I see a few of these “must have apps for the iphone” posts pop up, but none of them seem to really nail it when it comes to picking the right apps. I wan’t to share the best apps, that are sometimes harder to find, but I am a perfectionist that expects quality over quanity. Here are some of my must have apps, and hopefully I can nail it for some of you.

1. Facebook - This app is the best there is, developed in-house by facebook, and it is the epitome of what app design should be. The interface is clean, and no one would dare try and make a clone to compete with such a perfect app. It displays photos w/ tags so well, and honestly is my favorite app to use on the iPhone. In fact I wasn’t really a heavy facebook user until I downloaded this app, and it has connected me on so many levels. The only thing I could ask for would be a search friends function, but that is it!

2. Twitterrific - I’ve tried them all; tweetie, twittelator, twitterfan, whrrl, and tweetsville (which is my second choice.) The reason I like Twitterrific so much is the sleek interface, it works well with the iPhone, and I have no problem viewing my timeline and sending out new tweets. The premium version is better, but I’m not sure it is worth the $9.99 price tag. Although if you are a heavy tweeter then I would recommend it. All twitter apps are lacking something, and none of them seem to be perfect. For instance it is impossible to find new trends in twitterrific, but tweetsville does it wonderfully. I would definitely suggest installing both apps, and skipping on the premium price tag of Twitterrific, which is still a terrific app.

3. Mint (financial) - The mint.com app is certainly one of the best budget apps for the iPhone, and it is completely free. I see loads of expensive money management apps out there, and they have less features than mint does and again mint is free! It tracks your spending, and sends you email notifications if your bank charges you a fee. Even if you have low funds (under $50) in your account you will be notified, saving you cold hard cash from those overdraft fees the banks love to dish out. Of course you need to sign up to their website, which is alos free, and set up your account from there. However the app is missing the ability to naively categorize purchases in real-time. It is still wonderful for keeping track of multiple accounts and seeing your spending reports with a very easy to understand interface. Mint can learn over time what you spend on certain things like; gas, groceries, entertainment, etc. and categorize them to let you know how much money you have left for each category as to not exceed your normal spending.

4. Gazette - This RSS feed reader app that has the ability to sync with Google reader. There are quite a few RSS apps that are simular, but this one is the best, and only has a pricetag of $1.99. It has a very familiar interface that is seamlessly designed for the iPhone, an offline mode, and superb organization. It took me a while to find this gem since it is not what you get when you type in RSS reader in the appstore.

5. ego - The ego app developed by Garrett Murray is absolutely essential to web developers, web gurus, and people who have influence on the web 2.0 netscape. It lets you track visitors from Google analytics in a very simplistic fashion that delivers a no-nonsense experience. It let’s you see how many people are following your twitter accounts, I believe you can add unlimited sites and accounts. You can also track your mint web traffic statistics, and see your FeedBurner stats. This is not really for the average app user, but I had to mention it because whenever I have some free time I can load this app, and basically restore my ego to normal. Since of course nothing is more satisfying than having tons of traffic and thousands of followers on your twitter account.

Today the world powers held a financial G20 Summit to raise money to regulate a global economy. What people don’t understand about a global economy is that it essentially does what walmart did to small business. Instead of having many financial institutions to lend to people cash, everything will be subsidized and grouped in mass to offer lower interest rates. Which to the average Joe sounds good, right? Well actually that is the plan, but if you have ever played the board game monopoly when 1 player takes over your properties you are out of the game — and that is what will be happening to a lot of small lenders. Less jobs, which equals less opportunity and less wealth spread to the upper middle class, to then serve the lower middle class to form a new serf system. 

When big government gets involved in finances it is the end of monetary freedom. Essentially the world powers are going to take over hard working class business, and distribute wealth via world communism.

