Soho may be one of the premiere, chic shopping destinations of New York, rife with what I deem a hoity-toity air, a slowly wavering art scene, and a street-walking population of girls is the latest Citizens of Humanity skinny jeans, bug-eyed Prada glasses, oversized leather bags, and cone-shaped, red-lacquered Christian Louboutin heels – or, now that it’s spring, sky high

Plenty of categories to rifle through...

wedge platform that turn someone of my stature, 5’9, to right around 6’1. Soho definitely has its own flair, as does any neighborhood of Manhattan, and Midtown is no exception. Midtown isn’t a neighborhood, per se, but more a collection of neighborhoods, like Chelsea, Gramercy and Hell’s Kitchen, to name a few of the more familiar ones, and it encompasses a vast area, ranging from between 14th Street and 59th Street, from the Hudson River to the East River, at about five square miles or 12 km total. The core of Midtown Manhattan is from about 31st Street to 59th Street between Third and Ninth avenues, about two square miles – this is the area most commonly referred to as “Midtown” and is where the famous Times Square is located.  All in all, midtown denotes any area not labeled as “uptown” or “downtown,” and it carries a very symbolic New York essence to it, representing – if you will – the very heart of New York with iconic places like the Empire State Building, the Museum of Modern Art, Madison Square Garden, the New York Public Library, Penn Station, Carnegie Hall, the Plaza Hotel, Madison Avenue, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and much, much more. The New York you see heralded in film was most likely shot in some area of Midtown.

... and 3D maps to boot.

What MIDTOWNinmypocket does is assist you with finding your way around the giant epicenter that is Midtown, by carefully recording every single worthwhile place to see, shop, eat, sleep, lounge, or otherwise engage in mundane tasks (banks, churches), all in painstakingly organized categories and mapped locations. The app is designed in exactly the same manner as SOHOinmypocket – right down to the chic, Parisian-looking girl with giant, white framed spectacles -  with the option to either sort through categories to find something specific, or by browsing the map for your current location to see what’s nearby. Any mapped location may be tapped to view further information, and pertinent things like address, telephone, hours, and such are given for each place. When viewing a mapped location, you may also tap the “go” button, for your ease, so the app can navigate you there from your current location.

It’s astonishing, actually, the precision of MIDTOWNinmypocket (as well as SOHOinmypocket). The only downside to this app is the map loading time can be slow, but it’s noticeably faster on the 3GS model – it’s not that big of a deal, anyway. It turns out the developer will be releasing a SANFRANCISCOinmypocket soon, which I absolutely cannot wait for – San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general is where Appstruck is based, and I’m always looking for excellent guides to the area. Even if you’re a native, or at least, a long-term resident, there’s always the chance you’ll be surprised at what a guide can tell you.

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Star Walk is beautiful, if in a dark and mysterious way. It offers no words of explanation for its planet-riddled opening page, with arrows and numbers highlighted in green beneath each intricately-rendered planet, and each of these brightly glowing orbs beset by degrees of seemingly no significance. The current date, in the upper right corner, is the only thing of understandable familiarity. Space, in all its intricacies, is only deconstructed a mere notch here, as indicated by the seeming need for further interpretation. The beauty of the app, upon first opening, is immediately overtaken by the difficulty in reading the app, and I predict many users would become frustrated, and turned off by this convolution. But, readers, take note: space is hardly easy to define, let alone map out, and good things man be reaped from a thorough examination of what Star Walk has to offer.

Aside from the current date, the first, recognizable thing you may notice is the lunar cycle in the page center. The large moon, in the center of the row of 5 moons, represents the current day’s moon, how it will appear in tonight’s night sky. For February 25th of 2010 (today), Star Walk shows a crescent moon – the moons adjacent to it represent the other days in the week, how the moon has changed shape according to its rotation around the sun in our northern hemisphere, and it shows that by the day after tomorrow (Saturday), we will have a full moon. More elaborate indicators like waxing, versus waning moon, or late quarter or gibbous moon are lacking in this lunar phase, but for the amateur astrologer or layman, such details are purely extraneous – waxing, for example, just refers to a lunar phase currently moving toward a full moon, rather than a new moon (waning).

Taurus

None of these details on the opening page are able to be manipulated – the times of the planet’s, sun’s and moon’s rising are static, for obvious reasons, and the degrees positioned below them indicate something of which I cannot interpret. The arrows at the bottom of the screen allow you to cycle forward or backward in time, to see what phases and times the sun, moon, and planets experienced. If you click the “X” in the upper left, you leave the main screen to the greatest part of the app – the part I call the Space Page. In this area you can navigate the night sky, looking at constellations, zooming in all the way on a specific star in the Star Walk database to learn more about it, or zooming all the way to see our entire solar system, and the elliptical paths of each planet. Star Walk has an amazing option – possibly the best use out of this app – called the Star Spotter, that unfortunately can only be used on the 3GS model. What you do is tilt your iPhone toward the sky to activate the Star Spotter, and the display will automatically adjust to follow your movements and show you you all the various stars, constellations, planets, currently within your range of sight. That’s pretty awesome, considering no other astronomy app does this. I always have the greatest difficulty figuring out which constellation is which, or where they are, even, when considering the time of night, my orientation, or even the time of year. Star Spotter solves this problem, immediately, mapping out constellations in front of your very eyes.

