1. Epicurious
Only few stressful days left to track down last minute gifts. Can apps come to your aid and get you through the day? Here's one man's shopping day from hell, plus apps.
7:00 AM and there goes my alarm clock -- or, I guess, that's not really correct anymore. Alarm phone would be better. I haven't owned an alarm clock in almost a decade. A phone does just fine. For my first phone, an alarm clock sat at the apex of its extra features. But today? An alarm clock is about as progressive as having a battery.
I have an iPhone. Apps rule the day.
I tap off my alarm, get dressed and head for the kitchen. I need to get a wine rack – a last minute Christmas present for my mom. I’ve whittled my options down to a metal and wooden model at Crate and Barrel but because this is last minute – and I want to actually see the product before I buy it – I need to brave the crowds and go to the store. (What a concept!)
My day is about to be packed with long lines, parking garages and people in my way. At least I have an army of apps on my iPhone.
A good breakfast is in order to get things started.
Epicurious
I dial up Epicurious for a suggestion and search "hearty eggs." I recognize that my terms aren't laser-targeted, but I'm hoping that the app will help me along here. I know a lot of egg recipes but want a new one and, at least between humans, "hearty eggs" is a pretty clear direction for breakfast.
The app annoys me instantly. After searching it presents me with the extra button: "View Search Results." I just took the steps to search - why would it not just automatically show me the search results, rather than making me ask again? And then after clicking, it doesn't list the results, but rather makes me swipe through one result at a time. Imagine if Google made you click through to see each search result.
Though this tedious search process bothers me, I do come across a recipe lifted from The Hungover Cookbook. I wasn't out last night, but it sounds like we're heading in the right direction. The recipe is a good one, but again Epicurious lets me down. The typeface is grey-on-white, small and largely unformatted. If you're going to put a recipe on a phone -- and you're going to use it while you're running around the kitchen -- the information needs to be presented crystal clear, not just a regurgitation of a text file.
Regardless, I persevere and get my breakfast eggs and English potatoes down the hatch. And decide it's time to get my brain whirring into action for the day.