{"id":124,"date":"2008-09-03T08:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegobutton.net\/blog\/?p=124"},"modified":"2011-06-30T22:59:30","modified_gmt":"2011-07-01T02:59:30","slug":"the-iphone-app-store-and-stage-management-and-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/the-iphone-app-store-and-stage-management-and-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"The iPhone App Store and Stage Management (and Fun)"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: A current list of my most-used apps is kept on the Apps Page<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Well I’m in music rehearsals for a NYMF show (Twilight in Manchego<\/a><\/i>), so this means you get some blog posts while I sit doing mostly nothing to the soothing sounds of Chuck Cooper learning his music.<\/p>\n

Today my topic is a roundup of what I’m using on my iPhone to make my job, and life, easier. \u00a0My initial reactions can be found in this post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Time:Calc<\/b>\u00a0$1.99
\nSome people reviewing on the app store don’t seem to get this. \u00a0“Why would you need a calculator to work with time? \u00a0Just do it in your head.” These people obviously don’t understand that there are people who suck at math, or the enormous amount of time calculations a stage manager does all day long, and moreover, that there are stage managers who suck at math. \u00a0This app is so amazing, I use it all the time. \u00a0I’ve gotten pretty good in my career at calculating in 1hr 20 min blocks (the standard Equity break schedule), but for more difficult calculations, like running time down to the second (i.e. 8:05:30 – 9:21:35), there is much more room for error. \u00a0Some conductors will drive themselves crazy over a few seconds variation in the running time, no need to freak everybody out with bad math when it can be done with instant accuracy on the calculator. \u00a0This is of course for situations where you don’t enter the run times in a report that calculates it for you. \u00a0But whatevs, I don’t spend my whole life on Broadway, you know, and I don’t need to create a database for a show that runs 10 performances or less. \u00a0This app is attractive, cheap, and works exactly how you think it should.<\/p>\n

OmniFocus<\/span> $19.99<\/b>
\nThis app is pretty expensive at $20, but I find it worth the cost. \u00a0I can’t afford the desktop companion, but I like keeping everything on my phone in one place anyway. \u00a0It also backs up to my iDisk, which is great, since I’m often updating my firmware and reinstalling my apps because the App Store\/iTunes is busted. \u00a0I was looking for a simple Todo app, and found all the ones I tried suck. \u00a0So I decided to go for a very not-simple app instead. \u00a0I won’t go into all the details, but it’s location-aware (so you can see a list of tasks based on which are closest to your current location), very powerful with multiple ways to organize projects and contexts in multiple sublevels, and it’s a neat and clean interface that’s very finger-friendly while containing tons of information. \u00a0 Considering I stopped using Todos altogether with Windows Mobile because the app was such a pain, I feel my life getting a bit more organized already.<\/p>\n

iTransNYC<\/b> $4.99
\nMuch better than the cheaper alternative, it contains a very clean subway map, on which you can tap on a station to see a list of the trains that stop there and their schedules (which are never right, but I blame that on the MTA, not on the app). \u00a0It can put your current location on the map. \u00a0It gives you service changes as well as current alerts, like trains skipping a station because of police activity. \u00a0It can also do directions from one station to another (not from addresses, but I don’t find this to be a big problem in my life), and it will tell you where you need to transfer if necessary and give you a time estimate. \u00a0I have no idea if the time estimate is accurate, probably not, but again that’s the MTA’s problem. \u00a0 It’s got my daily commute at 23 minutes, which is pretty damn close to my estimate of 25 mins, on a good day<\/i>. \u00a0But if all estimates are assumed to be on a good day, at least that gives you an idea. \u00a0 The best part of the app is that most of the features (including the route calculation, impressively) can be used offline, which is essential for anyone living in New York, where the majority of the time I’m looking something up on my phone I’m underground. \u00a0 The service advisories are cached, although you have to remember to open the app above ground and download new ones if you want them to be up to date. \u00a0That other app, CitytransitNYC, looks up service advisories, but does it live, it can’t show them to you once you’re underground, which is close to useless if you’re debating whether or not to change your travel plans en route.<\/p>\n