When finding Taurus, the app shows not only the stars surrounding and contained within the constellation, but also shows a faint, white silhouette of how the bull would be drawn, in alignment with its skeleton rubric of stars. At the heart of Taurus is the star, Hyadum I, which I may read about by tapping the i in the upper left while the star is highlighted. When zooming in further, other stars will come to my attention, like Hyadum II, Alshain, and Aldebaran. The information about each star bears little to no significance to most people, because upon first reading, it appears there’s little information to glean. But, the information given is actually pretty useful. Take visual magnitude, for one. In the second century BC, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus divided the stars into six brightness groups called magnitudes (now apparent visual magnitudes (m or V), first magnitude the brightest, sixth the faintest. The system is still used today, though with a mathematical definition (a star of one magnitude is 2.512… times brighter than the next fainter) that takes the very brightest stars and planets through magnitude zero and into negative numbers. Through the telescope we see much fainter, to near 30th magnitude (4 billion times fainter than the human eye can see alone). Though stars bear some resemblance to the Sun, they appear as points in the sky because they are so far away, with the nearest, Alpha Centauri, four light years away; to bring this into perspective, the most distant stars the unaided eye can see are over 1000 light years away. The apparent visual magnitude of a star depends on true visual luminosity (in watts) and distance. To compare true visual luminosities, astronomers calculate the absolute visual magnitude (M), the apparent magnitude the star would have were it at a distance of 32.6 light years (10 parsecs, where the parsec is the professional unit of distance, equal to 3.26 light years). The absolute visual magnitude of the Sun is +4.83. Absolute visual magnitudes range from around -10 (a million times more luminous than the Sun) to below +20 (a million times fainter). Phew! If only Star Walk had a directory, or glossary to review before figuring this stuff out.

If you want to switch from viewing the sky, to viewing the entire planet of Earth, tap the button on the lower right, and then tap the center button that pops up (there will be three: the wrench symbol to the left is an options menu for night mode, or removing sounds and constellation views; the other symbol is just a bookmarking option). Viewing the entire planet is awesome, for obvious reasons, and you can zoom in wherever you like – the database isn’t terribly large, but there are several notable places mapped in the world, iconic places like the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Great Wall of China, indicated by glowing green, stick men. If you don’t feel like sorting through the world, or the sky manually, then tap the magnifying glass ever present in the lower left corner, and you may search by a specific mass – stars, constellations, solar system, or the Messier system (deep-sky objects). It’s pretty handy when conducting a self-foray into astronomy.

At first deceptive, and later almost magical, Star Walk is a quick guide, but not a quick study, to the vastness of our solar system. It’s already intimidating, in its presentation and informative ways – informative, of course, once you’ve cracked the code – but Star walk could actually use, dare I say, more information. An expansion to include greater detail on the other planets within our solar system, or even, to get bold, an expansion into other solar systems could do wonders for opening any person’s eyes to the wonders of astronomy. For Star Walk, the possibilities are, to pun, as vast and limitless as space.

Well, I know that’s definitely not true. Not that Petaluma is laden with crime, or anything, but we do have plenty of cops to go around. In some ways, our cops are more visible than those in Oakland, less likely to be lurking in dark alleyways and more prone to driving aimlessly, in full black and white splendor,  around town, in the hopes of nabbing a senior citizen in a rolling stop, or pulling over a teenager who drives two miles above the speed limit. They’re a crafty bunch, the Petaluma troopers, and spotting three around town in one afternoon is a common occurrence. Daily, even.

I suppose that’s why I really wanted to like SpotACop. In Petaluma, residents like to gripe about the police, and for a small town, quaint and lovely with a crumbly patina, we have a surprising amount of DUI’s handed out, like raffle tickets – in small towns, teenagers have nothing better to do than roam the empty hillsides, drinking their Mickeys and their 40 oz Miller High Lifes – the essential, tarnished oil cred of every bankrupt youth – and many of them jump in their cars, maybe just with a tiny buzz, because they know that cops have better things to do than pull over kids on an empty, dirt road. I suppose that’s one reason we call teenagers naive and reckless. But, in any case, the cops in Petaluma are perfectionists, and there are way too many of them for the amount of disturbances we see in Petaluma.

SpotACop was created with the intent of warning drivers of these impending cop interactions, to prompt drivers to slow their speed ahead of time, and to drive cautiously, within those DMV regulations – you know, those rules we like to treat like guidelines, starting from the time we leave the DMV with that brand new shiny license. Oh, right… those. Or maybe, SpotACop was created with a more mischievous bent, to warn those driving without a license to take a detour instead of driving past the cop on the 101, ready to pull over anyone with the slightest grievance, or to warn those driving drunk of an oncoming checkpoint just a mile down the road. Well, regardless of the app catering to those in illicit activities, the app can certainly be used in this manner.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), SpotACop doesn’t work very well. You must use your current location – despite the app offering the “Don’t Allow” option – otherwise the app will jitter and spurt, shooting out bolts and coils, and reading an error message repeatedly. However, if you are based in Petaluma, or based in any location other than a huge city, I’m sure,  SpotACop won’t spot-a-cop, and all you’ll be left with is a useless app, that registers nothing, and that doesn’t allow you to look up another location. On an amusing side note, SpotACop gives you the option of changing your search radius from 1 to a, gee, whopping 5 miles, so you can search for nothing even further away. Until this app works out its quirks and develops a community user base, I don’t see it being useful at all. And, honestly, I don’t think many people would be inclined to use this app – I think most of us are inclined to fend for ourselves, and if someone else gets pulled over, then at least that someone isn’t us. This app should be renamed SpotAWhat? and include, in parentheses, For Repeat Offenders Only.

