Can you believe the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, in a time when having an ecological mindset was correlated more with wearing birkenstocks and eating – the horror – foods not provided in a colorfully designed cardboard box? The environmentalists of this era are often dramatized as hemp-wearing hippies who tied themselves to trees, rioted against fur, and adopted a neo-Native American lifestyle of rediscovering simpler living, away from the granite confines of city interiors. Forty years later, environmentalism has changed into the yuppie mainstream, for the better: our entire lexicon is rife with words like biodegradable, ecosphere, carbon footprint, community supported agriculture and more, colleges around the country are building LEED certified buildings, the new wave of electric cars are emerging this coming year, and corporate America is taking a more sustainable approach to business (well, some, not all). Recycling has long been accessible on our curbs and eating locally grown food – or growing your own food – has become trendier, even, than the Prius, itself.

The problem with living an eco-intelligent lifestyle, however, is there’s so much to consider and remember. Thanks to green iPhone apps, all this information and much, much, much more is now available at your fingertips. Green apps are sprouting up faster than, well, sprouts. In honor of Earth Day’s big birthday, we at Appstruck combed through many different eco-friendly apps for shopping, travel, transportation, eating out and more, so you have them ready at your green thumbs.

1. Animal-Free – FREE
Animal-Free is a pocket reference guide for many common and hidden animal ingredients. Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, part-time veg or simply trying to shop veg-friendly, this app by Symbiotic Software will help you make conscientious shopping decisions. New vegans will appreciate the list of commonly misunderstood or unfamiliar vegan ingredients that will help expand your dietary horizons.

2. Gorgeously Green Survival Guide – 99 cents
The Gorgeously Green Survival Guide is a quick reference for busy women. Developed by bestselling author Sophie Uliano, Gorgeously Green guides you through the confusion of shopping for eco-friendly choices. One of the best features is the ability to create convenient and helpful shopping lists for everything from lip sticks to light bulbs.

3. Greenpeace Tissue Guide – FREE
The Greenpeace Tissue Guide allows you to make informed decision when shopping for recycled tissue and toilet paper. Experts have rated more than 100 brands as “recommended,” “could do better” and “avoid!”

4. Harvest – Select the Best Produce – $1.99
Harvest helps you skip packaged and processed foods with information on selecting the freshest, ripest, healthiest and best-tasting produce. Now you can knock on watermelons, smell pineapples and squeeze avocados with knowledgeable élan. (read review here)

5. Locavore – $2.99
Eat foods grown and raised locally without spending hours Googling data for tonight’s meal. Locavore provides government and NGO data by state. Click on the food item for Wikipedia info and Epicurious recipes. There’s no market-finder feature for in-season foods, but it sure beats printing lengthy lists of locally grown foods. (read review here)

6. TheGoodGuide – FREE
GoodGuide helps you find safe, healthy and sustainable products while you shop. Simply scan the product’s barcode to view detailed ratings for the health, environment and social responsibility of more than 65,000 products and companies.

7. CarCare – $4.99
CarCare automatically calculates your gas mileage at the pump and reminds you when it’s time to change the oil, rotate tires, get a wax or any other service you desire.

8. Green Gas Saver – FREE
Green Gas Saver tells you when you’re accelerating or taking a turn too fast, which can hinder your gas mileage. The idea behind the app is to keep the ball in the center of the screen. When you accelerate too quickly, the diameter of the ball increases and an alarm will sound, indicating you’re accelerating too quickly. Green Gas also keeps a running score so you can see how well you’re driving in real time. A few weeks with this app and driving efficiently will become ingrained.

9. Greenmeter – $5.99
Greenmeter by Cleantechnica tracks your car’s carbon footprint and fuel efficiency while calculating weather conditions, cost of fuel and vehicle weight. You also can measure drag coefficient, vehicle pitch and rolling resistance with estimates available at CleanTechnica.com.

10. Twavel – $1.99
Twavel isn’t just for wascally wabbits. It calculates the CO2 emissions associated with your travel choices and allows friends to compare their travel footprints.

