My Mobile Life

I discovered a great little application this weekend called AroundMe from TweakerSoft. I got to test it out this afternoon while wandering around a little gallery in Byron. Yes, after another idyllic weekend on the North Coast of New South Wales, we decided to finish off the day with a wine and some food in Byron before heading home. While selecting our watering hole, I thought I’d see if the application actually worked locally as I wasn’t sure if it supported Australian locations when I downloaded it from the iTunes app store (for free).

AroundMe icon

Some of you might recall a post I wrote not so long ago about an app called Buzzd which lets you recommend places and things going on in your local area. AroundMe is similar to Buzzd, except that it works off a pre-populated database with information on facilities (banks, cafes, restaraunts, service stations, hospitals, etc…). The idea being that you can lookup facilities close to you, using the phone’s ability to pinpoint your location.

AroundMe - current location prompt

When you launch the application you are asked if you want to let it access your location info. Once you permit this, you see a menu which gives you a list of the types of businesses that you might be interested in. You select the type of place you want and after a short delay for the search, you get a listing of the businesses in the area ordered by proximity.

AroundMe - Initial listing screen

From the listing screen you can add the business to your contacts, email them or choose to see the address on the map. Alternatively you can choose contact info or see the route to the location via Google Maps.

AroundMe - Service station listing

AroundMe - Business detail listing

I think this is a great example of the sort of apps that the iPhone is perfect for and this one in particular will definitely be one I keep on my phone.

Ah, what a weekend! Snowboarding is a blast! I had been told that it’s harder to learn (initially) than skiing, but the big line up at the ski rental counter compared with the relatively short one for snowboards, was all the convincing I needed. I figured there would probably be quite a few similarities with surfing and this certainly proved to be true.

I took a beginners group lesson on Saturday morning which got me off to a good start with essentials like getting on/off the chair lift, skating and heelside stopping, plus a little bit of riding. But it was the one hour private lesson I took in the afternoon that really got me going. By Saturday afternoon I was linking up my turns and riding heelside and toeside pretty comfortably on a blue run.

Sunday morning was spent consolidating what I’d learned and discovering new runs with Kirsten, a comfortable skier who managed to drag me down a black run from the summit. A 2nd private lesson on Sunday afternoon with a great instructor named Evan proved to be the best way to spend an hour progressing my skills. He got me improving the speed of my turns and showed me how to do 360′s and a few simple tricks & jumps to get comfortable on the board.

Riding up the chairlift at one stage during the lesson the conversation turned to work and travel. Evan mentioned a partner in Guatemala and a desire to travel more. I mentioned the blog and the background topic of mobility and the lifestyle design process that Timothy Ferris talks about in his seminal book for the mobile warrier – Four Hour Work Week.

I also showed him the iPhone and some of it’s cool features, SMS messaging and it’s conversation viewer, the camera, iPod and mail. In mail I showed him an email invitation I’d received from a friend which had a Microsoft Office Word document attached. Prior to this I wasn’t sure how the iPhone would handle viewing of Office docs, but I was impressed by how easy it was to bring up the doc on the iPhone. Once you’ve clicked on the attachment to download it, the file is opened much like it is when you click on QuickLook in Apple Mail. While you don’t get the ability to edit word or Excel documents, I found that even when I had the option to do so with a PDA I rarely did, as it’s just too fiddly on a small device. This may pose issues for some business users but for most people I would say viewing capability is just fine.

At the end of the lesson I got Evan to snap a few pics of me trying out the board skills he’d been teaching me and I followed one maneuver up with the best stack I managed in the two days on the mountain. A head over heels, free fall tumble. Looks like I have a fair bit more practising to do up here and I have a feeling I’ll be back soon.