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SoHo is gentrification central. Once known for its avant-garde art scene, that gave way to high-end shopping, with Greenwich and now the East Village taking the reigns as the nouveau art scenes in New York. The neighborhood is most closely bordered by the neighborhood of Nolita, and is bounded roughly by Houston Street to the north, Lafayette Street on the east, Canal Street on the south, and Sixth Avenue on the west. For anyone not native to New York, it’s overwhelming seeing all the shops and restaurants, and figuring out the streets and borders, so one developer, AppFury, offers an easy navigation solution with their recent app, SOHOinmypocket – a condensed guide to the SoHo neighborhood.

Like a play on the once popular Polly in my Pocket, the girl pictured on the app’s opening page – which is riddled with animal markings – has the same teenage girlishness reminiscent of cartoons or toys. The app, however, is anything but childlike in its presentation. The app opens to the Directory page, featuring categories like Accessories & Handbags, Bar, Bank, Books & Paper, Cafes, Event Venues, Food-Casual and many more, listing 900 places total. 900. That’ll keep you preoccupied for a long time. I thought the categories were neatly thought-out, with food having the additional separations of Food-Casual, Grocers, Cafes, and Restaurants. The casual food mostly consists of streetcars, or sidewalk venues, where you can grab a quick, tasty gryo, or one of those ever convenient and classic hot dog stands in New York, always with a heaping pile of salted nuts. One of my favorite places to eat in the past was Spring Street Natural, located on the main strip of SoHo, and featuring some of the most delicious, healthful food I’ve ever eaten. I can either browse or search through the directory to find it, or I can simply navigate the map and tap on the restaurant’s icon. On the information screen, the name is given, along with the address, the establishment’s phone number, it website (if available), and the category in which it’s included. From the Directory screen I may tap the “View in Map” button to visualize its location.

A nice bonus that SOHOinmypocket offers is a section on deals, which seem to change on a weekly basis – well, that and there are 900 listings that may potentially offer savings and deals, leaving your options wide open. In a manner like UrbanSpoon, a slot machine device is pictured onscreen, for you to either tap or shake to randomize a result. It’s too bad you can’t sort through all the deals manually – though I suppose that’d be exhaustive, and overall fruitless – but the spinning device saves any deal it discovers for you, so you may keep a logged account of your activity. On my second shake, I discovered Agent Provocateur is having a sale of 75% off selected items until January 31 of this year – that is very good to know, not only because Agent Provocateur is outrageously expensive (try $140 for a bra), but because it’s an international brand and this deal applies online; otherwise, if it were a SoHo-specific boutique (T.S.E., Intrigue, etc), I’d have to physically be in New York. And, the best part? These deals aren’t limited to clothing lines – the deals cover hotel discounts, restaurant savings and more.

The app is very easy to use after the initial, slow loading time, and for such a breezy app, it’s too bad that whenever the screen darkens, SOHOinmypocket must take it upon itself to query, again and again, if you want to use your current location. I was also surprised at the remarkably drab interface – a bit tacky almost in its color choices, and with its decision to use a transparent overlay of the girl in bug-eyed glasses and cheetah-motif, so you may see her on nearly every page. Her little black dress and white, retro 60s glasses with retro bob hail of a timeless, classical look, but I would expect this cartoonish design more from a local designer in San Francisco, with its cute quirkiness, rather than a sophisticated, at-the-edge-fashion boutique in SoHo. But, this small detail doesn’t hamper the app’s abilities in the slightest, and SOHOinmypocket performs admirably.

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My boyfriend, on the other hand, is a skier. Gliding this way and that, effortlessly, over powdery snow, sloshing pretty streams of it in either direction, he just exudes lithe grace and expertise. A familiarity I do not possess. His father took him often to the slopes of Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen, where he learned from a young age – age four, tucked between his father’s knees – how to don those frumpy snow pants and goggles without looking silly. When I hold ski poles, I do not look elegant and keenly aware, I look clumsy and unsure, the poles jutting at inharmonious angles like barbed, insect limbs. Last year I had my first bout with cross-country skiing, which left me permanently, for the rest of the trip, with a surly, angst-ridden expression on my face. No, I am definitely not a skier. But, I would like to learn.

It’s finally getting chilly in northern California, enough to see your breath around 5pm and to want only soups and hot cider drinks. My boyfriend’s dad calls me every now and then, asking, “Hey! So, when are we going skiing?” A few murmured hesitations are my usual answer, but I am determined to hit the slopes this year. Yes, I’ll even rock the jargon with my hit the slopes. Much like how WeatherBug is useful in preparing for weather conditions, there are three snow/skiing apps for the iPhone that despite their individual flaws, are great when used in tandem with each other. They’re far better than the other skiing apps out there; besides, they’re all completely free. For both the fledging skier like me, and the gelding, these apps are a great asset to any skier’s iPhone. These apps are The Show Report by The North Face, Ski Report, and iTrailMap.

