An interesting article about smartphone use:
Some of the most highly touted smartphone innovations are barely used at all. A 2012 Harris Interactive poll showed that just 5 percent of Americans used their smartphones to show codes for movie admission or to show an airline boarding pass. Whether that’s because of a lack of interest or lack of know-how (or both) is not entirely clear, but experts who study smartphone use, as well as tech-support professionals who work with the confused, say they see smartphone obliviousness at all ages and for all kinds of reasons.
I’m an app maniac, meaning that I use apps all the time on my iPod, cellphone, and Android tablet. Each device has its own apps that serve a specific purposes. My favorite apps are:
aTimeLogger – the best productivity app in the world that makes tracking the exact time I spend on research, teaching and service a breeze
Feedly – this app helps me keep up with what other bloggers are writing and read Spanish press
PicStitch – this is where I create the collages I keep inflicting upon my readers
WordPress – obvious
Habit List – an app that helps me track my Seinfeld List which, as of today, stands at 56 days of writing
TurboScanner – this is an amazing app that has buried scanners forever. I can scan any text I want and place it on Blackboard with my iPod in matter of seconds. The quality of scans is sensational, and I don’t have to deal with the copy center that bugs me over every text that is even a line over 3 pages
Lose It! – a weight loss app (more about this soon)
Holiday Cove – a game where I create cities and defeat pirates
Westbound – a game where I help a group of cowboys expand to the Wild West.
Of course, there are many more apps I use but these are the ones I access many times a day.
However, I don’t use any apps to show codes for movie admission or to show an airline boarding pass. This puts me in the category of app-Luddites the article discusses. The reason I avoid these apps is because I have a strange fear they will make me look pretentious.
Which apps do you use? And if you use none, then what is preventing you from joining the app craze?
Clarissa's Blog 
I love apps but I don’t use the two they suggested. Who cares about the airplane app when you can print the boarding pass when you get there at the same time you check your bags anyways, and I don’t go to movies much at all.
I use:
cronometer – good calorie tracker,
kindle app
rememberthemilk – task organizer
evernote – note taker
the app for my bank and the app for my public library
the nytimes app
instagram
vine
facebook
Pandora
OneBusAway – bus route app
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Of course! Pandora and the bank app, how could I have forgotten. I use them all the time.
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Words with Friends
Attendance2 (the least labor-intensive and most idiot-proof way I’ve found to keep attendance records)
Facebook
Spotify
Local public transportation app. (makes it easier to decide whether to take a bus or walk)
I don’t get the movie/airport examples at all. Surely whatever convenience such apps afford is offset by the challenge of finding someone at the theater/gate who knows how to connect the device you’re using to the seat you’re trying to purchase.
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“I don’t get the movie/airport examples at all. Surely whatever convenience such apps afford is offset by the challenge of finding someone at the theater/gate who knows how to connect the device you’re using to the seat you’re trying to purchase.”
– Exactly. Who needs to have an even bigger hassle at the airport? I never heard of Attendance2 but now I will check it out. I still keep attendance the old-fashioned way, in a big paper grade book.
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Okay, I know this is going to sound really dumb, I am still not really sure what an app is exactly. I just have a simple Nokia mobile phone and no tablet or Ipod. So I guess that puts me beyond having any possible access to any apps, but for some reason I don’t feel like I am missing anything important. I almost got a tablet so I could have a portable pdf reader, but I found an another American here who sold me his Kindle before he went back to the US.
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You are definitely not missing anything important. It’s just a hobby, and anybody can live perfectly well without practicing it.
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My flip phone does do apps. I could even use it as GPS receiver if I wished. But I am content not to do so. I do take a photo with it now and again.
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I use tons of apps (maps, photos, facebook, iTunes, shazam, lose it, cows vs. aliens, plants vs. zombies, draw something, angry birds, some other puzzle app I forgot the name of, a score keeping app for playing board games, yelp, urban spoon, and a movie times app, subway maps, occasionally a QR reader, the ny times, notes, and probably a few others I’m not remembering…). But not usually at airports or the movie theaters – I just don’t trust other places to to have the appropriate scanner.
