That got me to thinking about how an iPhone (or iPod touch) could be used for nature activities in general. The iPhone has a clear advantage over the iPod touch in a couple areas:

• The iPhone is a phone, which is handy. (However, AT&T service is not available everywhere. Too bad it doesn’t work with Verizon.) But the iPod touch has wifi, so if you find a hotspot (at the lodge or wherever), you’re not too badly off.
• The iPhone has a built-in compass and GPS, which are very useful in the outdoors.
• The iPhone has a camera. Of course it’s a very limited camera. But combined with the other powers of the iPhone, it does some fancy things. (Note: If you have a cell phone that has a camera and a wifi connection for your iPod touch, you can get tricky: Take a photo on your cell phone, email it to yourself, download it on the iPod touch, and proceed as if the iPod touch took the photo.)
• The iPhone has a built-in mic (although you can buy one as an accessory for the iPod touch).

The following apps or uses require an iPhone:

• You can geotag photos with certain apps (do an iTunes app search for “geotag”).
• Record colors of natural things (myPANTONE).
• Email the photos you’ve taken on the iPhone to people, or upload them online.
• GPS Tracker (free), iMapMyRun (free), TrackMe (free), Trails ($2.99), Trailguru (free): Track your speed, distance, etc. iPhone needed for GPS tracking features.
• Metal Detector Pro (99¢), or other similar app: Could help you locate a buried tent stake.
• TopoPoint ($9.99): Find your location on USGS maps.

However, both the iPhone and iPod touch work equally well with a number of apps useful to the nature lover. The following apps require Internet access:

• With phone or wifi service, you can talk, email friends (or monitor work email, if you get the nagging feeling), send SMS messages, visit any website, etc.
• Google Earth (free): Get the lay of the land, check out other people’s comments and photos of local attractions.
• Ski Report (free), The Snow Report from the North Face (free), REI Snow Report (free): Check ski conditions.
• The Weather Channel (free), Weather Bug (free), etc.: Get weather updates.

These apps do not require Internet access:

• Use the built-in voice record, or app of your choice, to record those breakthrough insights that come in the wilderness solitude, or capture your final words for posterity. (Requires separate mic accessory if you have an iPod touch.)
• Animal Tracks (99¢): Track animals.
• Army Survival ($1.99): This is the big brother of the 99¢ Survival Pocket Ref app. Everything you wanted to know about survival, medicine, shelters, water, plants, animals, tools, environments (desert, tropics, etc.), orienteering, weather, knots. From an official Army survival manual. Includes pictures.
• Brushes ($4.99) or other drawing app: Draw what you see!
• Flashlight: Many uses. If you get one that can do signaling, SOS, different colors, all the better. Great for night games like capture the flag, too! (Use it to signal your buddies or whatever. The apps Banner or Fuzz Lites could be fun too.)
• A Free Level (free), TiltMeter Pro (99¢), etc.: For setting up your campsite.
• Guitar: Play and Share ($3.99), iRecorder (99¢), Ocarina (99¢), Pianist ($3.99), or other musical app: for those fun campfire moments
• iBird Explorer Plus/Pro ($19.99/29.99): Photos/drawings of birds, along with sound samples of their calls, regional maps, etc.
• iTrailMap 3D ($4.99): 3D views of ski locations. View from any angle. There is also a color version that is free, but not 3D.
• Night Stand (99¢), or clock of your choice.
• RiverGuide for Kayakers ($4.99): Name says it all.
• Seismometer (99¢): Measure the shockwaves.
• SkyGazer ($2.99), SkyVoyager ($14.99), Star Walk ($4.99), Starmap ($11.99), or other astronomy app: Learn constellations, get directions.
• Sol: Daylight Clock (99¢): Predict sunrises, sunsets (great for photo shoots).
• TideApp (free): Find out when tide will be in or out. Oakley Surf Report (free) is another, but requires Internet.

Always remember to bring the charging cable. You can get a cheap adapter that will give you a USB port from any power outlet. There are also hand-crank devices and solar devices that will charge via USB.