11. Green Sushi Selector – 99 cents
Green Sushi Selector allows you to research whether the sushi fish you’re about to buy comes from threatened species or has been caught or farmed in ways harmful to the environment. Fish are listed both by their Japanese and common-market names. Additional features include health alerts for mercury and PCBs, as well as dietary recommendations.

12. VegOut – $2.99
Vegetarian offerings in many restaurants are often limited and boring. VegOut makes life a bit easier with the world’s largest international listing of vegan, vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. Search listings by your exact location or a customized location when on the road.

13. Geocaching Toolkit – FREE
Geocaching, the green outdoors game of hiding and seeking treasures, has caught on throughout the world. Geocaching Toolkit guides players between locations with clues involving puzzles, calculations and projecting a new waypoint using distances and bearings. Sometimes the calculations are easy, but this toolkit can help when calculations become tedious .

14. Lonely Planet Travel Guides – Prices begin at 99 cents
Lonely Planet Travel Guides are the guide of choice for many frugal and green travelers. Various apps provide paperless guides for both U.S. and international destinations. Some of the guides are buggy and need work, but Lonely Planet is working on updated versions. Tip: Read the reviews before buying.

15. BraveNewFilms – FREE
Find and access the latest, hard-hitting videos on social and economic issues. From exposing abusive health insurance companies to combating unregulated Wall Street greed, the videos on BraveNewFilms inform, challenge and recommend opportunities to take action.

16. Get Green – 99 cents
Get Green, from Candied Apple, provides you with daily ammunition in the battle against climate change.You’ll receive daily updates about how you can make a difference. Tips cover everything from green workplaces to green Halloween celebrations. It even has tips on how to reduce the carbon footprint of your wedding.

17. Green Charging – 99 cents
Green Changing reduces your energy consumption when you charge your phone. Launch the app when you start charging and it’ll notify you with sound and vibration when your battery is fully charged. Some of the best things are so simple.

18. Green Wars – $1.99
Based on the classic Drug Wars game, Green Wars requires players purchase environmental products for cheap and resell them for a profit. Manage your inventory to make the biggest profit on buying and selling recycled paper, LED light bulbs, reusable shopping bags, recycled paper and fixed-gear bicycles. Once you’ve earned some street cred by making deals, you can buy and sell high-end goods like solar items, geothermal pumps, carbon credits and hybrid cars.

19. iGreen – 99 cents
Stay current on the latest solar, hybrid, green and green tech news. Aggregated new sites on iGreen include About My Planet, Azo CleanTech, VentureBeat, Green Biz, Green Computing, Hybrid Car Blog and more.

20. MeterRead – $2.99
Read your meter with ease using your iPhone. Check it again later and MeterRead provides you with data to better control your power bill. This app from Zerogate displays the total kilowatt hours used since the last reading and calculates your total usage for the next 30 days.

Being a writer, myself, or at least, an aspiring one, I can attest to the difficulty inherent in the creative process. Sometimes, it’s an absolute breeze – words, characters, and premises are not so much grasped as fully grabbed, easily plucked from the clutches of your right cerebral cortex to be laid out, resplendent on paper. And, other times, it’s a sad practice in futile desperation, gasping for air when there is no air at all, and mustering what little of your confused sensibilities you have to jigsaw a ragged piece – this is where cliches, and refurbished ideas come into play, the Thomas Kincaid of the writing artform. At the risk of sounding hackneyed and cliched, writing is all too similar to running. There is a state of zen achieved when everything glides smoothly, with hardly any thinking at all, a rhythmic, perfectly sustainable motion. It, plain and simple, just is. Runners, when at their finest, feel a surge of energy they reign in, their endorphins racing, and their concentration wanes in favor of relaxation, dreaminess, an enjoyment of being privy to that state of perfect, almost accidental balance. In that perfectly honed moment of writing, ideas are strangely orderly, and decoded too quickly for the fingers to type, the writer finding himself in a sustained state of mental clarity, alertness, of keeping up, a transcriber to his very lucid thoughts.