The Snow Report by The North Face definitely has the prettiest interface out of the three: it’s easy to be partial to the charcoal gray and Christmas red theme, and the app itself is easy to navigate. The Snow Report opens to a summary page of five default ski resorts, including Whistler/Blackcomb of Canada; Chamonix of France; Snowbird of Utah; Kirkwood of California; and Stowe of Vermont. Beside each resort name is the current snowfall within the last 24 hours – currently, none of the stock sites have experienced snowfall, but if you switch the gauge to 48 and then 72 hours timeframe, then you’ll see that Whistler/Blackcomb experienced 33 inches of snowfall. Going back to the resorts, I’m not entirely sure what their reasoning was for including these particular places. With big names like Chamonix, I’d expect to see Aspen and Tahoe included, perhaps a few places in Alaska and Montana, Jackson Hole of Wyoming or Squaw Valley, even. You may add additional sites by tapping the plus symbol in the upper right, but this isn’t a surefire way to get information. I added Mount Shasta, but the app was unable to find Mount Lassen, and a few other smaller California resorts, like Heavenly, Gold Mountain, and Cedar Pass. More resorts are included in the Global Top 10 tab, which generally includes places outside of the U.S, far away from here.

Tapping on any of the resort names takes you a report page with in-app links to weather forecasts, snowfall, trail maps, and a “locate resort” map button (to access another resort, simply flip through or go back to the summary page). There are also tabs at the top indicating “Details” and “Twitter,” – just in case you need to keep tabs on people currently skiing who feel the need to tweet. Almost too much information is given on the forecast page, it seems – while it’s good to know what times sunrise and sunset happen, and what the UV index and wind speeds are, I don’t necessarily need to know that the moon tonight at Chamonix will be Waxing Crescent. The Satellite imaging is not quite up to par with WeatherBug’s, but it works in a pinch, and there’s no reason to snub your nose at any app that includes satellite imagery. It’s only too bad the trail maps featured on The Snow Report are woefully lacking. They’re pretty to look at from afar, like a Monet painting, but once you try to zoom in, the low resolution takes a toll and everything being a mishmash of blurred lines and words. It’s absolutely useless unless you want a general overview of the area.

But, other information peppered throughout the app is more helpful. Tap on the “details” tab to check out when lifts and runs open, what the average snowfalls of the area is, or what the elevation top and base are. There’s even a handy webcam to check out live conditions (maybe even a skier!), and a phone to get you immediately in contact with the resort. Some additional features of The Snow Report include finding a North Face store (that was a given), a North Face news feed (another given), an avalanche advisory panel (good thinking), and an image gallery showcasing the wild talent of both snowboarders and skiers, taken with wild, highlighted colors on the photographer’s part (glam factor). Overall, though, an excellent app for skiers.

Ski Report has a few definite edges over The Snow Report. As soon as you open the app, Ski Report prompts queries you about GPS, and if you select yes, then Ski Report shows you all the resorts in your given area. For someone like me – i.e. someone who never skies – it’s incredibly helpful to know where all the nearest resorts are. For my position in Petaluma, the app shows Bear Valley, Royal Gorge, Kirkwood, Soda Springs, Sierra at Tahoe, Sugar Bowl, Boreal, Homewood, Donner Ski Ranch, and Alpine Meadows. I haven’t even heard of half of those. As indicated on the main page, all these resorts are currently closed but will be opening soon, some with specific dates (November 25 for Sugar Bowl), and the amount of snowfall and projected snowfall is given. As with the Snow Report, you may add additional resorts by tapping on the informative “i” in the upper right, and you may view forecasts and a webcam. I may actually prefer the forecast information through Ski Report – it’s less involved and convoluted than The Snow Report, and is more direct in its detailed blurb, covering the basics over what you should expect. Unless you’re a competitive skier, there’s really no need to know about wind speeds and dew points, humidity levels and what not. So, you’ll sweat a bit more in your suit, or lean a little more into the wind than usual. No big deal. First hand ski reports by people currently on the snow are a small point of amusement, with their posts like “Bear Valley is the best!!!!!!!!!!” leaning a bit in the direction of hyperbole, but some posts actually give a good impression of what the scene currently looks like.

Unfortunately, Ski Report doesn’t even have trail maps to compare to The Snow Report’s low-res ones, so this is where iTrailMap comes into play. This app is straightforward and simple: it provides ski trail maps. Excellent ski trail maps. After checking to see if the resort nearest you is open with Ski Report, and after checking out snowfall rates and weather patterns with The Snow Report, open up iTrailMaps and start downloading the map to your resort. Trust me, iTrailMaps is bound to have it (it has Heavenly, Cedar Pass, and all the other resorts I mentioned The Snow Report didn’t recognize). Once a map is downloaded, you view it in its grand entirety, then pinch and zoom wherever you please, getting so far in you can distinguish the individual paths on Aspen. Now, tell me that isn’t completely zoomed in. Since the maps are downloaded to your iPhone, you need not fret about losing wireless connection. The screen is a bit small to look at a map, in general, but it sure beats carrying around different trail maps all the time. If you want, you can upgrade to iTrailMaps 3D, but I find the free version suits just fine – the 3D version lets you check out the resort’s topography, which could be useful if you’re planning a course around a severe drop, but skiers have always done just fine without this kind of routing technology. Big Air Software is constantly adding new resorts to the app, but it seems the North America section is pretty complete.

