The AstroStat Slog

The iPhone App Store has a couple of apps that make life significantly easier for those of us inundated and overwhelmed by the stream of daily arXiv preprints. These are ArXivReader.app and ArXiv.app, both providing a means to browse and search the arXiv preprint database and both selling for 99c with the first selling for 99c and the second free. Check them out! The former even lets you save papers for off-line reading.

For me at least, the hardest part of going through the arXiv emails every day was to pick out the interesting papers in the deluge of text. These apps do the right thing and segregate the categories and highlight the titles. Fitts’ Law in action — suddenly the daily ritual is orders of magnitude more pleasant!

The iPhone is an amazing device. I have heard that some people use it as a phone, too, but it really is an extraordinary portable computer. It is faster and more powerful than the Sparcstations I used as a grad student, and will fit into your pocket. And most importantly, you can fit an entire planetarium on it.

There are many good planetarium programs that you can access on laptops, but it is really not that much fun to lug them around on camping trips or even out on to the roof at night. But now, thanks to the iPhone (and the iPod Touch) there has been a great leap forward. Continue reading ‘Killer App’ »