Four
people asked me what I wanted for my birthday last week and I gave each
of them the same answer, “A new Filofax.” All four of them said the
same thing. “No, you don’t. Nobody wants a Filofax any more. It’s so
old-fashioned. Don’t be ridiculous. iPhone.” My daughter Maia was the
harshest. She simply said, “Oh, Mom! iPhone.” It made me feel
old-fashioned. It made me feel old.
For the record, I have an iPhone but despite the fact that four assistants over the last three years have religiously promised to transfer all my names and phone numbers into my computer and my iPhone, it hasn’t quite happened yet. And I never seem to have the time.
But I like my Filofax (even though it does sort of look like a truck ran over it.) It feels like a friend. I like it that it has names and addresses and phone numbers hand-printed into it. (Arguably, a few of them are dead, but I’ve learned not to notice. And I can’t quite bring myself to cross the names out. That would seem too final.) I use it in meetings to take notes. Sometimes, I’ll have a thought in the car or a random sentence for something I’m working on and I’ll pull over and jot it down into my Filofax. There are a few haikus that will probably never be printed anywhere else. I can gauge from them how sad I was on a given day. (Haikus are usually sad. The more comedic ones have found their way into my computer.)
My look at the top features I’m loving in the new iOS 7 update to my iPhone 5.
Tons of events, corporate sponsors, dedicated fans, traffic, people descending from all parts of the country and world, and lots of bright lights. Super Bowl? No, it's a political convention. I'm on my way to Denver for the DNC convention, and it feels like I'm going to a Super Bowl weekend. 
I live in Los Angeles where you can get pretty much anything you want, except for one thing I covet: Chesapeake Bay steamed crabs. I grew up in Baltimore and I miss the crab feasts of my youth. So, every year my thoughtful husband has a bushel Fed-x’ed out to Santa Monica in either May, June, July or August (because crabs are good only in months lacking an “r” ). And we invite nostalgic ex-pats and brave newcomers into our West Coast yard to indulge in the pagan ritual that is so cherished back in Maryland, officially The Land of Pleasant Living.
If you have an iPhone (sorry if you don't) and want to take your daily technology
coolness quotient to the next level, then you need to pay attention.
You won't find silly games or time wasters on this list. These are
helpful, and mostly free apps (unless otherwise noted), that will kick your tech life up a
notch.
