Plz to be noting: I love Loopt. If you have one of the Loopt-capable phones, please download it and friend me. I need to keep track of you.

I also have tried:

• Remote — fun and useful to control iTunes wirelessly
  
• Urbanspoon — amusing way to decide where to eat
  
• Pandora — delicious music
  

And just installed, but have not tried:

• Nearby
• Yelp
• Save Benjis

What else should I install?

On the one hand, upon arriving home I find that the acupuncture sessions I scheduled today from my iPhone have automagically appeared on both my iCal and gCal.

On the other hand, I'll have to pay Apple $100 to keep that up after my 60 day trial ends and the question is, is it really worth it?

On the gripping hand, apparently one cannot change the calendar of an event on the iPhone after creating it. WTF? That is unacceptably unusable and, well, just plain lame.

This means, for example, that if I accidentally enter a client session on the iPhone on a shared calendar, then that person's name will start showing up to other people. Not cool. And then the only thing to do is delete and reenter.

Speaking of poor usability, I notice Apple has downgraded iCal's usability for the sake of slick graphics. What's that you ask? People at Jobs-era Apple sacrificing usability for prettiness? Surely I jest? I do not; it is true. Gone is the Inspector (which tells you how long it's been since I last touched iCal) that would let you change the calendar for an event in two clicks (click the event, click the dropdown in the Inspector, done). Now it takes five clicks, so that an animated bubble can pop up special for your event. Um, what if I want to change the calendar for multiple events at once? Oh I can't do that. Thanks.

And don't give me any b.s. about no matter how perfect they make it people will complain (*coughbencough*). This is about which values Apple has, not how perfectly it achieves them, and Apple continues to demonstrate over and over again that it values usability at about the same level one might value old bottles and cans. But then, we knew this about Steve Jobs from the beginning. What can be done? You tell me.

My eye rolling muscles have repetitive strain after just one morning of attempting to get my iPhone calendaring working to my satisfaction.

First step: get Gmail syncing with iCal. Spanning Sync does a good job of this. It took me a while to reorganize Gmail into something useful, but then it was quick to get into iCal. That's when I learned: iCal no longer lets me choose whatever calendar colors I want. It appears to, giving me an "Other" option in the color dropdown, but then ignores my choice. What happened there? Older versions of iCal did this. <eye roll>

Second step: sync with the phone. Found that iTunes does not sync your iCal color preferences, so the color/calendar combos I'm used to seeing were all mixed up on the phone. <eye roll>

Third step: get MobileMeMadness going. Luckily over-the-air syncing DOES sync your calendar color preferences. However, found out that the iPhone Calendaring app only let's me view ALL calendars or ONE calendar at a time. So all my shared calendars are cluttering my view with other people's appointments and there's no way to turn them off and still view my Sessions, Personal, and Social calendars together. What? <eye roll>

Fourth step: downgrade my wild and radical, not to mention obviously unreasonable expectations for iPhone calendaring and go take the shared calendars out of my Spanning Sync preferences.

Part of why I caved and got an iPhone is because I decided, while I was risking being the FIRST PERSON EVER to get stuck in a two year contract with a phone he didn't like, that I could handle it. Was I correct? Time will tell.

There was a problem with my account password. As in, I don't know it. As in, I think Sprint made it up without telling me... probably specifically so that I would have trouble porting my number. Which is ridiculous.

They say they can't give me the pin over the phone, but they can text it to the phone number I'm calling them from. What? Why does that make any sense? Oh, because they can say that the text can take "10 to 20 minutes to arrive". I am calling back right now. That pin is MINE, betch.

UPDATE: After talking to a new person on the phone, she reset my pin to a number of my choosing. <eyeroll>

Now I am on the phone with AT&T.

I suppose this kind of moment by moment coverage of such important news is what Twitter is for. Perhaps I should sign up?

I am 3gee-ified! Zomg too many protective case options. Which one should I get? It should clearly display the 16gb-indicative White back of the phone.