Blown Away

Last week I fortuitously dropped my Blackberry into the toilet.  Luckily, it had been flushed already.  I grabbed the phone before it was in too deep.  In fact, it seemed to be working nicely.  I did take the precaution of shutting it off right away to minimize damage.

Later in the morning, though, I attempted to turn it on and the screen was blank.  I quickly stuffed it in a Ziplock bag full of rice and left it to dry out; however, my screen still is blank.  The phone actually works - by holding down 1, I was able to dial my voice mail, but a smart phone does no good if you can't see the screen.

As luck (or divine intervention) would have it, AT&T were offering $1 upgrades for the old 3G iPhone.  This meant my wife and step-daughter would upgrade to the old 3G phones while I would splurge a bit and plunk down $199 for the 4S phone.

I have heard of AT&T's spotty coverage, but so far the phone has been the coolest gadget I have ever owned . . . by far.  It's only 16GB, but it's effectively replaced by MacBook and my iPod classic.  It is the one tool to rule them all, if you will.

Even better, because my wife's data use is not that big, we were able to bump her to a lower rate and bump me up to the highest one offered, the 5G.  What I find interesting about this is that it allows us to use my iPhone as a wireless hub.  So that means when we go on trips, I can set my iPhone up to tether to our laptops so we can have constant internet access wherever we go (then what is the point of going on vacation, right?  Good question!).

Another feature that I like about the iPhone is that it picks up wireless services that help lessen the load on my data usage plan.

I can't wait to start using this for my classes.

So far, here are the apps that I'm loving --

FirstClass . . . our school's email account has an app.
Evernote . . . a wonderful on-line storage service.  It basically allows you to capture web pages and addresses and information and store it on line.
Pandora . . . as always.  Though the fact that my phone has iTunes on it, I've used Pandora less than I did on my Blackberrry.
Dropbox . . . another online storage service.  I can upload files from my phone and then access them on any computer.
TED . . . they have an app that allows me to download my favorite TED Talks to my phone or stream them over the internet.
Blogger . . . I can now blog from my phone.
Amazon . . . ordering is now easier than ever.
Twitter . . . the iPhone app doesn't quite measure up to the Blackberry version, yet anyway.
Kindle . . . though I haven't used this yet, but it's cool that I can read any of the dozens of books I have in my Amazon Kindle account.
Easy Group . . . this allows me to create groups from my contacts that I can then mass email or text.
iBooks . . . so far I haven't used this, but when I start using iAuthor to create them, I will be able to access them on my phone.