Now, all of the above are excellent apps that serve their purpose with recent accumulation, weather forecasts, community banter, resort information etc., but as I looked over the recent snow/winter app list to see what was new, one caught my eye. I’m familiar with the Skullcandy brand on a superficial level, seeing their highly regarded headphones for sale on Steep and Cheap and WhiskeyMilitia constantly, but I am also aware that they have some of the most creative and viral ad campaigns in the action sports industry, and the fact that the app is free made me really want to check it out. Skullcandy has really created a great app. The features are too numerous to name, but some of the highlights are as follows (from their site): Surf reports so you know when and where to rip; to the minute snow reports plus a 5 day forecast; a skate park finder for nomads who have to try them all; free music player; video from Skullcandy TV loaded with shorts featuring Skullcandy athletes and musicians; a dealer locator feature will find the nearest shop for instant gratification (very nice); a mobile Skullcandy store that allows you to buy new headphones, backpacks or other Skullcandy gear (even nicer); a fresh selection of continually updated wallpapers designed by Skullcandy fans that allow users to defy genericism (can’t retain your indie cred otherwise); and, finally, access to all Skullcandy happenings through the Skullcandy blog. The app also works with your phones mapping functionality to get you to any of the surf skate or snow spots you might find. Basically it does it all. It gets you stoked via its music, video, and photo content, then keeps you informed with their blog’s connection, and the best part is it wraps it all in a beautifully designed interface that is simple to use. If you’re looking beyond a strictly skiing app, this is a surefire win.

I actually can’t wait to try out skiing again – the plan is to go this next coming weekend, hit the bunny slopes for a good hour with other n00bs, then try my newly instated poles and skies onto bigger, badder slopes. I may have spent my childhood on the snowy, bitterly cold east coast, and I may have shoveled many driveways and enjoyed many episodes of ice skating, but I had absolutely no introduction to skiing. Maybe it’s just not in my blood. But, with these 4 apps on my side I can at least pull my weight with my boyfriend and his dad. It won’t improve my skiing, but at least I’ll be more informed.

Parking lets you forget the memorization game by keeping track of the street rules for you – however, it is only with the current version that the text alerts have become effective. In prior versions, the Parking App had to be left often, or else you had to re-open it near the time of an alert in order for you to be reminded (thereby completely defeating the purpose of a text alert). Frankly, the push notification used in the latest version should have been included in the first version, but oh well, at least they finally got around to doing it – I suppose cgCraft didn’t mind all those low ratings and reduced purchases for something so simple as not using effective text message alerts. The latest version, too, is more streamlined and modern to behold. cgCraft did away with the bland, boring, white background that seems the blank slate or virginal birthright of every productivity app in the iTunes Universe, and updated to a sleek, bluish-grey motif, with a darkly lit parking timer, and the hints of a shadowy cityscape at the screen’s bottom. A vast improvement, to be sure.

Using the app is very straightforward. A timer at the top mimes the face of a parking meter – all you have to do is adjust the time (30 minutes, say?), and select the recommended option of including an early warning alert, from 5 or 10 minutes prior to longer than that. You can use the app simply for Parking means, if you desire, though I can claim it’s just as easy to track 30 minutes on your watch or cell phone – setting the stock alarm on your iPhone may be easier, if not as snazzy. The real intent of the Parking App is for you to input the various rules and times and alerts for street cleaning, no parking times, etc, so that you’re not a jumbled mess attempting to remember all these. Take my friend, for example: all the streets within a 2-block radius of where she resides have their own rules. With Parking, all she has to do is label a street name (even pinpoint it on the map for later use if she saves her car’s location there), then choose times for the restrictions, the alert times (one or two hours prior may be handy for most working professionals who need adequate time to move their car), and the amount of occurrences (daily, only on wednesdays, every first week of the month, every first and third week, and so on). She could add every street in her neighborhood if she wanted, so when she parked, she could simply pinpoint her car’s location on the map, save the location, and then select, say, Frederick Street at Cole, which has street cleaning on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 in the morning. After syncing the information with Google Calendar (you must do this), my friend would receive reminders from Parking to move her car. The location hint is pretty unnecessary, I think, unless your memory is so poor you just need that photo of your car by that unmistakable stretch of sidewalk – besides, you can save your GPS location, so why take a picture? And, another quirk is if you decide to enter the map feature, you have to exit the app and reopen Parking – very, very annoying.

But, really, with the latest update, Parking is quick, efficient, and a friend to every city-dweller.

AccuTerra provides users with high-definition 3D maps of U.S. forests, state parks and national parks, maps that work even when you are far outside the reach any wireless mobile networks. One of the very first maps that were made available by Intermap for their new iPhone app was a map of Yosemite National Park, so now you can use your iPhone to navigate the Yosemite trails and know where you are exactly every step of the way. The AccuTerra app allows hikers, bikers, sportsmen, climbers, and casual outdoor enthusiasts who own an iPhone to view their topographic surroundings with a degree of detail previously unavailable, while allowing them to track their adventures and share with friends and family. The app tags photos and the location they were taken during an adventure and easily stores and shares the entire experience via email or posting directly to Facebook. Additionally, once the adventure is over, the AccuTerra Walking Tour feature lets the user replay the entire adventure directly from their iPhone. AccuTerra displays the user’s location and how far they are from the nearest roads, rivers, warming huts, trails and even natural points of interest. All of this is displayed along with information about the terrain, which is essential when hiking your way through a wilderness region.

Earlier in June, AccuTerra’s slick interface and smooth performance, as well as its innovation and usefulness, earned it an Apple Design Award for best iPhone 3.0 application at the 2009 Apple Design Awards. The AccuTerra was praised for its “usability” and “technology integration and adoption.” Because of the time it takes for the Apple store to approve new apps, AccuTerra was only available after the awards conference. However, once the delay was over, Intermap’s first iPhone application definitely did not disappoint.

