Over the past few months I’ve been relying on my 2nd generation iPod Touch more and more for connecting to the online world. On a recent 3 day trip I didn’t even take my MacBook pro with me and I didn’t miss it at all. All of my reading and email and even posting things online all stayed up-to-date all with the tiny little powerful computer in my pocket. While an iPhone would allow me to be connected all of the time, there were enough wifi hotspots to keep me connected for most of the day every day.
Another realization that I made is that the applications that I rely upon to stay connected are simple and powerful. The five apps I use throughout every day are Twitterrific, Tumblr, Simplenote, Reeder, and Instapaper. Simplicity is the key and if a choice needs to be made between something that is simple and works most of the time and something that may have a lot more possibilities, it’s obvious that simple is the way to go.
The other aspect of the five apps that I use every day to connect and share things with the world is that all of them rely on APIs to get and share the information that they use. That means that it doesn’t all just stay on my iPod Touch, but that everything is synchronized so I can check things out on my MacBook Pro or even another computer on the web and I don’t have to worry about losing something. Now I start and end every day in bed with my iPod Touch doing a little bit of reading and catching up using my favourite apps.
Twitterrific on the iPod Touch is my primary way of checking out what is happening with my friends and to send out Twitter updates. I like it more than the desktop version as it allows me to quickly check out replies as well as shorten URLs or words. It also lets me go over the 140 character limit, which allows me to carefully craft a tweet so it comes out to exactly 140 characters which I enjoy doing. The app embraces the constraints of the small screen and keeps it all simple and functional, so you’re focussed on what is important. But you can also do things like searches, update your location or upload photos as well, but the key is that it stays simple until you need to do a little bit more.
I absolutely love the simplicity and power of Tumblr for creating and reading Tumblelogs. It’s a blogging engine that works mainly because it has taken things away to focus on what is important. The Tumblr iPhone / iPod Touch app is a great way to quickly check in on the tumblelogs that I’m following and to create posts (but it can be a bit clumsy when you need to do something more complicated with your post, but with Markdown support it does give you a lot of power). But for posting quickly it lets you get it done right away and hides the advanced options from you unless you want them. It also works great whether there is a wifi connection or not, so posts can be created and uploaded when there is a connection.
The built-in Notes application on the iPod Touch works well, but the look of it always bugged me. When I saw Simplenote the look of it made me really like it and when I found out that it synced effortlessly with a web version I didn’t hesitate to buy it. Now I use it all the time to take notes and synchronize them. If there is a bit more text I can enter it in the web version and it will be there when I open it up on my iPod Touch and sync it. It doesn’t do images or formatting, just text, which is the best way to keep track of things, keeping it simple and fast and clean. I love it.
On my desktop the app that I use for all of my feeds is NetNewsWire and I was using the iPhone / iPod Touch version for a while, but I found that I didn’t really use it that much. Recently they changed the syncing so it used Google Reader to synchronize things. Jon Gruber mentioned the Google Reader client Reeder, and I saw it and the extreme simplicity and functionality of it made me buy it right away. It syncs when you start it up and has a minimalist interface with no text and only small icons along the bottom. If you want to share you have options to write a note, mail, bookmark on delicious, or send to Instapaper to read later. It’s fast and integrates perfectly with everything else I’m using which has changed the way that I look at feeds. When I star something it shows up in NetNewsWire in the flagged section, so I can check it out or if it is something longer, it goes over to Instapaper. It’s a great example of an app that can work with all sorts of other applications and sites thanks to APIs that tie it all together.
My most recent purchase is Instapaper, which I had the free version of, but for some reason I didn’t use much. But after Marco responded to a post by Merlin, I paid for the full version of Instapaper and armed with the knowledge of the backstory of the app, I tried it again and really enjoyed taking my time and reading some longer articles. Instapaper is an offline-reading app designed for long-form writing. You can download articles with images, but by default it concentrates on the text. With a bookmarklet in my desktop browser I just click on “Read Later” and it automatically saves a text version that will show up on my iPod Touch. I also can send things to it from NetNewsWire and Reeder, so I can quickly clear out things from my feed readers. I can also mail articles or post a link to Tumblr or send something to the Tumblr app as well as posting to Twitter, sending something to Twitterrific or Birdhouse. So the circle of online life is complete. It’s good when things work together and I’m glad that there are developers who make great software that plays well with others.