Of course, I wouldn’t be a writer if I claimed that all good writing is born from those moments of sheer clarity – which, frankly, aren’t that rare at all for the good writers (the Imaginagicians, as I call them). Writing, like any artform, is also a craft, and whatever skills or talents you bring to the table must be carefully honed and winnowed, cut to a precise, sharp edge. Writing, and its close cohort, reading, are nurtured from a very early age, so in many ways any one person’s talent in writing is set in stone based on these early practices. Well, maybe not stone, but certainly a thick, drying mud, or quicksand – writing can certainly be malleable. Of course, being able to weave a good sentence is far different from being able to create an original idea, of being able to create characters and bring them to life. And yet, the two ideas are inextricably entwined.

What I Need A Muse fails to realize is that the creative process cannot be undone from the act of writing, itself. I Need A Muse may be able to create an interesting, even unique character name for you, and attach it to a slightly eccentric job title, but since you took no part in that process, you miss out on that vital link of emotional resonance. You did not create this character. You did not conduct research or search your local environment for inspiration, from cafes, markets, or from that frumpy woman who rocks in her porch chair every morning, but is seen no where else.  You did not write this character, or decide that he was “surly.” Creative Writing classes will often give its students writing prompts, perhaps even of brief, character sketches, to incite students to nurture that creative spark. But, what I Need A Muse presents is a stark, robotic character, pumped out by a digital machine. Sure, a name here or there might be useful, but what would you write about for Aaron Cruz, a quiet Cashier working in Douglas Memorial Park?

I don’t know, either.

Plenty 'o' apps.

I actually thought Appzilla was going to be a collection of games, much like another app I reviewed that reminded me of those old Atari game packages you could buy. I was a little disappointed when I realized it wasn’t 50 games in one, but I got over that pretty quickly when I saw the apps Appzilla has to offer. In the past I’ve reviewed a currency converter, a price calculator (which deal is the better one), a password app, a tip calculator, and various others, all of which are contained within Appzilla. These apps are the kind that are useful to have on hand, but not necessarily the kind of app you would actively seek out, much less buy – if you have it, great, if you don’t, well, then you’re plumb out of luck. There have been a few occasions where I needed a level and thought of the level app for the iPhone (my boyfriend has it on his iPhone – as it turns out, it’s off by nearly a whole degree), but it’s never spurred me enough to actually download the app. With Appzilla, however, people may be more prompted to download it because it offers three whole pages of apps that you can hide away in one icon, without painstakingly downloading each one as the occasion calls for it. The

Protractor

flashlight, dictionary, level, password creator, price calculator, sale price finder, ruler, tip calculator, unit calculator, and translator are the most useful apps in Appzilla, and the ones I think, most people could reap the most benefit. Sure, some of them have their problems: the ruler isn’t anywhere near long enough, and scrolling to see more inches seems theoretically suitable, but in reality, doesn’t work that well, and the translator isn’t top-notch – but then again, what free translator is? The others work just fine – I get the most use out of the unit calculator, with all the baking I do. I would include the cook timer in this list, but it doesn’t work if you exit the app, so what’s the point? The grill time, too, is silly, because it’s an exact clone of the cook timer.

For every useful app, though, there is a completely useless one, almost thrown in there for kicks, or to round out the number to 50. A buzzer app shows just a red and green buzzer for those times when you want to hold a round of Jeopardy in your living room. It’s quirky and enough to crack a quick smirk, but the novelty dies within seconds (it doesn’t help that the buzzer sounds latently). The Booklamp may as well be the

Dictionary

Flashlight, the Grill Timer and the Cook Timer are the same, a coin flip provides momentary amusement for those times when, curiously enough, you don’t have a coin on you, and a clock app really takes the cake by, gasp, giving you the time. I was rather tickled by a few of the apps that were clever enough to strike my interest, but I would never find the opportunity to use them, apps like the Clinometer, Decibels reader (I suppose I could use this when arguing with someone, showing her that she’s way beyond raising her voice and is now just yelling), the Metronome, Plumb Bob, Protractor, and Tally. Seriously, who uses a Protractor? The Strobe app just flashes blinding white light at you, enough to incite seizures, and the Lighter just shows a burning flame. Really? A lighter? The Massager app turns on annoying beats of vibration, the Trip Wire registers sounds and then sounds an alarm, and I can’t even figure out what the Teslameter is supposed to do, other than the

Buzzer

disclaimer that notes, “This device does not have the ability to measure magnetic fields.” And I thought the iPhone could do everything.

