Murphy Bytes

I got a nice long weekend in NYC for my birthday. We went to August: Osage County, MoMA, went to the top of the Empire State Building at midnight and walked around looking at Christmas lights. Here’s a bunch of pictures from the trip. New York is nuts around Christmas. The sidewalks are just packed with people and it’s fun just hanging out people watching. Some of the store window displays are amazing and in general the street life just can’t be beat. We hooked up with Lisa’s cousin and ate at a fabulous vegetarian restaurant called Candle Cafe. Oh, one thing that was really cool was how useful the maps application on my iPhone worked to navigate through the city using public transportation. As some of you may recall, my Android submission was an application to do just that, help people use public transportation to get from place to place. With iPhone update 2.2 the maps application will not only show you the best way to drive from point A to point B, it will also show you the best way to get from place to place using the subway, bus or walking in many major metropolitan areas. I know it works in New York, and Minneapolis, but it doesn’t work in smaller cities like Ames Iowa. Anyway, it works great. When I needed to get from where we were staying down in the financial district to any place we wanted to go to, I’d just use ‘Current Location’ and type the street address to where I wanted to go and the maps application would show me the best way to get there by subway. It would also include how to walk to the nearest metro station, and how to walk from the station where you get off the train to your final destination. If all you type in is the street information, neglecting to supply the city, state, etc, the application is smart enough to fill in these details for you. It really is one of the most fabulously useful applications I’ve ever used.