Not bad I guess. We do still try to go every other day (when possible).

What have I been working on all this time? Well I think I touched on some of the stuff in other posts, but here’s my “regular” routine:

• 20-30 min on a recumbent bike
• 3 sets of 12 or 15 reps on each machine:

• chest press
• chest fly
• ab crunch
• bicep curl (usually alternating with tricep extension)
• lat pull

Sometimes I leave one out. Or change the order. Or as mentioned, alternate a couple things. It is rare that I do all 6 machines in a single visit (including the triceps, I mean). Something is usually rotated in and out. And if I end up doing 30 minutes on the bike, it usually means something gets bumped from my schedule.

I thought it might also be neat to include some recent graphs of exactly what I’ve been working with. So the next part is just a bunch of screen captures from the iFitness app on my iPhone so you can see how I’ve been improving (or not improving). Some of these are last 7 days and some are last 14, but you’ll be able to tell from the charts.

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According to 1Password on my iPhone, I have 70 different passwords. That’s for websites, work stuff, certain applications, etc. And I know for a fact that is not all of them. Those are just the ones that I remember to enter in.

I’m actually pretty good about remembering my passwords. But it’s a PITA to have to do a “forgot password” thing for some website I haven’t logged into in 6 months or something. It is way easier to just look it up. And since I always have my phone on me, 1Password is a life saver. Luckily, I picked up the Pro version a while back when it was on sale.

To be honest though, I don’t think it would have mattered if I got the Pro version or the regular version… I honestly don’t know the differences. Wait… I’m going to go look it up… brb.

… (no, seriously, i took a break here to google it) …

Ah, here we go… you can read about the differences on Agile’s website. Nothing crazy, but like I said, I got a deal I think. I don’t remember – it was a while ago. So which should you buy? I don’t know. Most of the stuff I’ve read says that if you think you might eventually want some of the Pro features, buy that first and get it out of the way (honestly, it’s worth it). They don’t really have an effective “upgrade” price in place (which sounds like an iTunes problem). So if you choose to get the standard version first and have to pay for it, you’ll have to pay again for the Pro version.

Anyway, so I have my 70+ passwords in there. I also use the Wallet function for my bank account numbers, reward member numbers (delta airlines, hertz, etc), and various other things. There’s also a Software grouping where I store my product keys for the Windows versions I have. I have a ton of other license codes I should probably put in there too. That’s a whole other mess. But honestly would let me take advantage of the app even more. Not that I need my product codes or anything like that away from my computer – but it’s nice to have them somewhere besides my computer… just in case.

All of this is of course protected by a passcode and various security settings. So if you have a passcode to unlock your iPhone (or iPod touch) AND this passcode, there isn’t anyone getting into your stuff.

Sound interesting? I definitely recommend it. Especially with the ridiculous number of passwords I have discovered that I have.

iTunes Links:

• 1Password: DOWNLOAD
• 1Password Pro: DOWNLOAD

Trenches

I haven’t really shopped for games a lot recently… been busy with so many other things that gaming on my iPhone has really taking sort of a backseat, or trunk position, if you will…

In looking up travel apps the other day I thought I’d poke around a bit and see what I could find. Once of the top sellers I found is called Trenches. It’s kind of a WWII trench warfare game. You (the British) are on one side of the field and the Germans are on the other. You work up to various squads of fighters. Like riflemen, snipers, mortar, artillery, etc.

The levels change by what you have to do and what you have access to. For example, level 1 is just fighting your way across the field with only riflemen. You go in and out of trenches as you pass them and have to blow up the German spawn bunker. One of the other levels, you have to hold off the German advances with artillery and poison gas for 3 minutes.

There are 3 levels (easy, medium, and hard)… and I kind of blew through the Easy in a short amount of time. Working through Medium right now and realizing how difficult this game actually can be. As soon as I get a couple squads together to advance the field, they get blown up by German artillery.

Anyway, the game is actually pretty cool. To me it has a little bit of a Fieldrunners feel to it (not the game play, the look and feel). It certainly provides a challenge though… I’m kind of getting used to that part.

I guess if I gave this a rating I’d call it a 4 out of 5. Loss of points from the drastic difficulty change from easy to medium (IMO anyway) and also for some graphical glitches in the background – which you can see below. Not a total show stopper – but annoying. But especially for $.99 (at this moment), it’s a very cool game.

I would still call this one a “buy” though – even with the graphics problem. That will inevitably be fixed in an upcoming release.

Want to check it out?

iTunes Link: DOWNLOAD!
Current Price: $.99

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I get to play with a whole slew of new iPhone apps!

Or at least try out a bunch of new ones. Not 100% sure what I’m going with yet… but considering I’ll be in a new area and will need to track expenses and such, there are plenty of opportunities for new apps.

