So, if you use your mobile device to browse the internet and keep up with your favorite blogs, just point your mobile phone’s browser to http://abhishekmittal.com for a neat way to read this blog.

Here are the charts:

Fascinating stuff!

UPDATE: From the GigaOM blog, here’s a fresh post that “exposes Nokia’s Achilles heel”.

I have about 80 apps on my iPhone. While I use many of these applications on-and-off, there are some which I use daily. These are apps that I love and I would dump the iPhone if these apps were not there!

So, here’s my list:

1. ReQall: This is my favorite app for setting reminders and getting things done. ReQall trumps in providing a dead-simple way of adding reminders from the phone – voice. It lets you add reminders by voice by recording a message within the app and ReQall transcribes it for you. It sends back reminders in the form of emails and SMS. They even have some great pro features now. And, did I forget to mention that they have a great “Memory Jog” feature.
2. Evernote: Again, a top-notch app. It is a simple note-taking application which takes notes in the form of text, voice and pictures. The great things is that is supports optical character recognition. So, you can search for text right inside the pictures! The package is complete with all the various access options that Evernote provides – it is easily accessible from the web, desktop app and the iPhone app – all in sync. There are many note-taking apps, but none like evernote.
3. Nimbuzz: If you are not my grandpa’s grandpa, I would assume you use IM (Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN etc.). Nimbuzz provides an extremely comprehensive IM suite with support for all major IM services, VoIP over wifi and “dial-up VoIP over 3G”.
4. Shozu: If you are a shutterbug like me, you have the need to click and post. Shozu releases the pictures on the phone and can upload to multiple websites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Twitpic, Smugmug, Photobucket etc.
5. Facebook: Needless to explain!  
6. Twitterfon: If you are a twit-addict and don’t want to dole out a couple of dollars for a paid app, this is the one for you. Great interface. Great functionality. It supports retweeting, opening of links, follow / unfollow, twitter search, viewing of trending topics and searching of twitter users by location. It also has a great little bookmarklet for the iPhone Safari browser which lets you post links from Safari.
7. Brightkite: I use this as an “add-on” twitter app. I use this to share interesting places, restaurants, bars or simply my location with my friends. It detects your location and can post a link to your twitter / facebook about your location on a map, with details about the place you are at.
8. Bloomberg: This is my news app of choice. Despite the fact that I love Google Reader for the iPhone, Bloomberg does a great job with business news. You can customize the news section and also take a look at leading indices, stocks, bonds, currencies etc. The app is slick and fast.
9. Wikiamo: This simple app lets me search and browse through Wikipedia in a format that’s friendly for the iPhone screen. A must-have.
10.  Zyb Sync: If you are always worried about losing your contacts in case your phone is lost or gets “bricked”, this is the app for you. Zyb is a great app that can backup your contacts on the Zyb website. You can even edit your contacts on their website and sync back. Zyb was bought over by Vodafone and should be a very reliable service.

A lot of these would change with the launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and its various features. I am waiting patiently for a brand new lineup of apps this summer. What are your current favorite iPhone apps? 

• From a content “consumer”, social media encourages people to also create content. So, I no longer am just a consumer, but a part of the ecosystem of producers and consumers. I write articles on my blog, create photographic content, video content etc. And, it’s not that I had a major change in my life which made me a “content producer”. It’s is the very nature of the “wikipedia economy” to make people “active”, rather than “passive” in the ecosystem.

• Social media has weaned me off traditional media. I hardly read the newspaper these days. It’s quite a big “object” to hold in the hands anyway. Instead, I prefer to read all the news / blogs via Google Reader on my iPhone. It is always available, easy to use and serves me fresh content.

• Not that I am a big TV fan, but I was quite sure that people cannot imagine their lives without the idiot box. But, I can see a lot changing there. More and more video content is moving to the web (Hulu, Youtube, on-demand movies etc.). Not only this makes content available on demand, rather than fixed show timings, it is also a great way of content “discovery”, rather than being tied to the content you subscribed for. Also, there are possibilities to buy specific content that you like and watch it at your leisure on the phone or computer. So, I don’t like all shows on Discovery Travel & Living, but I can definitely buy Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations through iTunes.

