1. Netflix
   Watching movies or TV series on the small screen is good boredom killer.  It’s a well made app too: Very simple user interface with a effective functions like resuming last movie played, and instant queue management.  The quality of streaming video is awesome too!
2. Facebook
   I admit I’m addicted to Facebook. I guess I’m the curious type. Just want to know what my friends are upto – in real time.  No matter where I am, it gives me the warm fuzzies I can still keep in touch.
3. Bejeweled Blitz
   Ever since I discovered this game in Facebook, I couldn’t stop playing it.  Even better now that it’s an iPhone App!  I have somewhat given up in trying to get a high score, since my friends have already scored close to 1,000,000 points!  But it’s still a good brain exerciser.
4. iPod
   Apple flagship product – for a good reason.  Everything I need in an MP3 player is all here: Shuffle Play and Audio Output control.  Apple really did their research in terms of usability here!  The only drawback is the use of iTunes to transfer files.  I don’t blame Apple for that though.  I blame the music industry for being overly paranoid on copyright.
5. Seesmic
   With my social media “addiction”, I wanted to post the same status updates to all of my favorite social sites.  Previously, I used the ping.fm website.  Since Seesmic bought ping.fm, they’ve integrated it into the app. Nice bonus.
6. Foursquare
   Geolocation Social Media is a new thing for me.  I’m always curious to know where everyone is and discover new places to visit, such as restaurants or sight seeing places.  People used to make their status updates to announce their location.  Now they have an official app to use to organize the activity.
7. Yelp
   Speaking of restaurants, Yelp is the ultimate place to find good ones. So far, I’ve got pretty accurate reviews. It’s a handy guide for the adventurous traveler.
8. IMDB
   Nothing beats reviews than IMDB movie reviews.  Since I watch a lot of movies (and TV shows), having information on my finger tips is nice.
9. Google Mobile
   This search app makes Googling is more fun using my voice.  It saves time typing.  I’m still not that proficient with touch-screen keyboard, unlike some people.  The voice recognition is not perfect, but it’s an excellent start.  Oh, don’t confuse this with the recently released Google Voice App, which I  haven’t found particularly useful yet since it has no push notification.
10. Skype
    When I didn’t have a phone service with my iPhone 3G, I relied on Skype (on Wifi) to make phone calls.  I used it for conference calls, and cheap calls to Canada.
11. Camera – now with HDR!
    Someone said, “The best camera is the camera that I’m currently carrying.” I always believe carrying one device for everything, and a camera is no exception.  The 5MP iPhone 4 camera is nice in the first place, and with the addition of HDR on iOS 4.1, taking decent photos is so convenient.  However, I’ve also discovered not all photos turn out well in HDR mode.  For example, when the subject is moving, HDR photo make more blurred images.  Good thing is, as a feature in the iPhone 4, I can save both HDR and non-HDR, so I can choose which one is better.
12. Notes
    Just like on Windows, I always use Notepad for a quick cut/paste text from web, terminal, etc.  I am trying out EverNote and Remember The Milk for a more elaborate note-taking, but it’s hard to beat this simple built-in app.
13. Runkeeper
    I try to keep fit by going cycling and walking.  It’s more fun to be able to keep track my travels, determine my pace, and amount of calories burned.  I can share my activities on Facebook or Twitter, but I won’t do that – just yet.
14. Amazon Kindle
    I don’t do much reading, but using the iPhone Kindle makes it more fun for me.  It’s also multi-device – not confined to just one.  Plus, it syncs via the Internet, so no reliance on a PC.
15. iBooks
    It supports PDF files.  That makes it very useful for reading comics and magazines.  But I think iBooks is much better on a bigger screen, like the iPad.  Oh well, I just have to make do on the iPhone4′s 3.5″ screen.
16. Angry Birds
    It’s the #1 game on the iPhone, and it will soon be released for Android and WebOS devices. I discovered this game late, but man is it addicting! Cute game to boot, too.
17. Fruit Ninja
    Nothing beats sliding my fingers back and forth quickly on the screen, especially in “Zen” mode.
18. StumbleUpon
    Another relatively new app for an old habit¹.  Discovering new websites is so much fun this way.
19. Pandora
    Internet Radio – who knew it’s possible?  Even though they can only play old albums and play the same song every 3 hours, it’s still useful to discover music that I don’t usually listen to.  The iPhone actually put the company Pandora Inc. on the map and make more money.

