Here are a few iPhone apps I’ve got on my phone, and am loving:

Big Oven - There are dozens, really, of recipe-compilation iPhone apps, but so far, this is my favorite. It speedily accesses its online database of 170,000+ recipes and classifies by dietary restrictions, ratings, type of cuisine, and more! It will even pick a random recipe from its trove if you ask it to, so if you find yourself stuck at the grocery store with no brilliant ideas of what to cook, you’ll find a shopping list appearing in your hands. Photos of their recipes are rather inspirational, too…

Cocktail Compass: Seattle - This is all about finding hours and specs on Seattle’s Happy Hour. It uses location services to show you what’s closest, and then goes on to tell you how much time you have to get there before Happy Hour ends. Tap on an interesting-looking entry, and you’ll get details on what that location’s Happy Hour involves, as well as a map to them, a call button, and an option to add them to your favorites list. No longer must you wander downtown like a lost, thirsty puppy!

Yelp - It’s just as good as the full website is, with hundreds of restaurant reviews, hours, phone numbers, and details. Even better, it integrates with maps and location services to tell you what’s nearby, and how to get there. You can search by ethnicity, price range, and more, and build up a list of favorites to come back to.

Open Table - So you’ve found a restaurant that looks great, is nearby, and in your price range. Of course, it’s only two in the afternoon, and you need a table for six, but no one’s answering the phone at the restaurants. Open Table will allow you to make reservations online instantly, for free. The one caveat I’d have for this is that the selection of restaurants available via Open Table, while large, is not Every Restaurant in Seattle. Yet.

Dear Violet,

It’s good to see you finally delivering on some of your promises — like the promise to utilize the Nabaztag’s built-in RFID reader as advertised. It’s only been like three years since you announced that feature, anyway.

And it’s good that you’ve finally, finally updated the website. It reassures me that you haven’t all fallen into a deep black pit, and I like that you are explicitly trying to support user apps now. Also, I know there are some already out there, but you guys should probably release your own Nabaztag iPhone app.

If you think I’m going to spend money on Mir:ror, though, you’ve got another think coming. Until you can prove that you can reliably support the products you’ve already released, I’m not giving you another dime. I’d like a non-buggy website, non-crashing servers, services that work reliably as advertised… you get the picture. Just do what you said you would, already, okay? You’ve got a great, fun product, and as soon as I get internet re-installed, I’ll be back on the bandwagon. I just want to see you do well.

Thanks,

yr customer

PS. “The Internet of Things starts here” is a dumb tagline. I mean seriously.

This strikes me as the perfect marriage between retro pop iconography and modern technology, which is a dynamite, hipster combo.

More seriously: ladies and gents, I’m in love with Vienna. I got directed to it from Cool OSX Apps (which also gave me Democracy Player and a bunch of other fun apps that I’ll have to review in the not-too-distant future). Vienna’s an RSS Aggregator built for Mac OS X; it’s happily open-source and free-to-download. It’s by far the simplest, easiest to use, *best* aggregator that I’ve found. It’s the easiest thing in the world to add a feed ([CMD+N], paste feed URL, hit [Enter]), and the way that it allows them to be organized is perfect for my feed-reading tendencies.

On a side note to this, I know that online aggregators (google, newsvine, bloglines, etc.) are popular, but somehow RSS feeds feel like a personalized newspaper to me, and as a result, I have the desire for them to fall somewhere between e-mail and websurfing, in an application, appropriately, all their own. Plus, this way I can get the little unread-feeds numbers popping up in my dock, and what’s better than that?

This robot rabbit is simultaneously the least necessary and MOST necessary thing I have ever seen.

What it does:

- Wiggle its ears.
- Speak in an English accent, if you want it to.
- Speak aloud e-mails and SMS messages that you receive, as well as (optionally) RSS feeds, stock market quotes, weather and traffic…
- Sings songs sent to you from your friends via cell-phone, etc.
- Is an alarm clock.

I realize that I am in danger of crossing over into the land of giggly Harajuku anime bubble-girls for wanting this, but, um, I do.

Besides, it’s just fun to say “robot rabbit.”

Minor note: I *do* really want one, but it ever-so-slightly creeps me: I really want to be able to take the damn thing apart and make sure that it does not have a camera in it, because, well, if my life were a spy movie, it would so definitely have a camera in it.

Minorer note: My life is not a spy movie. No worries.