Leah Culver

Leah Culver was a co-founder and the lead developer of the social network and micro-blogging website Pownce, which was acquired by blog juggernaut Six Apart in November 2008. Now a software engineer at Six Apart, Leah uses her experience with Pownce to develop large scale social applications for future Six Apart projects. While creating the Pownce API she co-authored both the OAuth and OEmbed open API specifications and now maintains the popular Python OAuth library. Leah promotes open source, APIs, and the Django web framework on her blog at leahculver.com. In her free time she likes to play around with new technology and try new restaurants near her home in San Francisco.

Phone: First of all, I think I may be the first person on your site who doesn’t have the phone on their home row. For me, the iPhone isn’t a phone at all. It’s an SMS / email / GPS / MP3 device. The only people I call on the phone are my parents.

Mail: On the web, I use GMail to combine my many email accounts. On the phone I rely on the native mail app since it’s a lot faster than the mobile GMail site.

SMS: Duh. This is the whole point of a phone. I love the chat-like interface! I’ve unlocked emoji and often attempt to construct and send entire meaningful messages out emoji icons.

Maps: I live (or die) by the San Francisco transit directions on Google maps. I’m curious to find out if Apple is going to make their own Maps application and how it will compare to Google’s.

iPod: I actually listen to music on my iPhone a lot… especially on the bus. My home button double-click brings up the iPod controls.

Google calendar: This is a link to the Google calendar mobile site, which has gotten significantly better over the past year. I used to use a 3rd party app to sync my Google calendar with iCal but I don’t really sync my phone with my computer enough for this to be useful anymore.

Google reader: Another link to a Google mobile site! Mobile Reader is horribly buggy but I love my feeds so much that I keep it on my home screen.

Photos and Camera: I don’t even have a “real” camera anymore.

Clock and Weather: Every time I visit a new place I set my clock and weather. I keep each place stored in my iPhone as a sort of travel memento. Currently I have the time and weather for: San Francisco, Austin, Minneapolis, Amsterdam, Miami, Toronto, Portland, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, Prague and Las Vegas.

Subway: This is my favorite iPhone game. More about it here.

Yelp: The Yelp app is great for finding nearby businesses and super handy for finding out business hours. I love trying out new restaurants and the Yelp app helps me find them on the go.

Flickit: This is my favorite app for uploading photos to Flickr.

TypePad: I started using the TypePad iPhone app for posting to my Awesome Blog. I think it’s one of the better mobile blogging apps.

Foursquare: I love Foursquare! I was a long time Dodgeball user and all my friends now use Foursquare. I’ve served as Mayor of such fine establishments as Nova, 3rd Street Grill, Hotel Utah, and Six Apart.