Product placement

This has nothing to do with England, but I just got a "smart phone" and it is so brilliant, I just had to give it a shout.

I've wanted one for a couple of years, but nothing came close to the iPhone, and I refuse to buy Apple products on principle. (Steve Jobs is a genius, but he is also a dictator, and I am much too independent--some would say stubborn--to be told what I can and cannot do with the things I buy.)

That changed last month with the HTC Desire (which is actually Google's Nexus One, with a custom set of software).  While it won't run iPhone apps, it has access to the full "Google Android" app market, which is equally extensive and (more importantly) not subject to the whims of Cupertino. Plus it has a much better camera, can play music in the background, and includes Google navigation, free--a real boon now that I have a car!

In fact, I was looking at replacing my personal laptop, which is falling apart -- the monitor doesn't work half the time, the 'G' key has broken off, and it constantly overheats and shuts down! -- but this phone is so good, I think I'll just use it in conjunction with my work laptop, and not even have a personal computer!

So I've replaced my old phone, my PDA, a SatNav, my camera, my MP3 player, and my laptop with one tiny device.  However, it also meant setting up another contact list -- I already had five! -- plus a whole new way of managing tasks and appointments. I played with a lot of things before coming up with these six apps--all free:

1. Remember the Milk, an online task organizer which automatically syncs with Astrid on the phone
2. Google Calendar (which also syncs with the phone automatically)
3. Soocial, which syncs my contact lists on Gmail, Hotmail, and phone (too bad it doesn't sync Skype or LinkedIn)
4. Memento, which lets me store notes in any format I like
5. Nimbuzz, which manages all of my IMs (Windows, Yahoo, Google, and Skype, all in one place)
6. Last.fm for streaming radio (I'm not a big fan of Spotify)

By the way, I'm not being paid for recommending these; I tried a lot of apps and these were the best.  If you join Soocial, though, I do get one benefit: Not only will it sync your contacts lists (including Outlook and Yahoo Mail), but it will also update my contact list whenever you make changes! How cool is that? (It's free up to 250 contacts, and 3 different applications.)

P.S. Google also provides some amazing voice-to-text tools, including voice commands and translation into five languages!  I now dictate text messages, and I may start doing the same for this blog.