US President Barack Obama (R) and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Also going on in the United States Senate; A 7 billion dollar bailout for banks, so basically the fed will increase their stake in central banks and begin their own takeover of our funds. As the United States gains power over the financial system they will basically be printing out the worlds money. So therefor might as well pollute the streams of cash flow as they strive to create a world currency. All of this is bad, and no one will see any of it coming because government transparency will never exist. Obama has a big agenda, and as much as I like his persona I think what he is doing fiscally is manifestly an act to serve the governmental bureaucracy. I am an independent that leans towards the liberal side of things, and Obama scares me big time especially as a business oriented individual. Mainly because I can see him trying to get in every ones pocket. That is not what a president should be doing. Let capitalism work itself out, stay out of business and protect and serve. When government becomes involved in business it just shows how greedy the government is. Why have there not been huge layoffs of state officials, and big government players? Why is it that companies are being hurt, and the government is getting stronger? Because that is indeed what is happening here. 

The government acts as a giant police for everything under the sun and the people have no say in any matter because they are uneducated and driven like cattle. It’s right here in The US Treasury Fact Sheet:

“For most of our nation’s history, individual taxpayers rarely had any significant contact with Federal tax authorities as most of the Federal government’s tax revenues were derived from excise taxes, tariffs, and customs duties. Before the Revolutionary War, the colonial government had only a limited need for revenue, while each of the colonies had greater responsibilities and thus greater revenue needs, which they met with different types of taxes.”

History will repeat itself this recession as it has in the past. The extremely rich will create loopholes and end up screwing the upper middle class and hard working people. Think about the quote above when individual taxes didn’t exist in the early 1900s, and the middle class were asked to vote to pass a tax system only on the wealthy tariffs. What do you think happened? The rich created tax loopholes like corporations, and put all the burden on the people who voted for it. The people who complain and are desperate are just setting themselves up because they don’t control money, and never will.

As everyone is outraged at banks being unregulated, do you really want greedy politicians to control the monetary system? Having no control or privacy over your own wealth? We owe the Chinese money, lots of money! This is all about the government getting their hands on your tax dollars. That’s it, plain and simple, and it’s all right in front of you. They cover it up making it seem like banks are evil, but banks just take the icing on the top and give it to the top tier employees. The government will take that icing, and make cake to feed debt and world power. My only point here is who is regulating the government? And why is everyone just sitting idle while they are losing control of every aspect of what this country was founded on, freedom and capitalism.

I am not a party pooper and I don’t want to rain on every ones parade today, or anything like that. But I feel like bashing holidays to be a big jerk and get publicity (well just this holiday, which is technically not a holiday but what else would you call it besides a really stupid day.) It doesn’t matter, I just need to touch on a really not so touchy “holiday” on which everyone spends a lot of time thinking up really really not funny pranks.

I live in the 21st century! I have an iPhone that I turn on almost every morning, and it tells me what day it is. Since yesterday was March 31st unless the world got sucked in to a black hole it is April fools day. A day where all the web-savvy companies that have enough money to have a worthless staff of employees (I call them employdont’s) spend an entire week coming up with ideas that will be really surprising and maybe get them some notoriety. But in fact this practice is actually really really really really ANNOYING.

Google has like 10 different April fools jokes, and some for different countries (why??) They have a 3D Google Chrome browser and Auto Pilot for Gmail. Youtube is upside down what they were going for was “OMG how wacky.” but my reaction was “WTF meh pls stop.” Then they decided to release something called CADIE which stands for Cognitive Autoheuristic (spelled wrong it’s Auto Heuristic) Distributed-Intelligence Entity. LAAMMEEE. Then there is a gBall which I guess is for Australians, but I wasn’t sure if that country had computers yet. Then there’s Google Brain Search, Google Books Monograph (wtf seriously!!) Last year they had Google TiSP, and it was sort of funny because it didn’t try to hard and probobly spent their dev team like 10 mins.

My point here is that Google needs to have MASSIVE layoffs. at least 90% of their workforce should be cut. They obviously have nothing better to do than try and scare the pants of retards by flipping youtube upside down. Google is a company that is run by computers, you don’t need luxury cafeterias, or really cool green ball bean bag chairs. You need 3 nerds, and maybe a really crap cubical to run Google. That goes to all web 2.0 companies that made really tedious efforts to try and fool your user base. Don’t waste your time writing fake not funny articles to try and trick people to get listed on TechCrunch’s April fools hall of fame.

