Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Chris Szeto


these are not the droids you are looking for

Web 2.0 Tournaments

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At Meebo, Foosball is one of our favorite pastimes.  Because we're such a fun-loving bunch, we decided to host a double-elimination foosball tournament.  While looking for an online tool to help manage our foosball tourney we came across a pretty cool implementation called Challonge!  Very nicely done.  I can imagine some fun stuff with player/team profiles, stats, records, office pools.  What will you use it for?

TripIt FAIL

I am a big fan of TripIt.com and their latest iPhone application, but I was recently disappointed with my TripIt experience during what I consider my key customer moments.

Key Moment #1: 24 hours before flight
TripIt FAIL, Friday 4/17
On Friday night, the day before my trip to Japan, I tried to view my TripIt itinerary on the iPhone and saw an empty itinerary with a vague error message .  I tried to sign out and back in again, but without success.  What was wrong?  I had thought that a printed itinerary would be unnecessary since I had a beautiful TripIt itinerary on my iPhone… but it wasn’t working and I didn’t know why.

I then resigned to print out an itinerary from TripIt.com.  Ah ha!  TripIt.com was down for site maintenance!  What inconvenient timing!  I couldn’t print out an itinerary either.  I had moved all of my itineraries and confirmation numbers to TripIt, but now 24 hours from my trip, I couldn’t access them.  When would I be able to?  It would have been nice to see an ETA.
I searched through my gmail and yahoo mail for my flight confirmation emails and my hotel confirmation and jotted things down on a piece of paper…

Key Moment #2: Day of flight
TripIt OK, Saturday 4/17
On Saturday morning, I checked TripIt.com again and discovered that everything was back up again.  Good.  The iPhone app was working again as well.  I printed the itinerary (just to be safe), and threw away the hand-written piece of paper from the previous night…  Japan, here I come!

Key Moment #3: On the plane
TripIt iPhone FAIL, Saturday 4/17
There isn’t much under-the-seat storage, so I put my backpack up in the overhead storage, along with my printed TripIt itinerary.  I had a window seat with another passenger next to me - a big guy.
An hour into the flight, the flight attendant brings by the customs cards.  Hmm – my paper itinerary is in my backpack overhead.  Ah, but my iPhone is in my pocket (in Airplane mode of course)!  I should be able to just use TripIt to look it up – even in Airplane mode – just like other apps (Notes, Todo, etc).  Sadly, the itinerary was empty.  I would end up having to ask the big guy to step aside so that I could retrieve my paper itinerary.  There’s no reason why the TripIt iPhone app couldn’t store the itinerary on my phone.

Key Moment #4: In Japan (Abroad without Coverge)
TripIt iPhone FAIL, Sunday 4/18
See above.  A cached itinerary would be helpful. 

Some Improvements for TripIt:
1.    The iPhone App should cache my itineraries on the phone so that it is accessible even when I have no connectivity (Airplane mode or Japan) and even when the site is undergoing maintenance.
2.    The iPhone App needs a better error message if the site is going down for maintenance.  Also, please provide an ETA for when service should be back up.

UPDATED 4/20/09 at 7:41 PM: Thanks to Will and Scott from TripIt for reaching out to me and letting me know about a pending new version of the iPhone client - I look forward to abadoning paper itineraries.  Also, the maintenance was only for 20 minutes.  It would still be helpful for those people that hit the service during scheduled maintenance to have some sort of estimated downtime.  Still a TripIt fan!

iPhone Apps

I have had my iPhone for over a year now, and I've probably spent over $100 on apps.  I thought it would a good time to list out my favorite iPhone apps.  I should probably do this every now and then.  Let me know what you think and what apps you think I might be missing out on:

Favorite and Most Used Apps:

  1. Tweetie - fantastic Twitter client
  2. Todo - full featured todo-list app.  It desperately needs push notifications to become perfect
  3. Facebook - required for every Facebook user.  However, I have been using Twitter more and Facebook less lately
  4. BeejiveIM - very good but very expensive IM client.  I will replace this with Meebo's iPhone App when it becomes available
  5. Flixster - the ultimate movie source.  I use this to look up movies before heading to a theater
  6. DVR Remote - a remove control for your tivo.  I use this to browse my Now Playing queue without turning on the TV.  I will also use this to input text
  7. Flight Control - a fantastic, simple, beautiful little game.
  8. USA Today - a well built app for news.  I haven't tried the NYTimes in a while.  But other news apps haven't been as easy to use.
Most Used but Not-So Enjoyable Apps:
  1. Bloomberg - for stock quotes, landscape graphs, and news!  Ugly app though.  I will try the new Stocks app when it becomes available
  2. Weather Channel - the ultimate weather info.  Hourly and 10-day views are great.  Ugly app with ads.
Favorite iPhone Web App:
  1. Google Reader - so good it doesn't need to be native.
Apps Wishlist:
  1. TripIt - This would be fantastic to have when i travel
  2. Slingbox - i have been patiently waiting for this one
  3. Warfish.net - with push notifications and an improved UI, this could be a lot of fun.
  4. Something to scan barcodes and check prices on Amazon...
  5. Netflix - Something to manage my queue would be great.  And actually, if I could watch instant movies - that would be fantastic
Bonus:
  1. I wish there was a way in iTunes to manage my home screens!  I very much dislike manually moving apps one at a time.  Very painful.  I should be able to see my home screens in iTunes and drag things around there and then sync it.
What iPhone Apps do you recommend?
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