Head Tale

State of the Art: Apple's Sleek Upgrade
– The New York Times raves about Snow Leopard, the new update to the core Apple operating system, Leopard.  The most amazing thing?  After years of features wars that turned OS's and various applications into larger and larger messes, this upgrade may be the first time in history that a software program has significantly reduced its footprint – by eliminating unnecessary files (instead of having GB of printer drivers “just in case” even though most people use one or maybe two at most) and tightening up the existing programs.  The tagline “A snow leopard is just like a leopard but faster and with a smaller footprint” definitely applies!

Three iPhone Apps with Augmented Reality Support
– “Augmented Reality” is adding information to a display of a real event to supplement what you are seeing.  A common example is the yellow first down line overlaid on most football game broadcasts today.  Here's a YouTube video demonstrating how this works for the London bus app.

I'd recently read another article about “10 Ways to Improve the iPhone” or something like that but can't find it again [Edit: Found it.].  One point the article made made which I agree with strongly is that they need a better way to organize your apps.  Right now, I have about ten different tabs with anywhere from a couple to a full dock of apps on them.  They're grouped roughly as “Apps I Use Regularly”, “News Sites”, “Games”, “More Games”, “Book-Related”, “Reference Services”, “Pace Games”, “Camera Related”, “Social Networking”, “Music” and “Utilities”.  (Sounds anal but I'm a librarian – what can I say?”)  The problem is that when a tab fills up, I have to either figure out a way to reorganize things one app at a time or create a new “category” out of things I already have grouped together (I used to have all my “Social Networking” apps on the same tab as my “News” apps but split them apart when I got more than the 16 total apps you're allowed to have on any one tab.

Anyhow, since I can't find that exact article again, instead, I'll give you a link to all Ask.MetaFilter questions tagged with “iPhone”.  Lots of good reading there!