The Auto Camera, at first, seemed like it offered something useful for the iPhone’s much neglected camera, but then I realized a timer wasn’t included in the iPhone for a reason. Unless you prop your iPhone against something carefully, or sandwich it in between two books, you’ll be taking a lot of pictures of your ceiling, 10 seconds after scheduling the camera to shoot. Not exactly the greatest idea. I was really miffed, however, at seeing a Homeland Security app – do I really need to be reminded of this preposterous labeling system? Oh, and are we still on yellow, meaning Elevated risk of terrorist attacks? This is an app I could do without.

Appzilla could be better presented, and have more worthwhile apps, or, heck, even just a reduction to 30, because there are certainly 20 apps in there I could do without. But, I’ll continue to make the argument that having a package deal on a dozen or so apps that you would find useful should the situation arise, makes Appzilla a good app to invest in. Besides, it’s only $0.99 and takes one meager slot on your iPhone page. Who can argue with that?

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Well, Moodagent by Syntonetic , for one, definitely warrants a second look. It’s actually a little unfair to compare it to Pandora because they do two completely different things, albeit in the same manner. Moodagent creates playlists from your stock set of music based on “moods,” defined as sensual, tender, joy, and aggressive, along with a tempo to your liking, to keep your music fresh and continually exciting. What’s particularly great about this is all the music you have on your computer is, obviously, music you love – none of us would keep music on our computers or iPhones that we didn’t at some point actively seek out and purchase. I like to use Pandora for seeking out music I wouldn’t otherwise buy, or to introduce me to new groups and sounds that I probably would never come across. But, it’s true, whenever there’s a song (say, Electric Feel by MGMT – yes, I am a girl) that I just cannot absolutely live without, then I most assuredly will buy it. After that, it pretty much boils down to listening to my own collection of songs, of which I have hundreds, and siphoning them in some interesting way so I won’t listen to a straight down, in-alphabetical order, arrangement of songs that eventually gets stale. I, personally, couldn’t live without the shuffle feature on all my Mac products, but every now and then I’ll even skip a song or two if I’m not in the mood for it. Please, no more Fiona Apple – I only listened to all her albums a dozen times over during my entire High School years, and please, if I want to go dance crazy, I doubt Ryan Adams is going to get me there.

Here is where Moodagent comes in. Whatever songs I place on my iPhone are synced to Moodagent once I open the app. The app has a slick feel to it, with five bars along the top in colors, from left to right, of red, orange, yellow, purple and gray, representing, in order, sensual, tender, joy, aggressive, tempo, each of which is able to be slid up and down to different degrees of preference for that specific category. The higher up I slide sensual, say, the more songs Moodagent deems “sensual” will be placed in my playlist. If you want, you can tinker around with different slider settings, with differ play lists popping up – it’s pretty cool, to say the least.

Let’s say I want a playlist with plenty of sensuality and aggressiveness, but with the lowest settings on the other three. The first song that Moodagent picks, “Heartbeats” by The Knife, couldn’t be a more perfect fit. The synthesized, pseudo glam-rock feel to Heartbeats, with its slowly undulating beat and the pouty voice of the female lead singer just oozes sex, mystery, drama, allure, and flushing skin, a quickening heartbeat. It’d be a more sensual song without the funky synthesize beats, but it’s the, I guess you could say “aggressive” quality of this sound that places it at the top of this custom playlist. The next song in the mix is also a perfect match, “Hotel” by Broken Social Scene, with a similar low, sexy hum to its digitized, hipster beats. But, straying from the more synth type music the fourth song Moodagent picked was Dangerous by Kardinall Offishal (featuring Akon), which is definitely a sensual song with a raw, aggressive quality to it. More surprisingly, this song actually has a more upbeat tempo to it, but it maintains a smooth and curvy enough quality to it that it’s not necessarily upbeat. Were I to dance to it (and I do), it would involve a slow, sensual saunter with rocking hips than it would that frenetic hand waving we all do in bars late at night. Or, well, at least I do that. Hah.