Be sure your device is protected in some kind of case. You don’t want to trip and fall and land on it, or suddenly get a rude reminder that you put it in your hip pocket while rock climbing.

Electronic devices require a little TLC, but can be very handy when exploring the great outdoors.

The base app, PocketBible, is developed by a company called Laridian. This app is FREE. However, PocketBible is mainly just a shell for library modules that you download. Some of these are free or included, but others — such as the Ellen White writings — cost money. (Most of their libraries are Bible translations and such.)

You cannot, apparently, buy the Ellen White library from Laridian. I got mine directly from the White Estate booth at GYC. However, I could not find any information about the Ellen White library for this app on the Ellen White Estate website. They definitely carry the product, because I am using it now on my iPod touch. My guess is that you just need to contact them for information about how to buy a serial number. Once you register the serial number on the Laridian website, you then enter your customer identification in the PocketBible app, and the whole collection downloads automatically. It’s best to do this with a wifi connection, because it’s quite a large download.

Personally I found the interface a little confusing. It’s not as elegant as the Conflict of the Ages app, but it’s functional. Personally I found the method of turning pages awkward. But some people might prefer it. It’s mainly a matter of taste.

The app is fully searchable. However, it only searches one library at a time. In some ways this is good, because you usually don’t want a search to be pulling words from all the different Bibles and commentaries. However, when I first started using the app, it appeared that you could only search White’s writings book by book. In other words, you might open Sons and Daughters of God and search that. Obviously that would be very limiting. However, I learned that the key is to open the library called “EGW-BKS” (in the Other Books section of the app), and searching in this library searches all the books simultaneously.

Here is a screen shot showing a search results listing:

And this shot shows what the content looks like. Note that the Bible verse references are clickable, which is quite cool:

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s definitely the best thing out there for accessing Ellen White’s writings.

Current features include:

• Bookmarking
• Notes
• Boolean searching
• Chapter jumping
• History (see what you’ve read lately)
• Cut, copy, paste

It currently sells for 99¢, and the developers claim the contents are officially licensed from the Ellen G. White Estate.

MichaelPrewitt.com

I had been using JumpLine as my web-hosting company. It had been working well, but was somewhat expensive for the plan I had ($19.95/month). Plus it had limitations that kept me from growing my website. And it did not have a good web-based spam filter (at least not a free one), so I was downloading countless spam every month—an especially atrocious problem for an email device like the iPod Touch, which does not have any built-in spam filtering.

After some research, I decided to go with HostGator. The price is much cheaper (only $4.95/month), and at this point they provide everything I need. They use SpamAssassin as their spam filter, which seems pretty standard.

When it comes to server-side spam filtering, I prefer Abaca, which is what we use at 3ABN, but very few web hosting companies seem to offer it. SpamAssassin deletes a lot of junk without even delivering it, and marks other suspicious email as spam for easy sorting. This is OK. Abaca doesn’t deliver any suspicious spam, but holds it online, and it lets you sort the spam by the likelihood that it is spam, which is very, very convenient. With Abaca, at most I have to look at 5-10 messages, and I know everything after that is junk. With SpamAssassin, it is necessary to check each message in the spam folder, which thankfully isn’t that much after the obvious spam has been auto-deleted.

Email (IMAP)

Besides the spam filtering, I wanted to simplify my email system. I had multiple email addresses I wanted to consolidate. In short, I wanted to be able to manage all email through a shared account (IMAP), so that when I read or delete a message on one computer or on my iPod Touch, it is marked as read or deleted when I check my email on another computer; and when I send a message from one computer, the sent message can be accessed on the other computers. It was pretty easy to set up on HostGator, and it has made my email communication so much better, more fluid. It is also web-based, so that I can check it from a browser if necessary, from anywhere in the world.