Perhaps the secret to AccuTerra is that Intermap’s key business is not iPhone applications at all, but rather, aerial mapping. In the past, Magellan GPS and the US government have partnered with the company to utilize their 3D map data. And mapping in this world is no easy feat. To collect more than 3 million square miles of high-resolution 3D map data, the company didn’t ping a satellite. Their work involved developing new mapping technology and deploying more than 2,530 aircraft over U.S. airspace for more than 10,000 hours of airtime. Imagine that paperwork. Still, the company believes your safety is well worth the effort.

Even in a storm far from a wireless connection, hikers can use AccuTerra to see their distance from warming huts and roads, routes around river beds, and most importantly, the terrain. While the app’s ability to create and share annotated hiking tours with geo-tagged photos is interesting, it’s the offline maps that make this application a solid survival tool. AccuTerra plans to sell state park maps at $1.99 each and national park maps at $2.99 each in the app store; however, for WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) attendees, Intermap released free maps of Yosemite National Park and the SF Bay Area including Muir Woods and Mt. Tamalpais. Even though each map costs money, it’s worth it to have all these maps easily saved on your iPhone. Any hikers knows the cumbersome effect a mere three maps can have in your backpack. I’ll definitely be using AccuTerra for all my future hiking endeavors.

A somber fog hushes the woods. A fog so thick it’s palpable, able to be indented, as it undulates, clinging to the craggy faces of rocky outcrops and the splintered shell of an antique, befallen stump. A deer steps out from the thicket, dew cascading from her mange-bitten fur, her doleful eyes searching for something. A piece of bark with those chewy grubs, maybe. A spot of grass. Lowering her muzzle to nose the ground, she huffs hot air into the soil, revealing tender shoots of grass, and the deer starts eating mindfully. But, the grass is so tender, and the fog so quiet, the deer makes the mistake of snuffling a bit too loudly, and chewing with nary an ounce of abrupt, onset fret, like most, inherently flighty deer. Had she minded her species’ instincts, her god-given skills, she would not have been unaware of the strange, crepuscular creature to her left, hidden in the underbrush, the creature with no fur, and lanky, joint-ridden extremities. She also, would have been aware of the snare.

* * * *

In situations of peril when you are alone, lost, in the wilderness, there will come a time when you must fend for yourself, meaning you must find food, water, and shelter. You must survive. Relying on your instincts, your body and senses, is an arduous, challenging task, and one that many people fail at – some people never make it out of the wilderness. Think about the odds – it’s you against nature. Wild animals, rocky precipices, extreme temperatures, lack of water, poisonous plants, giardia, broken limbs, and far more pose serious threats to the untrained individual. Unless you’re a wilderness instructor, a ranger, or a member of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy or Air Force, you’re fairly plumb out of luck. However, some reading can be done on the subject, and what better way than with the new Survival Pocket Reference app, a guide to Survival Tactics by the US Military, itself (developed by Double Dog Studios). Hell, they’re only the authority on the subject.

This app doesn’t kid around. Starting off in quintessential military fashion, the app opens with a lively background splash of camouflage, with the next few pages dissecting the given mnemonic of S-U-R-V-I-V-A-L into its various mantras and codes. Either flip through like a book, or double tap the screen to access Chapter, to bookmark, and to otherwise easily navigate. The app then delves deeply into 11 chapters covering all the most important areas of knowledge. Some are more militaristic than others, dealing with evasion techniques in enemy territory, and proper POW interactions (in short, no interaction), but a lot of the information in these sections can be applied to the outdoor enthusiast, as well. Skills like radio communications and fire signals (Chapter 4), and navigation (Chapter 3) – knowing how to make a sun compass, determining your position, star navigation, triangulation and more – are truly exceptional assets that can spell success for the hopeless wayward. Even the chapter on “Evasion”(Chapter 2) can be relayed from avoiding enemy detection to avoiding animal detection. It’s good to know how to move along the ground, how to conceal yourself and your odors, and to understand that binnocular vision is best for direct examination – when tracking an animal, say – and that peripheral vision is better trusted at night for recognizing movement in the twilight. Some tips seem common sense, sure, but reading them from a recognized manual gives them some credence, some tangibility, over your basic first instincts.

*****

Scene: Siskiyou Wilderness – Day

Greg bit hard into the heavily charred thigh of venison. No grubs, a good sign. He had put the meat away before the flies could get to it. Rolling the meat around in his mouth, trying for the best angle of chew – game meat is always so rubbery – Greg noticed the cut on his arm looked a little worse for the wear than the night before, a few pustules visible just below the skin. That deer’s hooves sure were sharp.

Did I wash it enough?

Yes, yes, I did. A foreign body, maybe.

Maybe it’s impetigo.

He closed his eyes and sighed, knowing if it was impetigo, then there likely was an infection. He would have to find some tree bark, possibly from that acorn tree where he had made shelter the previous night. Finishing up the last stringy piece of meat, he threw the bone into the flailing fire, the last dying embers valiantly leaping in dazzling, futile trajectories toward those tempting pine needles scattered in clumps in all directions.