“All I Need” by Radiohead also fit perfectly within the aforementioned scheme – are we noticing a trend yet? Let’s switch up the sliders, shall we? Let’s raise the tender to as high as possible, with a mid tempo, and the lowest setting for the rest. I’m suddenly inundated with a list of very moody, haunting songs from the likes of Sigur Ros, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (from the soundtrack of The Assassination of Jesse James), Sufjan Stevens, and Feist. Yep, that is definitely right on the mark. Let’s up the joy with mid-tenderness and mid-tempo. I now have a playlist of “Off Broadway” by Ryan Adams, “Impossible Germany” by Wilco, “Crazy on You” by Heart, “Alone in Kyoto” by Air, “Bad Dreams” by M. Ward, “Time of the Season” by The Zombies, and “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson. Definitely an eclectic mix, but does it fit the ticket? I certainly wouldn’t consider the majority of these songs joyful, by any definition of the word, but the beats they exhibit, the musical sensation, without a doubt have a joyful, upbeat bent to them. What if I raise all the sliders to the top? Well, the results turn out to be just as impressive. The first song, “Jerusalem” by Mirah is all at once sensual, tender, joyful and aggressive, with a sprightly tempo. Moodagent does have a surefire skill, through its technology, of achieving sensational playlists.

So, what about this technology? Moodagent’s developers say it:

“combines digital signal processing, music science and artificial intelligence to focus on the way music is perceived emotionally… Moodagent can play any song, no matter how obscure, without language barriers. Moodagent technology creates a profile for every song it encounters and stores it in an Amazon EC2 cloud. To create a profile, the song’s digital signal is analyzed, a segment (or segments) of the song is then amplified and run through 34 artificial intelligence expert systems, which are constantly trained by musicologists. Moodagent is able to create a song profile that measures the degree of each of the song’s characteristics, including moods, genres, sub-genres, styles, tempo/beat, vocals, instrumentation and production features.”

Gosh, no wonder the results are so impressive. I’m curious what the “34 artificial intelligence expert systems” are – as of now, it just sounds like something out of a sci-fi paperback. In any case, Moodagent seems to have the proper backing to create custom playlists ; whether you agree with the mood definitions or not. You might argue there should be more variety in the sliders, but considering the vast range of human emotions and moods, it’s best to keep Moodagent’s range winnowed to a small degree that encompasses a fairly wide variety of songs. It’s already impressed me with its ability to interpret songs based on perceptions of emotion, and I’ve enjoyed the 25 song playlists. What’s also great about Moodagent is the music keeps playing if you exit the app, so in that sense, it works just like the iPod function.

Give Moodagent a go next time you want to try out a new playlist making app for your iPhone – you may just find you’re in the mood for something new.

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.

In the past, I’ve praised the gifted ability of Airfare to find my low-priced flight tickets; unfortunately, it seems for the past few months the app has been burdened with painfully slow loading times, crashes, and oftentimes simply not working at all. I’ve since moved on to scouring JetBlue and Southwest Airlines for discount deals (I remember several months back JetBlue had an outrageous offer for flights from SFO to JFK for $14 each way – those sold within minutes). I haven’t particularly liked any iPhone apps in recent history – I’m sorry, but the highly regarded FlightTrack Pro is usually off by 30 minutes at a time, so what’s the point of tracking your flight’s arrival? – so I’ve relegated to using, once again, all those flight finder sites, like Orbitz, Kayak, Expedia, and more, taking a good 30 minutes just to view all of them and compare prices. It’s a pain.

