RunPee – Thumbs Up

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is see a new movie in the theaters with a huge box of popcorn and an enormous soda.  The only problem with this is that my tiny bladder can’t hold all that soda for an hour and a half.  If it’s a great movie, I don’t want to run to the bathroom and miss anything important, but if I never use the bathroom, I’m in for a lot of discomfort at the end of the movie.  

Well, RunPee, a new app for the iPhone will solve my problems.  You start a timer for the movie you’re seeing when the movie begins, and it lets you know what the best times are to run to the bathroom.  It even gives you a summary of what you missed.  The app also lets you know if you should stay during the credits for a bonus scene.  Not only is this a fun app, it has a great real world use as well!  

Here is a picture of the app in action from Mashable.

TweetDeck – Thumbs Up

TweetDeck, the popular Twitter desktop application, came out with an iPhone application this week.  The most valuable part of TweetDeck, is the ability to separate users into groups, which are displayed in side-by-side columns.  Using this tool, I am able to make a group of people that I know well, and want to read every update, as well as making a group of companies that I follow, where each update isn’t quite as important to me.  It’s a way to cut through the noise of Twitter to get exactly what you want.  TweetDeck also has additional functions of updating every minute to alert you of new tweets, allowing you to sign into multiple Twitter accounts at once, update your Facebook status, and more.

Having TweetDeck for the iPhone is a huge step for TweetDeck desktop users.  The ability to sync their accounts on the desktop application and the iPhone application allows Tweeters to unify their experience with Twitter.  Before I switched to TweetDeck, I was using TwitterFon, but TweetDeck blows it out of the water.  TweetDeck looks and performs better than its competitor and having the same groups that I have on my computer is great too.  While TweetDeck and TwitterFon are both offered for free, the most popular iPhone application on the market is Tweetie at $2.99.  While I don’t have any experience with Tweetie directly, Mashable’s comparison between the two services gives the slight edge to TweetDeck, but mentions that dedicated Tweetie users, and less experienced Twitter users will prefer the simpler functions and interface of Tweetie.