Reinstalled XP Pro

I have Windows XP Professional on my Dell desktop computer, which I think had been installed 4-5 years ago. It had become very sluggish, so that even opening a web browser took a lot of time. I decided it was time to reinstall. It is working much better now (snappier, as the geeky types like to say). However, I am finding that Ubuntu meets most of my needs very well (too bad you can’t run Adobe software under it), so I’ve been spending more time with that lately, which is also installed on the same machine.

iPhone 3.0

I don’t have an iPhone, but iPhone 3.0 is the name of the software that runs on the iPod Touch. I just did the upgrade, and while I don’t yet notice any dramatic differences, it does have some very nice features (copy and paste, notably; and push notifications) that I look forward to using more.

With the free Fring app, you can make voice calls using Skype or SIP services. I believe Fring also supports voice chat on MSN, but I haven’t tried it yet. I made a test call to my cell phone, and can assure you that it does work. Depending on the service and who you call, the calls may be free, or may incur a small fee (as little as 1.5¢ per minute or so, but YMMV). Obviously if you don’t sign up with anything that requires a credit card, you should be safe.

Another app called Truphone, also free, provides similar services. You can buy credits online for calls to regular phones, while calls between users are free.

With various apps such as iRecorder, iTalk, or QuickVoice, you can also record voice notes. Some of these apps will transfer your notes to your computer.

I’ve heard that the sound input also works with digital instruments like iRecorder or Ocarina, meaning you can make music, but I haven’t yet tried those. [Edit: iRecorder works, although you have to hold the mic between your lips, which may bother some users; the current version of Ocarina doesn't support the iPod Touch.]

While a mic add-on doesn’t make the iPod Touch into a virtual iPhone, it does close the gap some. One obvious limitation is that with an iPod Touch, you must be near a wifi access point. You can’t make cell phone calls from anywhere, as with an iPhone.

Now if only I could find a camera add-on….

These are my favorites so far:

• OmniFocus ($19.99): To do list manager; best if you have the computer desktop application that goes with it; this program is the reason I bought the iPod Touch
• Facebook (free): Very well executed
• Pandora (free): Streaming internet radio that learns your musical tastes and helps you find new music
• Weatherbug (free): Quick access to satellite weather maps, video news, and local weather cams
• AirSharing ($6.99): Lets you wireless connect and store/retrieve files on your device; there are now free alternatives to this program, but this particular app still remains very popular
• Bible (free): There are several free Bible apps available; but the one called simply “Bible” (its icon, confusingly, says “Holy Bible”) is the best, in my opinion; it can download multiple versions for offline use, unlike some of the others
• A Free Level (free): Mainly because it’s so cool; but it’s useful too.
• Easy Relax Ultimate (99¢): Relax or fall asleep to your own choice of sound effects, which can be combined in various ways; for example, I made one called “Campfire on the prairie” which has the sound of a crackling fire, faint insect noises, and the occasional howling coyote; there are many built-in sounds to choose from; there is also a free version with fewer options
• Seismometer (free): A great app to show off what your device can do
• Night Stand (free): Probably the best clock available
• Dice (free): Useful if you play dice-based table games, but it’s also a great show-off application, with 3D dice that roll around when you shake the device
• Enigmo ($1.99): A fun problem-solving game, where you try to get drops of water/goo/lava to fall into the right containers
• Amazing Sudoku ($1.99): This was free when I got it; and it’s by far the best of the sudoku games that I’ve tried
• Quadrum (?): This is a fun game where you slide letter squares around to make as many words as you can; unfortunately it seems to have vanished from the catalog of apps
• Wurdle ($1.99): This one is so fun, it is almost too fun: You have a grid of letters, and the object is to find as many words as you can before time runs out (there is also untimed play); at the end of the game you can see all the words you missed; great way to expand your vocabulary!
• Sol: Daylight Clock (99¢): Visually shows sunrise, sunset, and current light/dark conditions, along with actual times; contains a built-in database, so does not require internet
• Google Earth (free): Provides most of the functionality of the free desktop app of the same name
• a2z Pro Unit Converter (free): Does every kind of conversion imaginable, and you can download more from an online, user-contributed library; some of the conversions include angles, area, blood sugar, currency, data, distance, energy, length, pressure, speed, temperature, time, volume, weight, biblical weights (find out how many shekels you weigh!), cooking volumes, biblical lengths