*****

The First Aid section of this app (Chapter 6), is exceptionally thorough for a quick guide to survival. A whole section on Plant Medicine shows the different uses of the Common Cattail, the Common Plantain, Willow leaves, Aspen leaves, tree bark, and several other less common plants that can be used to treat dystentary, boils, infections, and more. For the more serious bodily injuries, the app makes sure to include handy and easily deciphered illustrations going over the various steps in, say, how to properly apply a compression bandage for a snakebite. The big offenders are obviously included in this chapter, conditions like Hypothermia and Frostbite; Heat Stroke and Sun/Snow Blindness; Burns, Fractures, and Shock; and tools like how to apply a tourniquet, how to perform CPR, and how to properly apply a bandage. The First Aid section pays great attention to details, covering even pressure points along the body, to ease hemorrhaging, and covering the concern of a “sucking chest wound,” a frightful condition where the chest wall has been penetrated, causing the victim to gasp for breath. Many of these techniques require some technical skill, but it’s nothing so far advanced that a thorough perusing of the chapter won’t prepare you.

The chapter on Personal Protection (Chapter 7) may be overlooked by some for its sheer common sense value, but it would be unwise to do so. Remembering that your priorities are to 1) construct a shelter and 2) procure water, are absolutely vital to your initial 24 hours of survival. This section also covers helpful clothing amenities, such as how to improvise gaiters, foot pads, bedding, and snow goggles. It’s of great significance that this chapter heavily covers different types of shelter: immediate shelters (ones from already present objects that require minimal action on your part), thermal A frames (like an angular, sideways teepee), snow trenches, snow caves, molded domes, and more. Pitch (i.e. sap) from trees may be used as tinder (defined by the app as a smaller version of kindling, meant to be finely shredded to provide a low combustion point), and fires may be created through any one of various designs, all of which can be narrowed down to what’s available in your situation. If you think all this is mind-blowing, then wait until you check out the water section. I, for one, had absolutely no idea you could whack off a piece of bamboo and drink the water within. Next time I’m in China, I’ll have to try that.

The other chapters cover, obviously, Food (Chapter 9), and two of a more curious nature. Chapter 10 probably won’t pertain to most people stuck in the wilderness, it covering Man-induced conditions like post-nuclear, post-chemical or post-biological attacks. But, for those completely stricken with the never-ending fear of terrorists, such knowledge isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Chapter 11 – an appendix that concerns Edible and Medicinal Plants – is definitely more useful, but it treads a thin line of reliability on personal judgment. For anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s heartbreaking book, Into the Wild, you can understand how mistaking one plant for another can spell the difference between health and a crippling, drawn-out death. Take the elderberry, for example. Commonly found all over the East Coast of the United States, the elderberry is a delicious berry I would eat as a kid in Pennsylvannia in the form of jellies, jams, and baked into cobblers. It’s quite good for sore throats, and we would pick them by the basket load in the summer. However, it’s all too easily confused with the water hemlock, cicuta, a highly poisonous plant that, upon ingestion, releases a toxin named cicutoxin, which causes seizures and other central nervous system disorders. Some varieties of elderberry, too, have poisonous properties, like the bush with red berries, sambucus racemosa, which is toxic regardless of cooking. The edible elderberry is even toxic raw, as it contains a large quantity of cyanide.

For anyone who makes a habit of plundering in the backwoods of some remote area, like the Siskiyou in northern California (the most isolated stretch of forest in the continental U.S.) or in the trenches of Appalachia (Deliverance, anyone?), or anywhere else in the world, the Survival Pocket Reference is your new best friend. In one backpacking excursion in the Siskiyou with three friends, one of the girls and I had become lost in the woods, disoriented from our camp location. Thankfully, I knew enough about compass and topography to re-situate ourselves; every backpacker or ardent hiker must know how to read a topographical map. But, then again, what if we didn’t have our map? Who knows, we could have gone off in the wrong direction, and ended up miles away from our destination. Had we not been as bright, or more inclined to panic, we could have been in serious peril. This app, certainly, could have saved our lives.

*****

Scene – Siskiyou – Smith River – Day

Greg surveyed the scene. The river was fully engorged, a sheer white sweep of rushing liquid, freshly thawed from the spring sun’s rays. Should he cross? He thought better of it. He could be swept away in the torrential river, and whatever strength he could muster wouldn’t help him any once his body hit a rock, his body thwacking with incredible force, and ribs cracking, no doubt. There would also be hypothermia to contend with. No, he would have to follow downstream. Or, was it upstream? If only he had gotten lost in the winter.

The iPhone App first hit me with happiness at it’s quick load time and easy use. There has been a recent surge of Farmers’ Markets in San Francisco so I decided to begin my search here. I was happy to find the experience to be accurate, painless and easy.

Good Features

• Interactive map
• Many markets listed with predominantly accurate data
• Sort by date, county, or city
• Internet connection unnecessary to view listed farmers’ markets
• Send update, report inaccurate info

By storing info on your device, this app has opened up its doors to users without an Internet connection (although without connectivity, you do loose out on the links to specific market website). Farmers’ Market finder is reliable and a simple database. Instead of wading through info, the ability to filter the data left a good taste in my mouth.

Also Every map listed within is interactive. I found the ability to zoom in and out exceedingly helpful to help gain my bearings on exactly where each market is located.

Features to Make it Great

With this sort of app, I was hoping to get a taste of every market. Of course this would be quite an undertaking and is really a minor thing to mention as each market is connected to its website. This brushes the taste of the market on those who run it.

In a later version, perhaps there could be a list of resources on seasonal produce. As this is something that really ought to be covered in a farmers’ market website and not integral to a farmers’ market finder app, I won’t let this omission affect my review.

I was also apprehensive that with the quantity of farmers’ markets covered, that there would be many errors in the data; this has been taken care of with an easy button at the top right of each listed market allowing you to let the developers know what changes need to be made. Yes, this may not be the best option if you are solely relying on the app’s data in finding a market, but it is better than no option at all. With that in mind, take a look at my official note to the user below.