Weatherbug<\/b> Free
\nI don’t trust the built-in weather app for a second — literally I don’t trust it to tell me what’s going on right now<\/i>, much less in an hour or tomorrow. \u00a0Weatherbug is more detailed and also gives advisories on serious weather conditions. \u00a0At Reagle I used it to warn me when I was about to get struck by lighting in the parking lot. \u00a0This isn’t exactly job related (unless you’re doing outdoor theatre, in which case it might be the most important app you have), but I feel it’s one of those secondary jobs of the stage manager to have an answer for everything, including whether it’s going to rain on our day off.<\/p>\n

Flashlight<\/b>\u00a0Free, requires jailbreak
\nThere are a number of flashlight apps. \u00a0The one I use requires the phone to be jailbroken, because it makes the screen brighter than Apple will allow the official apps to be. \u00a0But if you don’t want to go that route, there are some on the App Store, many free. \u00a0Personally I think if you have to resort to this you have failed as a stage manager, but not as epic of a failure as if you don’t have a flashlight and<\/i> don’t have this app.<\/p>\n

Files<\/b> $6.99
\nWhen I was looking for an app to put documents on my phone, I had three requirements: doesn’t require a proprietary desktop app, displays the documents well, and has a pretty interface. \u00a0This app has all three, so I’m happy. \u00a0If you’ve got your phone on the same network as your computer, it tells you what address to put in to mount your iPhone in the Finder (I assume it works on a PC, probably not as simply). \u00a0I keep a PDF of the Equity rulebook for whatever contract I’m working on, the script, calendar, schedule and contact sheet for my current show, and whatever else I need.<\/p>\n

Wikipanion<\/b> Free
\nAn app to easily search Wikipedia without having to load the rather phone-unfriendly web page. I suppose this could be used for legitimate rehearsal research, but what I find myself using Wikipedia most for while working is looking up trivia that comes up while running a show. \u00a0It can be hard to do while calling some shows, but generally you can find someone on the crew who plays on their laptop while doing their not-so-demanding job. For example when I was doing Annie<\/i> this summer, during the cabinet scene Morganthau is introduced as “Acting Secretary of the Treasury.” Why was he acting secretary, and what happened to the real secretary of the treasury? \u00a0Wikipedia can tell you<\/a>. \u00a0I expect this app to make it much easier to answer these kind of burning questions when it’s not practical to have a laptop backstage.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: 1 More!
\nCycorder <\/b>Free, requires jailbreak
\nThis is a video-recording app which takes very good quality video for a phone camera. \u00a0It did not originally support audio in its first release, but it does now. \u00a0It’s free, and supported by advertising which is very subtle and non-intrusive, and very much appreciated as an alternative to the other video app which costs money (which I think is rather silly for an app that is technically not supported on the phone and could be disabled by Apple at any point in the future). The app doesn’t have a built-in way to get videos off the iPhone, so it requires a little more computer knowledge to do that. \u00a0I don’t know much about UNIX and I’m not a fan of using the terminal to work with files, so the method I prefer is to install an app through Cydia called Netatalk, which makes your iPhone able to communicate with a Mac through standard Apple filesharing, so if the phone and Mac are on the same network, you will automatically see the phone in your Finder under “shared.” \u00a0From there you can log into the phone and browse to the folder where the videos are stored. \u00a0Check out this post<\/a> for a tutorial on how to do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: A current list of my most-used apps is kept on the Apps Page. Well I’m in music rehearsals for a NYMF show (Twilight in Manchego), so this means you get some blog posts while I sit doing mostly nothing to the soothing sounds of Chuck Cooper learning his music. Today my topic is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,8,6],"tags":[94,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3406,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/3406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}