Hi, my name is Paul, and I am a news junkie.

While some of my fellow bloggers admit to vices that range from reality TV to quilting, my fix is an order of magnitude more boring.  I just love learning about the major news stories of the day.  I have no real fascination with weather or sports, but national and international news bits are like candy to me.  That’s one reason why I’ve written on several previous occasions about the ways I use RSS (and Google Reader/Reeder on my iPhone) to “feed the beast”.

My nearly insatiable desire for more news led me to NPR as my primary daily source.  I find its reporting to be both more informed and more unbiased than most.  They don’t get dragged into sensationalism, and they treat their audience like the educated and rational folks that we mainly are.  In short, I respect them because they respect me.  And, through my avid public radio listening I was introduced to the Planet Money podcast.

I’m not an economist and I don’t have the money skills to ever invest wisely, but I thoroughly enjoy the writing and style of the show.  I listen every week while I plan my lessons.  Now, I can make sense of the seemingly endless flow of bad news from the media about the financial situation we find ourselves in.

And, so it was that I recently heard an episode of Planet Money in which the economics of the music industry was discussed.  One of the people interviewed was Damian Kulash, lead singer of the alternative band OK Go.  To learn more about the band, I highly recommend this bio written by Ira Glass.

Thus, in one of the strangest lines of reasoning and coincidence ever, we get from a news addiction to one of my favorite bands.  If none of this has made any sense to you, I would like to blame it on blogger fatigue and simply leave you with this, a great example of OK Go’s fun and entertaining music videos.

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

I’ve made no mystery of my love for RSS and my dismay over its slow adoption by the masses.  I do most of my reading in a given week by means of my feedreader, and it is how I satisfy my inner news junkie.  I find myself trusting mainstream news sources less and less as their biases become more apparent and their propensity toward sensationalism becomes more irritating.  I prefer do-it-yourself news aggregation, especially when I can read it on my portable device of choice: my iPhone.

A couple of years ago, I purchased Byline to read my RSS feeds on my iPhone.  I liked that it syncs to Google Reader so that anything I read on the mobile device is marked read online.  It’s basic features met my needs at the time, especially since I considered my news habit to be very personal.  It was (as most things in my life seem to be) all about me.

In the months that have followed, my PLN has grown and matured and I now appreciate the social potential of RSS feeds.  We all follow some of the same news sources, but our individual interests and experiences (mine are comic books and marine sciences) lead us to read different things.  I make use of Google Reader’s sharing features much more now to pass along and comment on news that I discover.

And so, this week I went searching for a new iPhone app to access and share my RSS feeds.  After some research and suggestions from friends, I discovered Reeder.  I couldn’t be more impressed with an application.  It has all of the visual goodies of my preferred Twitter client, Tweetie, with all of the RSS reading/sharing features I would ever want. Read more »

It has really tickled me to see the cost of owning an Apple iPhone decreasing, and their prevalence increasing, as it has meant that much of the device’s cache has subsided.  Many more people are seeing it the same way I see mine: a nearly perfect convergence device…AKA the “One Thing in My Pocket.”

As more of my friends and the members of my PLN get iPhones, I have been asked more and more what my favorite and most used iPhone applications are.  I decided to blog my answer to the masses, and I hope that you will add your opinions in the comments.

Disclaimer: The following list is just the opinion of one tech-obsessed, pathologically extroverted, middle school science teacher.  Also, I have left off the list any built-in Apps that I use regularly, such as Calendar or Mail.  Your mileage may vary.

Evernote: I’ve posted before about how critical this application is to my state of mind and my “outboard brain”.  The bottom line is that I can capture anything (except, perhaps, webpages) with my iPhone and then search for and access it all from anywhere (web, iPhone, Mac).

Price: Free  [iTunes link]

Google Mobile: This slick little app direct from Google used to just be another way to search Google (without using the search bar in Mobile Safari), but the addition of Voice Search in the latest version makes this the killer search app.  It can include Contacts in my search results and can utilize the GPS in my iPhone 3G to search nearby.

Price: Free   [iTunes link]

Byline: There are many ways to read RSS feeds on the iPhone, but for those of us who use Google Reader as our desktop feedreader, Byline stands above the rest.  It synchronizes to Reader, so my unread count is always accurate, and it downloads articles for offline reading.  The interface is pretty good, and it has an optional landscape mode that makes reading even more of a pleasure.

Price: $4.99   [iTunes link]

Twitterific: Isn’t it amazing how quickly Twitter has taken off over the past few months?  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t spend as much time in the Twitterverse as I would like to, but when I do dip my toes into the endless stream of conversation this is the tool I choose.  I actually prefer its ease-of-use even to the Mac desktop version.  Its creator, Iconfactory, has a knack for beautiful interfaces.

TouchType: There is a growing number of applications like TouchType that allow text entry (including email and twitter composing) in landscape mode for its larger keyboard, but I prefer the ability of this one to save snippets to use later.

Price: $0.99   [iTunes link]

WeatherBug: There are basically three choices when it comes to high-quality weather apps for the iPhone.  The best looking is the built-in Apple Weather, but I prefer the local info available through WeatherBug’s network of weather stations mounted on schools all over the country.  The iPhone app uses the GPS receiver to find the station closest to you and give you all the usual data like current/high/low temperatures, wind speed/direction and weather alerts, along with radar maps and video/images.  Plus, you can’t beat the price.

Price: Free   [iTunes link]

RTM: I am a to-do list junkie, and I finally found a complete system that worked for me when I switched to Remember the Milk’s web service.  Their iPhone app completes the package by giving me local access to my tasks in a gorgeous interface.  Now, the best part of finishing a task is the cool “swipe” effect that you use to mark it as complete.

Price: Free (w/Remember the Milk Pro)   [iTunes link]

Texas Hold ‘Em: This is one of those iPhone games that isn’t just a port of something that originated elsewhere.  It taps into the strengths of the accelerometer by switching from a top-down view in landscape mode to a face-to-face view in portrait.  It helps that the level of play is not beyond the reach of casual gamers.  Top-of-the-line graphics are the icing on the cake.

Price: $4.99   [iTunes link]

Mint.com: The web interface for Mint.com is an incredible free resource that will coordinate all of your finances in one simple screen.  The iPhone application give you a snapshot for all of your accounts and the current state of your budget (which the program sets up automatically).  It keeps me honest on the money front.

Price: Free   [iTunes link]

The cumulative effect of all of these applications on my iPhone is that I’m using my MacBook less and less often outside of school.  I really can do everything I need to with one device in my pocket, and all while listening to my favorite music.  Any suggestions?  Put ‘em in the comments.