So I played around a little bit more with Washington Post’s City Guide iPhone application.

With the restaurant search, my most likely to be used function, I’m finding a serious lack of listings around me that I know exist but perhaps haven’t yet been reviewed by Post staff. Leaving off a restaurant right next to you because there’s no rating is a bit unhelpful and hardly comprehensive. I will say that at 5 bars of signal plus wi-fi, the app is functioning a lot better, but it doesn’t even list my favorite 4 restaurants right up Mt. Pleasant Street and its concept of “near” me listed a whole bunch of restaurants that might be near if I had a car or were willing to go through a moderate metro ride, like Capitol Hill… or Falls Church!? One of the frequent complaints of other venue finding applications was standing outside a perfectly good restaurant/bar and having the application locate places completely across town.

I would also appreciate a link to OpenTable for participating restaurants and not just a phone number button. I know I advocated phone calls earlier, but for restaurant reservations that often means either a “please hold” or leaving voicemail and awaiting a callback as likelihoods. OpenTable has a mobile site, so linking to it for a particular restaurant would be easy enough.

I’d say this application needs a little bit more work and I hope there are some updates coming after they’ve seen a little road testing from local users. And perhaps read reviews like this…?

I just got e-mail from the Washington Post about their new iPhone application, City Guide.

We are continuing to explore opportunities to translate features on washingtonpost.com for mobile audiences and the City Guide application was a natural fit. With this application, we are giving mobile users all of the information they need to conveniently navigate the entertainment scene in and around D.C.

Jim Brady, Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com

City Guide application features:

• The City Guide app is an easy-to-use resource to find local restaurants, bars and clubs.
• A GPS feature provides a map (and directions to) all surrounding-area locations
• Search by location name, neighborhood and cuisine
• Get immediate access to addresses, phone numbers, hours of operation, pricing info, and more
• Read reviews from award-winning Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema and the Going Out Gurus
• Set personal favorites to save time

Tapping around, it looks like a solid application. It had a little trouble finding my exact location, but with a G1 iPhone, I’ve been running into that problem with a few apps that seem to rely more on GPS than cell-tower triangulation. And using the app via EDGE is likely not going to give the best results, but a tap on Arlington (Clarendon) brought up a Google map with markers at each venue. Clicking a venue name takes you to a page with details, address, phone number and a link to a detailed Washington Post review.

I’m not a devotee of the WaPo reviews and listings, but this does seem like a very handy application. The Post has less user-solicited ratings than other services/apps like Yelp or Urbanspoon, but people seem to trust most of the staff reviews. Apps like this make it fun to play “going out roulette” (Urbanspoon especially) since most of us are familiar with a lot of places in DC, it helps to have a handy guide to provide input and inspiration.

To date, I think I’ve only paid for one application. I’m quite content being a freeloader… get it? free… loader… ah, never mind.

One of the issues lately that really makes my blood boil is Photographers’ Rights. The idea that taking a photograph makes someone a terrorist is just stupid. And giving someone (usually a rent-a-cop) the arbitrary power to question and/or detain someone for it doesn’t make any kind of sense.

I used to think that I just needed to leave the country because of the idiocy, though this story from the BBC makes me think maybe I need to leave the planet:

The family was stopped by a plain clothes officer from the Channel Tunnel Policing Unit on 20 February.

Ms Maynard, a legal advocate, said the officer, who failed to identify who she was, asked for the family’s passports then asked “who’s the boy?”

“My son is mixed race and the officer then told us, ‘I believe you are child trafficking’.”

Terror police detain disabled boy

For a nice (and maybe much-needed) laugh, enjoy the live enactment of xkcd’s I Love the Discovery Channel strip. And a fun video detailing why I don’t like getting involved in website design here at the office, The Process. What if there were no stop signs… and a major corporation was charged with inventing one?

Definitely one of my “feel good” songs is “Love it When You Call” by The Feeling, a band I learned of through a friend Dan in the UK. They’re pop/rock, but just enough in-between both not to lean one way or the other too much. It also doesn’t hurt that the lead singer is queer and adorable! But this tune always has me smiling and bopping my head on my morning metro commute. I’m not really interested in Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but put some songs like this in and I might be.

I also think about it a lot when I hear news of the iPhone. I had an IM conversation with James yesterday about people and the phone. Most of us are starting not to care for the telephone as a means of communication, some are already calling for the death of voicemail. When I saw the video of the reporter trying to heckle people queued up for the iPhone, I wondered if a more zinging question on his part would have been, “Have you ever used your phone to call someone?”

I love hearing from friends and even some family and while instant messenger is ok, “LOL” seems much better when you can actually hear the person laughing. I know a lot of people that don’t care for using the phone, which makes me wonder how they conduct any kind of business. I used to hesitate to call people because I’d think I was bothering them, but now I figure they’re enough of an adult to tell me when it isn’t a good time to talk. I just don’t think I’m ready to see the advance of technology herald the death of the phone conversation.

On a lighter note, there’s been a bit of a bumper crop of babies among my friends in recent months (and days — Congratulations Felissa and Neil!) so maybe this primer is a good thing. Baby’s First Internet by Kevin Fanning & Kean Soo. — Not sure how to explain the internet to your young ones? Presenting a series of nursery rhymes to teach children how to comport themselves on the online. I think they would do well to create a real book from that!