As if the flight gods were overhearing my agony, BookMe landed in my lap a mere week ago. BookMe is a free iPhone app by BookMe.com that searches the best travel sites for flights, hotels, car rentals and cruises in every country in the world. It presents them to you in one neat package, never leaving the app, itself, until you make a purchase, so you can avoid individually visiting each site and plugging in the same information. I tested it out with fairly low expectations – how much time could it really save me? – but I was grateful at how breezy BookMe is to use.

The options are presented as such: search for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, flight+hotel, flight+hotel+car, or flight+car. Let’s say I just want to search for a roundtrip flight to New York, airport preference up in the air. I pick a flight date of June 20, set to return on the 30th, with the departure from SFO and the arrival at any airport in NYC. I plug in this information once then tap the “Search and Save” button. Well, if the button says “save” then they best bring me the best savings that searching can provide me. A list will pop up, almost immediately, of the sites that provide arguably the best deals in terms of price. For my hypothetical flight, Skyscanner, Bing Travel, Kayak, Travelocity and Orbitz are shown. I’ll try Bing Travel first, if anything, just for the perky name. A new tab emerges, taking me to an in-app page of the website, and the loading time is roughly 10 seconds, if even that, depending on my current connection. The arrow keys at the top allow me to browse the site as I would via the web – only, make sure not to tap the Back button at the very top of the screen, or you’ll be sent back to the main page of BookMe and start from scratch. I made this mistake the first time around, as it’s easy to assume, based on its positioning, that the “back” button is used as a web browser’s; remember, you’re using BookMe, so the interface isn’t the same. Instead, should you want to return to your search results list, use the Home button at the bottom left of the screen, next to your first tab (which, for me, is Bing Travel).

I’ve decided that $342 for a flight to New York isn’t bad at all, but maybe some of the other sites have something better to offer. I tap the Home button and this time I select Skyscanner – I like how BookMe keeps the sites currently on tab highlighted in blue, so you don’t forget which ones you currently have open. A second tab appears at the bottom of the screen, and BookMe opens to the Skyscanner page, where apparently, I can book a flight for the same price (it’s important to note that some sites, like Skyscanner, list separately the prices for your departing and arriving flight, rather than combining the full price, as with Bing Travel. Also, most sites don’t tack on additional fees until you total the purchase, so take this into account, too). Kayak took longer than the other sites to load, and then eventually crashed, but it was the only crash I experienced throughout my entire use of the app (several hours worth). After I searched through all the sites, I discovered that each of them offered the same price of $342 – which is cheaper than any airline site I searched, and was ascertained by me much more quickly than had I searched each of these sites individually.

I wish some filters would be applied – I would like flights to be arranged in terms of their affordability, priced low-high, to make for easier navigation, as it’s currently unclear whether BookMe automatically performs this duty for you. Overall, though, an excellent app I will definitely use in the future for any traveling arrangements.

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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There are so many TV apps out there today, and it's definitely not in my News Year's Resolution list to watch more TV. But, with all the brand new, exciting technologies to come out, with the second generation Blu-Ray discs and their built-in 3D, Skype being integrated with HDTV, and much more, it's definitely worth it to check out the brimming possibilities coming in 2010. In the meantime, these TV and remote apps will make life a bit easier when controlling the various gadgets around you, whether it be your laptop or your TV.

DirecTV

When my parents switched to DirecTV from Comcast, they ran into a few problems, like weird screen set-ups, less channels and choices, and overall less movie choices to rent or download for free. But, that's their beef, and as I currently do not own a television (I do better without), I only browse channels here and there to provide mind-numbing background noise should I happen to visit their home. But, for those who do enjoy their DirecTV capabilities, and own an iPhone, then the DirecTV app makes life so much easier. The DirecTV iPhone App lets you browse up to 2 weeks of shows, set recordings and control multiple DVRs in the house. Even better, it's free. By comparison, it's much, much better than the web-based method (which, frankly, is probably super slow because of the crappy house brand DVRs from DirecTV, itself), and works well on 3G or EDGE. If you have a DTV DVR and an iPhone, you should get this.

