I’m behind in my app reviews, to the tune of five pages worth of them on my phone. So it’s time to review and get rid of the stinkers, definitely.
Do live wallpapers count as apps? Well, no, but some are worth a warning when you learn a lesson from having one on your phone. For instance, get rid of that “2011 countdown” New Years Eve exhibition of noisy fireworks that goes off every 5 minutes whether you like it or not, whether you want it to or not and especially before you’re the new kid in the office being shown around by your Supervisor. The Supervisor laughs and says it’s “cute”, but they are secretly filing the information away to put on your eventual pink slip, trust me.
Do I speak from experience on that one? No, of course not.
Who the hell put all these default apps on your and my phones anyway?!? Do I really have time for “The Sims 3″? Uh, NO. Let them riot and starve and die in their make-believe city because I neglected them…better yet, I’m just going to reject them outright and throw them in my virtual trash can, which, by the way, is not an app, but boy, does it come in handy!
Maybe they’ll find some virtual psychotherapist in there to help them get over the trauma of me rejecting them.
Nope, hate to break it to you, reader, but all this crud clogs up our phones because these developers stormed Samsung’s and Apple’s offices and bribed, begged and/or threatened these phone manufacturers to put their junk into your pocket. It’s certainly not there because we want it all or because they want to see our smiling faces as we play these mindless, senseless games as the nice traffic officer writes you a ticket on the side of the road. Oh and that reminds me, April is crack down on all those idiot driver, Lords of the Sims wannabes.
So if you’re in the San Fernando Valley, take my advice and bury that damn phone so deep in your pocket you can’t hear it while you’re driving. Again, do I speak from experience? YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DO!!! Don’t answer it – it’s only another twitter alert for the release of the 50th trailer for the new season of Doctor Who. It’s only another 16 days, 5 hours, 17 minutes and 2 seconds…CAN’T YOU WAIT THAT LONG, PEOPLE!?!
I gave this one months of hope because I LOVE Slurpees. After installing it late last year, I tried it once a week or so to see if I could get the blasted thing to work. No such luck. I tried logging in after creating a new account through the app and then through their website. Neither ever got me past a consistent, “force close” warning, though sometimes I would be lucky enough to see the screen beyond that where a Slurpee mountain vomited fruit all over my screen…a mind-bogglingly useful screen to waste my battery life on, let me tell you.
To be fair, I did get in – once, but we were on our way to see Harry Potter and couldn’t stop for a Slurpee so I never got any real, practical use from it. After perusing the many and wildly varied experiences of users in the reviews (ranging from “It’s great!” to “It sucks!”), I am giving up – a painful decision as anyone who knows me will tell you since I have been drinking coca-cola Slurpees since back when they were called “Icees” and since I was little. Yes, I know, they’ll rot my stomach and kill me in the end…hopefully I’ll last longer than coffee’s planet-full of victims, but I will tell you this – I won’t waste my time any longer trying to get this brain-paralyzingly LAME application to work on my Android.
Still sucks, even after last week’s update of the application.
I was finally able to find “average” emergency room wait times – not “current” – as advertised. And that was for only a specific hospital when a search was done for the nearest facilities to my location. It was under “comprehensive emergency services”. Sorry folks – WRONG ANSWER!!!
For those who think I am being too critical, let’s look at why you want to use this app. in the first place. You are violently sick, broke your leg or are dying. Your friend or relative is fumbling around on your phone to find the nearest and fastest help because you are too cheap to call an ambulance, or you are unconscious and your friend is too cheap (or too stupid) to call for an ambulance. You want an app that will, with only a couple of keystrokes, tell them where to take you and how fast they will get to you.
A better alternative to this stupid app. is to get the information directly from the hospital. For example, West Hills ER – the people who sent me the flyer on this android app. in the first place, included their text messaging info in the second flyer they sent me. Replying to the text gave me the instant gratification of knowing that their average wait time at that moment was 25 minutes. (For the locals, to do this you text “ER” to 23000 & reply with your zip code and then you’ll receive their average wait times) Awesome! Now we are getting somewhere! Now, assuming my HMO likes West Hills and will let me go there without asking them to amputate my arm and leg in payment, this could work out.
Bottom line? Use iTriage to find the nearest ER – look on their website or call them for a similar text info setup, then uninstall the app. to save hard drive space.
Hypochondriacs of the world united under one app…how awesome is that? For the rest of us who will use it for more practical purposes – like looking up great new diseases to call in sick to our boss/work with, we can keep busy with it, too. Me? I downloaded it because the flyer I got in the mail (you remember snail mail, don’t you) promised one could “view emergency room wait times”. While we all know these days to bring a really good book, your portable nintendo game or other time-waster to the ER, I would really like to be uber-prepared and oh, know what I am getting into with the wait times from hell before I get there. It’s the difference between packing “War and Peace” or your favorite bedtime story book for the kids in tow.
So, did this little app bring satisfaction? Uh, NO! At least not with the ER wait times. Crawled over all the options and missed it somewhere. If someone knows where to find it, please leave me a comment. If not, the next time I fall down an open manhole on the street while looking up the nearest place to get a flu shot, I’ll update this article on iTRiage’s other functions ;>
Hey, there’s a thought…an app to find the nearest funeral parlor when you break your neck falling down one of those manholes…no? Well, it was just a thought.
App specs and other commentaries by users can be found here at AppBrian.com.
iTriage.com’s website for you poor slobs still tied to a desktop PC.
