Never say never...

I am a perfect illustration to the proverb “Never say never”. If you ever hear me say something like, “This is so ridiculous! I will NEVER get myself [a cell phone OR iPhone OR you can pretty much insert anything here]”, you can be 99% sure that at some point in the future I’ll be an obsessed owner of and an absolute expert on this [device]. I just had a chat with Dima about Google+, and I caught myself saying, “I just don’t see myself on this platform. How will I manage to move all my stuff from FB to…“ - I stopped realizing what’s going to happen soon. Eh, who am I kidding really? I’m going to be in love with Google+ as soon as I figure out who the hell it works!

This reminded me that I’m still in love with my iPhone. The applications for this device are absolutely incredible. Browsing the iPhone App Store is like going to Duane Reade: you never know what new amazingly useful gadget you’ll find there, but you know that it’ll be there and in a matter of seconds after stepping into the store you’ll be wondering how you could ever live without duvet corner clips, for example. Of course, you could sew buttons inside, tie the corners of your comforter or use any other way that this article suggests. But why, if there are now duvet corner clips available to you for only 5 bucks? Those clips and a thousand other tiny items you can find on Duane Reade shelves can clearly make your life so much simpler. And so can the App Store.

I used to pay 10 bucks for each 50-dive log book to record my dives. And I never really recorded them properly because it’s almost impossible to not smudge the pages with the pen on a boat, a wet boat. Now, I can record as many dives as I want, absolutely free, with DNA BLU app. And I don’t have to worry about smudging anything. Well, now I have to worry about not dumping my phone in the ocean, but that’s a minor detail and hopefully such a disaster will never occur.

I used to write my shopping lists in a note on my Nokia phone, but now I have SplashShopper that saves my lists, knows my favorite groceries and even allows me to email stuff to a friend who is shopping for me (yes, I have amazing friends).

I used to depend on a computer access for checking Facebook. Now I can do it anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection.

I can customize my retweets with Tweetlogix, I can track birthdays with iDay and my period with IP, I can look up any actor who has ever played in any movie with Movie Genie and IMDb, I can video call for free with my friends in Russia with Skype, I can track stars with Star Walk and identify annoyingly familiar songs with Shazam. And that is only a very small tip of the iceberg!

Some applications are really helpful and some are useless but just cool. My personal favorite in the latter category is Sleep Cycle. This is how it works. As you sleep you go through different states that range from deep sleep to light sleep. The state you are in when your alarm clock goes off will decide how tired you feel. A fixed alarm clock is a lottery. If you are lucky it wakes you in light sleep. If you are unlucky you are in deep sleep and barely conscious. Sleep Cycle creates a 30-minute wake-up phase that ends at your desired alarm time. So it tries to wake you in your lightest sleep state – the natural way to wake up where you feel rested and relaxed. Since you move differently in bed during the different sleep states, Sleep Cycle can use the sensitive accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movement to determine which state you are in. I usually sleep very well and wake up easily all fresh and full of energy, so how did I get sucked into this you ask me? Aha, simple: they have statistical reports on your sleep! With graphs! Now I know that on July 17^th, for example, I slept a total of 7 hours and 27 minutes (went to bed at 10:53 and woke up at 6:21), and my average total sleep time is 7 hours 14 minutes (as determined over the past 18 days). I rest my case.