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I tried angry birds but my intellect is insufficient to master even level 1.
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I tend to avoid apps, with the exception of a good mobile browser. My favorite mobile browser (for Android) is Firefox, while my partner (and co-owner of the $ell phone) J. prefers Opera. As far as I know, Opera is the only mobile browser that will wrap text to fit the width of the screen, and update the text-wrap with every zoom in or out; overriding the page’s stylesheet if necessary. This is a dogsend to those of us suffering with presbyopia.
There are a few apps other than browsers that I find useful, namely GPS Logger by Mendhak, RPN Calc by efalk.org, a game called Nethack, Colleen (an emulator of antique Atari computers) by Kostas Nakos. These are largely open-source apps that ask for little to nothing in the way of permissions. J. enjoys the music player app (a paid app, but well worth it) called PowerAmp, which I believe to be best-in-class.
In terms of commercial apps, I enjoy window shopping real estate with Trulia’s app. Aside from that, I prefer to interact with companies through their websites rather than their apps, which tend to cast the user in a passive role. I tried a TV listings app from TV24 Group, for example. I find I prefer to use the website zap2it.com. That website comes in a mobile version, but even on the phone I prefer the desktop version, which is less dumbed down. Even with the pinching and zooming involved in viewing the desktop version of zap2it.com, I find it far, far, far less annoying than using TV24 Group’s monetized-to-the-hilt app.
I only use monetized apps for things that absolutely, positively can’t be done via a website. If you look in any of the many dirty-deeds-done-dirt-cheap websites (they refer to themselves as “freelance” websites) you can see many ads basically frankly requesting the creation of trojan horses in the form of simple mobile apps.
I’m writing an app called “Alarum.” It’s going to be a drop-in replacement for the default alarm clock app that comes with Android. I’ve got it to the point where I can set the alarm, and it goes off at the appointed time, but to get it to shut up I have to go into settings/apps/force-stop. So it’s not ready for the play store. Maybe I should push what I have so far to github or something. My alarm clock is an interpolative alarm clock. The way to set it is described in my comment of Sep 09 2001 on this page. (12+ years later I finally get a round tuit and implement it…) More of a novelty item than a practical tool, I admit.
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This was the best comment: “No, no, no. What’s needed is an alarm clock that you can literally set backwards. That is, on Thursday 14th October 2004 I really wish I’d woken up about 45 mins earlier than I did”. I think such an item would be a best-seller. 🙂
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Or an app for use when you forget to take your phone with you somewhere.
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I always use the mobile boarding pass but then I have to print it too for reimbursements. So I leave that at home, and take my mobile one. I always lose my paper boarding passes mid-travel, but am too attached to my phone to lose it:-). I also use a gazillion other apps though.
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Geek apps:
The Photographer’s Ephemeris: handy app showing for any given date the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, the compass coordinates of the rises and sets, all superimposable on a map. If you want to know when the full moon will rise over the Arch if you are on the top deck of a SLU parking garage, this will do the job. It has a GPS component.
Sky Safari: a star atlas with clickable information about objects, with a gyro setting that allows you to hold it up in the direction you are looking and be able to compare your view with the same view of the map on the phone. Best of all, it has a “red mode” where all text and illustrations are in dark red against a black background, essential for maintaining dark adaptation during observation.
Audubon bird atlas: photos, recordings of songs and calls, info about range
PubMed On Tap: phone-formatted PubMed search engine
Webpages on tap:
weather.gov : self explanatory
ClearDarkSky: for astronomical viewing conditions at Brommelsiek Park, St. Charles
I have other apps that I don’t use much. I use the Notes and the Reminders and the Calendar apps that came with the phone. Exercise: I use an oldfashioned printed-out Excel spreadsheet on a clipboard at home (where I exercise).
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The other thing I use is the camera. Very useful for documenting “whatever”. I will photo permanently posted trail maps at the trail head, often helpful because the loose maps run out.
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