My purchase of an iPod Touch

Back in July I was fortunate enough to go a large cigar convention for retail tobacconists, the IPCPR. All of the Stogie Review Staff flew out to Las Vegas to cover the event as members of the Press. With few cigar bloggers at the event, we were in a very good position to be one of the first sites to break the news.

While at the convention, Brian and Jerry were both able to quickly provide updates via Twitter on their phones. I on the other hand, had to wait until I returned to my hotel room to spread the news due to my lack of internet phone. This got me thinking that I needed to come up with a better way to connect to Twitter and Stogie Review on the fly.

A month ago I finally got around to calling Verizon to see what their rates were for such a phone. I was planning on switching to a Blackberry and my wife planned to do the same. After learning that my phone bill would almost double with a data plan, I had to come up with a less expensive alternative.

I began researching the capabilities of an iPod Touch and weighed the pros and cons of working solely from a wi-fi connection. Considering that the trade show had wi-fi available, as do most of the cigar shops and friends houses I frequent, I decided to go the iPod route.

For Christmas my wife and I both got ourselves an iPod Touch and have fallen in love with them. Being tied to wi-fi only for certain things has been a slight hurdle, but nothing we haven’t been able to manage without. Being able to respond to email and tweet from my leather chair at the cigar shop has been great. Now that I have one, I don’t know that I would do without it.

Having had it for a couple of weeks now, I have found a handful of applications that have been great. If you don’t already use the ones in the following list, I’d recommend checking them out.

Walt’s iPod Touch Apps

TwitterFon: (FREE)
Convenient application to use Twitter. Have been using it since I got the iPod and love the way it functions.

Magic Pad: (FREE)
Small rich text notepad that has come in handy from time to time.

WordPress: (FREE)
Allows me to quickly log into my blog and begin drafting posts on the fly.

Brightkite: (FREE)
Application similar to twitter which allows me to check into different locations (cigar shops) and see if friends are in the area.

Evernote: (FREE)
This allows me to quickly create reminders for myself that get synced to my other machines.

tChess Lite: ($1.99)
Simple chess application that allows me to kill time while waiting on something.

Last.FM: (FREE)
Mobile version of my favorite online music player.