First few I’m looking at are these:

• TripCase – Trying to arrange my travel plans in a simple way. Includes flight info (gate, arrivals, etc), hotel, rental car, etc. Have all of my stuff entered into this – will get to test the flight stuff out when I leave.
• XpenseTracker - Apparently there are a ton of expense tracking apps. After reading around a bit online and checking iTunes, I went with this one to see how it is. Looks promising. I’ve had to track expenses before, but this will just give me a central way to know exactly what I spent and where. Instead of shuffling through receipts and trying to remember everything.
• Where - Picked this up for being in a new area. Hopefully it’ll show me some good eats and stuff around there. Also considering “AroundMe” for same purpose. Will probably go with both.
• UrbanSpoon - I’ve already had this for a while – but figured it’ll actually be useful for this trip.

I guess those are the only ones so far that would be specifically for this trip. I’ve read through a few of the ‘iphone travel trips’ kind of things around the internet and a lot of this stuff was pretty common. I’ll be happy just to get a little more utility out of the phone and make my trip a little bit easier.

Will definitely be reporting back as I start to use things and what I think of them.

OK Pizza Hut. We get it. You sell chicken wings now – though I’m still trying to figure out what “award” they have actually won.

I finally broke down and ordered a dozen 10 piece tonight. Got an order of medium traditional. The spice was about the only thing that seemed OK.

The wings themselves were on the small side and were pretty crappy IMO. The meat even wasn’t that good. Was tender enough but something was really lacking. I just can’t put my finger on it…

I’m by far no wing connoisseur… but these may actually be some of the worst wings I’ve had in this area. Just not very good at all considering the hype and advertising Pizza Hut is throwing behind them. Even for typical pizza place wings, they just not good.

Save your money.

Side note: Pizza Hut’s iPhone app sucks. The only things you can order through their app are pizza, pasta, and wings. That’s it. No breadsticks. No sides. No appetizers. Nothing. Sure, they’ll offer you 20% off your iPhone order… but after you pay the $2.25 delivery charge (WTF?) it is worthless anyway.

With regards to iPhone user App purchases anyway… anything else is up for debate.

A story on TUAW says that the average iPhone user has spent about $80 on apps with an average of 65 apps per user… working out to an average spent of about $1.56 per app.

Me? According to my email receipts from Apple, I’ve spent roughly $198 on about 104 apps (before tax). That works out to about $1.90 per app for me. I’ve had a lot of free ones (obviously) and a lot of paid ones. I don’t know exactly how many of each, but I’ve spent up to $13 or more on some apps (Dynolicious is one that comes to mind). But usually just $.99 or maybe $5.

One of the important things to note here is that this goes back to 2007 or 2008 when I first got the iPod Touch. So for a full year or two, I don’t think that’s too bad. Works out to just a couple $$ per month, if that.

Lots of new from Apple today (as just about every other blog on the internet is going to report). Real quick, here’s what I got out of it… though I’m sure there were more details that I don’t care about:

• New version of iTunes
• Better App management and screen arrangement
• New Nanos w/ video camera (no still pics though!)
• Lower prices and higher capacities for the Touch
• Genius for Apps in the App Store
• Madden NFL 10 for Touch/iPhone

Now lets talk about that last point for just a minute… I normally don’t give two craps about Madden (at least for consoles). I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that EA squeezes $60 out of all of the stupid frat boys and other gamers out there year after year for mild game improvements (this goes for their other sports franchises as well – but Madden in particular holds a certain stigma for certain kinds of gamers).

Moving right along. I decided to pick this up for the iPhone today given that it was on sale for its introduction (and at $7, it’s about half the price I had expected it to be). It’s actually not that bad – aside from being incredibly fucking difficult to play on the iPhone. My only real complaint about the game is the commentators. I’ve always been of the opinion that all of the Madden games would be better off with a lot less Madden in them. But this one seems to suck even more. I’m pretty sure I heard the same comment repeated at least 3 plays in a row. I wish that were an exaggeration.

This gets really annoying after a while. I don’t mind figuring out how to play the game but if I have to literally hear the same stupid commentary in EVERY series, I might have to delete it. From the sounds of things, they only programmed about 5 different comments in it for each commentator. Just sick.

I’m still new to Twitter… fo sho’. I’m still really trying to get a grasp on what apps work for me and what don’t. When I’m on one of my computers, I’ll often just use twitter.com or sometimes TweetDeck on my windows system or Tweetie on OS X (that changes a lot). Of course, both of those are subject to be rejected at any time when I find something nicer.

I’m having the same issues on the iPhone, so I thought I’d take a VERY brief look at four big free Twitter apps for the iPhone. Specifically, Twitterrific, Tweet, TweetDeck, and TwitterFon. There are probably other free ones and even better paid ones… but I’m cheap. And lazy. So these are the ones I’m looking at. And FYI, this is FAR from any formal review. I don’t know jack about Twitter, like I said, I’m just trying to find something that works for me.

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