i.TV

This app is the end-all-be-all of TV apps. i.TV delivers local (U.S. and Canada) television and movie listings to your iPhone, which at first may not sound all that impressive, but oh, just you wait. When you first launch i.TV, the app finds your location and asks you to choose your service provider - that's pretty much all the grunt work you need to do to get started, aside from a few channel customizations here and there. Overall, it's a breeze and only takes a couple of minutes. Just about anything you find in i.TV’s listings can be added to “My Media” by clicking on the thumbs-up icon at the top of the screen. “My Media” is basically a bookmarking system that tells you things like what shows your favorite actors are in, or what channels your favorite shows can be found on. It's an excellent feature. Even more, if you're a TiVo addict you can link your i.TV account to your Tivo and record a television show right from your iPhone. As if the realm of TV weren't enough, there is even a section on the i.TV app for movies. You can browse movies by those upcoming in theaters, or those already in the theaters. Since the app already has your zip code, when you browse the theater section you are shown a list of theaters nearby with lists of what is playing at each, along with a description of each movie. You will also get links to the map, directions and phone for each theater. Not only do you get info and ratings, but you are also able to watch great-quality trailers of the movie. I like this feature so much, I pretty much kicked my other movie apps to the last page (sorry Showtimes). It just seems the i.TV app does everything but drive you there. Future version of i.TV may include the ability to watch TV and the ability to set up recordings on your DVR. In any case, this is a must-have for TV freaks.

Keynote remote

Now you can maintain complete control of your Keynote presentation using your iPhone. This app works with Keynote ’09 (part of the new iWork ’09 productivity suite), letting you progress through your slides with a simple swipe of the fingers, ensuring the salivation of many a business presenter, I'm sure. Hold your iPhone vertically (portrait), and you see presenter notes; horizontally (landscape), and you see the current and next slide in your presentation. It's easy to set-up, even for the complete layman, and using the app is a total joy. Some issues here and there with lagging raised my eyebrow in terms of its reliability, but unless you're stealing your neighbor's wifi from three houses down, this shouldn't pose much of a problem. Besides, the places people most often give presentations - workplaces, colleges, cafes, conferences spaces in hotels - usually have good connections. It isn't flashy by any means in terms of its extra features or abilities, and using an iPhone isn't as forgiving as the tiny Keyspan Presenter, but for giving presentations it's pretty darn good.

Remote

Whenever I cook, I have my laptop open, playing music to the likes of Amy Winehouse, Fiona Apple, Beethoven... okay, and maybe some Gangsta Luv by Snoop Dogg. It usually works out great, because my laptop is portable, I can move it where I want for optimal listening. The one problem I've always had is when I'm kneading dough, or handling raw fish, or otherwise mucking up my hands with oily, powdery, or otherwise food-related accoutrements, the last thing I want to do is touch my laptop and rub said products all over my keys, letting some undoubtedly fall between the cracks. Blah. I tested out remote yesterday, while making split pea soup, and while it's true, I still wiped down my hands a bit before using my iPhone, it's way, way better than constantly moving back and forth between my cooking and my laptop. With remote, I can control everything I have in my iTunes library, and installing the app is completely easy. Just add a computer, and voila, you're ready to go.

VLC remote (free version)

Another annoyance-saver for me. Before bed, my boyfriend and I like to watch back episodes of House, or maybe start one of the movies we have queued up in our own personal list of classics to watch (Dial M for Murder was last night, and boy, was that a winner). Usually, our movie formats are in VLC - not a surprise, VLC is nearly universally applied - so we're always opening VLC. We place the laptop on a shelf at the foot of our bed, which is great for viewing purposes, but for the lazy man in all of us, it means every time we want to adjust the volume, rewind, skip ahead, pause or stop, or start a new movie, we have to get up and finagle the laptop. With the VLC remote, now we can just operate our movie watching with a remote via the iPhone. Brilliant. Why didn't I get this before now? While it can't quite match the music library organization skills of the more OCD iTunes, VLC will play just about any video file in the world, ever. So if you're streaming video from your computer to your TV or using VLC on your home theater PC, control is now a lot easier.