There are many reasons the native apps are being made – two of the biggest are bandwidth saving and performance.  There’s even a report that native apps also account for half of the mobile internet traffic.  It also doesn’t hurt to make money along the way.

No doubt I’ll find more fun and interesting apps, so my list will be expanded, soon.  If anyone has a recommendation, let me know below in the comments!

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

My Top iPhone Apps

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I passed on the code to Pierre Fournier and Yves Lepage for maintenance and further development.  They took it as far as they could, before eventually retired it.  I’m grateful for their involvement and dedication to it!

Below was Pierre’s entry in Wikipedia about the poker bot.  Wikipedia is about to delete this entry due to “lack of interest”.  So I’m posting it here for posterity.

—

PBot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PBot was a computer program that ran on Internet Relay Chat in the EFnet channel #poker which allowed users to play poker with fictional money. Based on standard 5-card draw poker game, the bot could handle up to 6 players and was in service between 1993 and 2002.

History

PBot was originally written by Rudy “Radix” Amid. In early 1993, after the success of his first IRC game “MooBot” ^[1], he went on to think that someone would be inspired to make a poker bot. Of course, no one seemed to have the time or the inclination to make such a bot, so he went on in February 1993 to start making a poker bot.

Radix era

Radix completed an alpha version of PBot in late February and tested it on EFnet IRC. It wasn’t as easy as he expected; the bot was riddled with all sorts of mysterious bugs as he was testing the user interface aspect. The bot was written with ircII scripts and the poker module was written in C. It didn’t take long for him to realize this 80% ircII scripts bot was not fast and powerful, but it was the best way to debug and perfect the command line parsing; recompiling the program on the fly without killing the bot. By March 1993, he started to put the poker module together as one big C program, eliminating the need to rely on ircII scripts to parse the commands. The bot at this point had many commands and was flexible enough to program. From then on, he concentrated on the poker game itself.

By late March, he was ready for PBot’s beta-testing. He called on a few dedicated users on IRC to discuss ideas and play the game. There were lots of ideas and modifications to be made. Tweaking the program proved to be the hardest. Slowly, after one feature was added at a time, bugs appeared and debugged. The process was painstakingly slow but he was determined to get it up and running, as he knew this bot would prove to be the best bot that ever happened to IRC. After his exams in April, he started to work full time on this bot. Spending countless hours modifying and testing with his beta-testers. Ideas kept pouring in.

Finally, in June, he had a fully functional poker bot. Modifications did not stop then but it was time for him to slow down and let the bot make itself known to the world. In August 1993, he had to leave the country for a few months, and have given this bot to Lyverbe for safe keeping, continued maintenance, and development of PBot.

Lyverbe era

At that time, the main goal of PBot to handle an IRC poker game was successfully achieved. Lyverbe’s goal was to add features, security and documentation to the software. He introduced:

• User privileges (known as Gods and Cops)
• Banning system
• Flood protection
• Account database
• DCC connections
• Complete online help
• Player personal setup
• Top winners list
• …and many more

With the code getting insanely bigger, he separated the single source file into multiple source files. Managing the code was half the work where the other half was managing the IRC channel itself, and this is why he created user privileges to help him out while being away. These users had additional commands to handle troublemakers.

In a short period of time, PBot gained a lot of popularity. On January 9 1995, a mailing list was created as well as a website, which was not that common back then. Two conventions were held with the first one in Montreal (August 4-6, 1995) and the second in Chicago (August 2-3, 1996). A GUI was created for the mIRC client ^[2].

Post Lyverbe era

In September 1996, after 3 years of constant work on this project, Lyverbe decided to let go. He gave the project to Cirra who moved the bot from EFnet to Undernet. She eventually gave the project to Jupiter1.

PBot stopped operating in late 2002. However, the code is still in working condition meaning that it could reappear at anytime.

During its decade of existence, PBot has created new rings of friends ^[3] with a common place to hang out and chat. Conversations have even created its own glossary of terms^[4]. Tournaments have been organized ^[5] to create variety in the standard routine game.

See also

• Internet Relay Chat
• IRC bot

References

External links

• The Realm of Undernet IRC Poker

—

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Once Upon a Time, There Was A Poker Bot

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