April fools used to be funny when people didn’t know what the date was. Now that we have really advanced technology to let us know the date and time, trying to play a prank on a day when pranks are pulled is a catch-22. If you are expecting to be pranked, WTF IS THE PRANK. April 1st = FAIL.

Some people don’t get it, and let me explain. We know them as dinosaurs, they are people that have no web presence or even a twitter account. They are still among us, running for elections, setting up coffee shops, and running law firms. What they all don’t know is they are as good as the dinosaurs that used to roam the earth (dead.)

What they all don’t know is they are as good as the dinosaurs that used to roam the earth (dead.)

Plain and simple, if you are not harnessing the power of the Internet and new technologies you are only hindering yourself. My girlfriend asks me all the time, “Why is it so important to have twitter, I don’t get it I’d rather read the paper.” I say “listen reading the paper is fine, if you want to get your news 2 days late.” She doesn’t seem to care, but I do. If I am not getting my news directly from the source or a nearby source within 2-3 hours it is not news, it is now trash.

What really matters is the people who are actually running businesses, and still have no desire to create a web site. Let’s not even get started on the fact that most people that even run sites don’t know how to optimize, use archaic design techniques, and will never rank in Googles listings ever. At least they are showing some effort. Geeze I am so sick of hearing someone try and sell me something at my front door, and I tell these solicitors “I am busy guy, just give me your website, and I’ll check it out.” And when they tell me “We don’t have a website we feel it is best to go door to door.” And I say “whaa huh? Stop right there buddy, you think WHAA?” These people are MORONS, and will get their business nowhere. Big companies may have gotten somewhere going door to door in the 50’s, but in the 21st century if you want to play with the big dawgs you better get your ass in gear and turn on your computer.

At the very least sign your business up for facebook and redirect your domain there. I could really care less, as long as you do something. Business cards don’t cut it anymore people, unless that card has your e-mail address, website, twitter account, and maybe your cell number I am not impressed. When I see a business or individual running for office that has covered all aspects of the web then I will be engaged with what you are trying to sell me. If you do not meet my qualifications, and I have nowhere to give you my feedback. Well you will be dust friend, and I hope you will one day see the light.

From the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of time as the future will know it. We know it as the conception of the Internet. An argument has been longstanding, and an ongoing debate still continues to arise. The debate of which computer OS is better, and why. Here is a brief summary that my technomeme robot has gathered from the interwebs.

Unix: I am elite, and you can all suck my b@lls.

Windows: I don’t want to offend anybody, but my windows XP runs fine.

Mac: I have a very expensive computer. If I don’t talk about how much I love it, and make everyone else feel inferior I might create a black hole. 

This debate has been beaten to death, but now it can all end because the operating system is about to become obsolete. It is already happening, and new platforms are being engineered. New languages are being conceived, and new code is being written. The death of the OS, and the rise of the Internet browser.

Michael Arrington got me thinking about this a few months back in his highly disputed article “Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer” He was repeatedly flamed, and as many people agreed with him, most disagreed and said he had no idea what an OS was. These people were closed minded, and had no idea what Arrington was trying to point out. The fact that 90% of what most of us do on the computer is within a web browser. For me it is even more like 99%. I use Google chrome myself, and if I can avoid downloading apps that work on my OS that work internally in my web browser you can bet I am there.

Considering there are so many different operating systems available, keep in mind mobile and handheld devices, there will have to be a uniform solution. And that is within the web browser. Sure games will remain developed for the OS. But everything else will be ran on the Internet. Spreadsheets will no longer needed to be downloaded and saved, there are already web apps available that will have live versions of a spreadsheet multiple users can update. No more need to email back and forth what changes and revisions have been done, all of that can be done away with stronger web apps.

This of course doesn’t mean an end to the ongoing “which browser is better debate.” But I hope in the future less web forums are littered with why a mac is better than a PC, and instead filled with what is the best uniform application that works on every OS and mobile phone and can be accessed from any computer in the world. We are finally at a point of true Internet realisation, and inter connectivity will progress us further than we have ever dreamed in the past.