The last thing that would bring this app from goodness to greatness, is incorporating a rating system or some social interactivity. 3rd Whale has the right idea (although the follow-through is questionable) in it’s ability for user generated ratings. This could also give California Farmers’ Market Finder an added benefit of synergy with the individual markets vying for a top ranking spot, and marketing this app. Of course this is just an idea and I understand the implementation will take a season’s more work.

Note to the User

As Farmers’ Markets are infrequently closed or temporarily moved, it would behoove you to double check that the farmers’ market you’ve chosen is in fact open by either calling or checking the market’s website. As a frequent farmers’ market shopper, there is nothing worse then showing up without realizing that the market has been closed for the week due to construction, San Francisco Love Fest, Bear juggling, or other arbitrary community events. I’m just talking from experience here, and yes this is tangential to the app itself.

Bottom Line

This is the best farmers’ market app I have found as it is easy to navigate, interactive, responsive, and mostly up-to-date. You cannot find a better deal as the app is also free. Bravo California Farmers’ Market Finder!

It’s true, many locals may simply be lounging in their neighborhood park and sticking to the same coffee shop they’ve faithfully sipped their favorite brew over the years, wondering if they should paint their walls and feeling familiar tidings of boredom on the weekends. But, locals and non-locals alike can surely benefit from knowing a little more about what is going on in their neighborhoods, right under their nose. If you’re fortunate enough to own an iPhone, the app Events Finder by Sputr LLC keeps you up to date and notified on music events, concerts, street fairs, festivals, wine tastings, sporting events, outdoor recreation, book releases, movie events, and more, connecting you through event finder sites like Upcoming, Eventbrite, and TicketStumbler. Upcoming, powered by Yahoo!, is particularly great as it covers varying genres of activity, from comedy and performing arts to public educational and political events. Eventbrite is actually used by various oligopolistic, prestigious, and national institutions – MasterCard, Harvard, US Postal Service – and anything sponsored by these giants is sure to be advertised through this site, and by proxy, through Events Finder.

On the home page, you may narrow your search by Who’s Playing, Fairs & Festivals, Sports & Outdoors, or Movies & Book Releases, or you can simply opt to search for everything by tapping Show Me Everything. The app will automatically try to use your current location, but you can opt out of this feature to search for a specific city, town, or other location; at any time you may tap the GPS icon in the upper left to use your current location. By default, Events Finder locates events within a 25 mile radius within the course of a week. Tap on the funny martini-glass-like icon in the upper right to change these filter options. 25 miles is a bit too local for my taste, especially since my current location of Petaluma is more than 25 miles from San Francisco, the closest city, and my best bet for fun activities. 50 miles is a good average choice – not too far, like 200 miles, but far enough to include more avenues – and I like to see up to 3 weeks  in advance. I never book tickets 3 months in advance, but I’m sure my boyfriend – foamy-mouthed and rabid Ryan Adams fan that he is – would relish this option.

As it turns out, Emmylou Harris is playing tonight at 8:00pm, October 6, at the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa. Tapping on this link brings me to a page with the address, a picture of the silver fox herself, and a short descriptive blurb on the event. As with any good source app, the address will link me to a google map so I may map out directions, and a link to the event finder site, Upcoming, is given as well. Too bad this opens up a separate window in Safari, rather than keeping me in the app (this is always frustrating). Since I like Emmylou Harris, with her stately debonair, and warbling mockingbird of a voice, I’ll tap “Add to Favorites” and neatly tuck it away in my Favorites tab for later inspection. If I feel like sharing, I can email the page to myself or to someone else (most likely my boyfriend, since he’s also a rabid fan of Emmylou Harris, though more of the drooling, sedated fugue kind).

Other notable upcoming events in my search radius are the Mill Valley Film Festival at the Smith Rafael Film Center in downtown San Rafael, and, my pick of the litter, Litquake, the annual SF literary festival that spans a week and showcases local and national authors in various events, that grows by the thousand with each coming year. I, despite being a budding writer, have never heard of this event – *Jackie starts buzzing that typical literary geek trend of religious reference and metonymical uses of “blasphemous” and “baptizing”*. Thanks to Events Finder, I’m tempted to attend the Black, White and Read Book Ball this October 9, in particular for the “fabulous and mysterious” dress code (if I were to describe myself as anything, I’d like it to be fabulous and mysterious). Hopefully, the ball (don’t you just love that word? Ball? Gala is too regal, and party just pedestrian) won’t be rife with the excessively and hyper-articulate, those young, starry-eyed 20-somethings prone to literal interpretations of the figurative “rubbing elbows” with highly-publicized authors, and Dave Eggers rolling his eyes in the corner, sipping on his own moonshine concoction. Of course, I won’t know unless I go, right? And that’s what Event Finder is all about.

I would prefer if the app didn’t constantly revert to its original filter options of one week, 25 mile radius search, and I would appreciate better descriptions for some of the events – I realize the app receives its information from those three aforementioned sites, but how hard is it to do a bit of research and fill in a short summary? As someone looking for a good time, I’m more apt to attend the event I can actually read about, skipping over those with only a title and not even a picture to further elucidate. People and institutions hosting such events should also take note, since prompting people to attend requires a week bit of descriptive marketing.

Overall, though, a good app in a pinch, and free to boot, and knowing what’s happening in a week, or just tonight, is far easier when on your iPhone.