• I have an audio cassette of one of my favourite artists, but I don’t know how to play it. With music moving to digital formats, we made the content more portable. The iPods provided a great interface to run through and organize your music on-the-go. And, then phones doubled up as your music player. Even more, now I don’t necessary have to store music, I can hear it streaming from the web legally though sites like Last.FM, Pandora etc. While the radio still is in fashion (somewhat), you have tons of web apps offering streaming radio.

• The social media makes the content timeless for me. So, I am free to go back to look at the content repeatedly with ease.

• Best of all, my content is no longer confined to me. It’s out there in the open – for sharing. Always available to everyone – on demand!

Many of these changes we see in this new web-driven world are very disruptive, changing attitudes, behaviour and even ways of doing business.

What changes did social media bring to your life?

By now, many of us know that Gmail Tasks is now available on the iPhone and G1. An interesting competitive analysis was done of the most commonly used “to-do” tool – Paper.

Paper has a number of popular features:

• Easy editing. Cross out with pen and write something new.
• Works offline. You can read paper even when your PC is not connected to the internet.
• Mobile. Fold paper and stick in pocket.
• Instant boot up. Just pull paper out of pocket — don’t have to wait for it to load.

However, paper does have some limitations:

• Limited availability. You don’t always have a pad of paper with you to write new things.
• Not ubiquitous. If you leave a piece of paper in one pair of jeans, you can’t access it from the other jeans you’re currently wearing.
• Difficult to organize. Eventually turns into a giant mess on your desk.

I am a big fan of mobile productivity and couldn’t agree more with this. And, the most compelling reason is that the phone makes all your data (emails, to-do’s, calendar, notes) portable and available on demand, on the go.

However, I would love to see more inter-operability between Tasks and Google’s other productivity apps, in particular Google Calendar. Tying up Tasks with Calendar will make for a more comprehensive productivity application, with ability to easily add emails as tasks and even get reminders through SMS. That should give users a more complete scheduling and GTD (Getting Things Done) application. The icing on the cake would be if Google voice-enables Tasks, giving users the ability to add Tasks and Reminders using voice. Just like ReQall (which is my current favorite reminder app).

UPDATE: Google Blogoscoped is reporting that a user has spotted the “Tasks” feature in his Google Calendar. Looks like someone is listening!

Much has already been written about the capabilities & quirks of the phone – whether its the elegant multi-touch screen or the lag-free user interface or the average 3G performance or the restrictions imposed by the ‘closed’ operating system. I quite like the phone. But, given that I use mobile phones extensively for much more than making calls, I do feel that the iPhone needs to grow up – just a little bit:

• My basic expectation from a smartphone is ability to multi-task. For the uninitiated – simply put I must be able to listen to music, browse the web, view a spreadsheet and chat via IM at the same time. I loved my Nokia E series devices for this. Unfortunately, the iPhone just can’t do it! You can work on one application at a time.
• Secondly, to customize a phone so that one is able to ‘power-use’ it, there has to be a lot of applications available. Sure, we have the Apps Store from Apple, and some of the apps are great, but the I didn’t find the assortment complete.
• Again, a smartphone without VoIP capabilities is difficult to digest for me. Sadly, it is not possible to talk to people over Gtalk / Skype etc. at the moment. Hoping that Fring comes up with something soon.
• Finally, I still share the gripes of so many other iPhone owners about the usual things – no SMS forwarding, no Video recording (despite being Youtube capable), no Business Cards, average PIM capabilities etc.

Really hope that we get around some of these in the not-so-far future.

Update: I am quite unhappy with the battery performance even after the 2.0.2 update. I am just getting about 2 hours on 3g data connection and about 3 hours on EDGE. To put things into perspective, my nokia E51 could be on EDGE on push mail all day on a single charge!