Honorable mention (some of these are free, some are not):

• WritingPad: Replacement for the notes app; uses an incredible input method that is so much faster than Apple’s; I wish Apple would hire this guy and incorporate his method into the basic device functions!
• EasyWriter: Landscape typewriter for email
• MobileFiles: Access your MobileMe/iDisk files
• Bookmarks: Del.icio.us bookmarks
• WebMessenger: Chat with friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Jabber (there is also a free web-based app at iphone.iloveim.com that seems to work well; access it via Safari on your device)
• MySpace: Works OK, but I don’t really care for MySpace anymore
• WiFinder: Find local wifi networks
• Pianist: Play the piano
• Guitar: Play the guitar
• Brushes: Paint
• Scribble: Draw
• Swatch: Match colors; useful if you need to find something of a particular color in a clothing store, for example
• Backgrounds: Download wallpaper for your device
• Bible Reader: Another Bible app
• Stanza: Download free literature from multiple online resources, including Project Gutenberg
• Mines: Pretty much like the ol’ MS classic, Minesweeper
• MasterBrain: MasterMind-like game, where you try to deduce a series of colored pieces
• Koi Pond: Not a game, not a productivity app … but it’s pretty!
• Sunlight: See where it’s light, where it’s dark, around the world
• iTip: Calculate tips and how to split the cost of meal
• 1Password: Securely stores passwords and other information

Me with my new iPod Touch

I just bought a 2nd Generation (2G) iPod Touch 16GB. I have to say it is a pretty cool device. Although I would have purchased an iPhone if AT&T serviced my area, I think I will be quite happy with this. I bought it directly from the Apple Store, with my name and email address laser engraved on the back at no charge.

Although the iPod is known as a portable music and video player, the iPod Touch is so much more. Out of the box you can surf the Internet wirelessly, check your email, and use Google Maps with GPS (all of which require local WiFi availability). The built-in calendar, world clock, notes, weather, calculator, and remote control apps are pretty cool too. Hundreds of free and cheap applications are available. So far I have downloaded OmniFocus (the killer app for me), Del.icio.us Bookmarks, Facebook, several Bible applications, and some recreational and show-off apps including a virtual guitar (it’s really amazing … even though I don’t play guitar!), Enigmo (I couldn’t resist!), Koi Pond, a level (it really works … you can use it to level furniture), and a seismometer.

Many applications use the iPod’s motion sensor. For example, the level and seismometer make extensive use of it. A drawing program erases your drawing when you shake the iPod, and a virtual 3D dice application rolls the dice realistically when you shake.

The multi-touch interface is cool, too. When viewing a web page or Google Maps, for example, you can zoom in and out by pinching or sliding apart two fingers. The virtual guitar apps lets you pluck or pick more than one string at a time.

The device seems well-built. However, I am babying mine until a Speck protective case arrives that I ordered from Amazon.com.

It will be interesting to see what comes along in the areas of church and ministry. For example, there is a Jehovah’s Witnesses program that runs on the iPod Touch (and iPhone) that lets their missionaries keep track of which houses they have visited and which products have been left, using the devices’ built-in GPS capabilities. They get street-level maps, and markers showing who has been visited. Can you imagine something like this integrated with, say, the Army of Youth website, or designed specifically for a GYC outreach? I can even see applications for general Bible work and literature evangelism.

I was a little disappointed that the Touch does not include a built-in camera, like the iPhone has. Also it lacks a built-in mic, although there are rumors that Apple will introduce a mic for it soon. I would love to have a mic input so I can use it as a voice recorder with ReQall and for other purposes.

Still, despite room for improvement, it is a great tool (and a bit of a toy!). I am very happy with it, and highly recommend it.