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.

Alright, so compared to yesterday’s Survival Guide, the WeatherBug app seems a little trite, a little less mind-blowing. But, as any outdoor enthusiast knows, preparing for whatever weather lies ahead is tantamount to a good trip – and your safety. With the way California weather has been going lately, with hot days lasting into November, it’s all too easy to assume random showers won’t strike at the least opportune moment. Or, you might find yourself stuck in an unforeseen, but nevertheless awesome lightning storm, as we Bay Area residents experienced out of the blue back in early October. When it comes to snowfall, and extreme temperature changes, these are weather patterns you want to be prepared for. Wearing those Hunter Wellies in the rain won’t cut it in hard ice – you’ll need to break out the Adirondack and sherpa-lined boots with duck fronts for that.

More involved than other weather apps for the iPhone – including the stock weather widget – WeatherBug gives you a vast array of information, maybe more so than you really need. What really sets WeatherBug apart from other apps is it gives you live, local weather conditions and forecasts from both NWS (National Weather Forecast) weather stations and WeatherBug’s own proprietary weather stations. This means you pick the nearest weather station to you rather than simply selecting a town, which is pretty limited in the grand scheme of things. This means if it is hailing in your neighborhood, yet sunny across town, WeatherBug will help you to determine this. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve checked the forecast for Point Reyes, had it read a very chilly 55 degrees F, only to begin my hike with sunny, blazing skies and warm enough weather for a tank top even before my heart rate starts pumping. Phooey.

Some key features of the app include 7-day and hourly forecasts; daily national weather outlook video; radar maps with zoom feature; live weather cameras of which you may view 5 at a time and view in time-lapse mode; cached weather data for offline viewing (of particular use for we, hikers); National Weather Service alerts, touch map interface that allows you to view weather conditions for any location touched; and -way cool – temperature contour and satellite infrared maps. Phew! Think that’s enough to keep you busy?

When you first open the app, the most basic and necessary information is given up-front – the current temperature with hi and lo of the day, along with a weather description for the day (”party cloudy in the morning then becoming mostly sunny…”). It’s nice that Weatherbug includes on the first page other details like wind chill, humidity and dew point, and if you want to see more specific details on any of these, just tap the arrow pointing to the right – you’ll be taken to a page of “current conditions” detailing wind gusts, rain rates, and everything else so far occurring on that day. Funnily enough, despite all these details, there’s no way to change the temperature reading from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Too bad for the Canadians, eh? Should any weather concerns be pressing, the center of the main page has a bar indicating those NWS alerts I mentioned earlier – if you’re in Pennsylvannia and a tornado warning is issued, you’ll be sure to see it blazing in that bar.

I have my WeatherBug following Petaluma, CA; Point Reyes Station, CA; San Francisco, CA; and New York, NY, but you can set WeatherBug to follow up to 10 separate locations if you wish. Flipping through these locations is just a matter of using the navigation bar along the top of the main screen, which reads “Petaluma, CA,” or whichever location you’re currently viewing. The Forecast button in the bottom navigation bar is self-explanatory – check out the written forecast blurbs, and tap on them for more detailed blurbs. The Maps page is where things get exciting. Powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth, you’re able to navigate with your finger, much like Google Maps, only this one contains weather pattern imaging; satellite, radar and temperature views; and an opacity setting (whatever that means, just pretend you’re a forecaster). You may watch live weather videos if you ever want an immediate, personal connection to your weather updates, conducted by the less-lusty-than-usual Rachel, with her dark lipstick, highlighted strands, and cat eye glasses.

Definitely worth it for outdoorsmen in the long haul, WeatherBug will keep you up-to-date with detailed information of weather patterns and forecasts from anywhere in the world. At no cost to download, it’s a small price to pay for being prepared.