One Light or Two?

A very strange thing happened to me today.

I had just pulled over to the side of the road in a shopping centre car park when a woman in her thirties or forties - clearly a driver judging by the keys in her hand - came up to me from behind the car and notified me that one of my rear lights wasn't working.

"One of the brake lights?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said.
"Which side?" I asked, pressing on the brake pedal.
"Not those: one of the middle ones," she said.

So I got out of the car to see what she meant.

"That one," she said, pointing to my left indicator light. "You see it's not blinking?"
"That's because I'm indicating right," I replied a little perplexed.
"But shouldn't they both be blinking?" she asked.
"No. Is this what you mean?" I said, getting back into my car and switching the hazard warning lights on.
"Yes! Now they're both working again!" she cried.
"If only one light is on, it's the left or right indicator," I explained.
"I never knew it could do that," she replied, walking away towards her car, clearly amazed at the revelation.

iPhone

I know you can get the iPhone around the world, but I got mine here and it was developed here too, so I really insist on spending some time raving about it.

The iPhone truly is the best thing since sliced bread (if indeed sliced bread was a good thing). In fact, I'm hard-pressed to find words to express the impact it has had on my life. But rather than waxing lyrical, here are the hard facts, starting with the basics:

In France I had a two-hour mobile phone subscription for about €40. Here, for a paltry $80 a month I get 450 minutes talktime during the day (rolling over into the next month if unused), unlimited calls at night and over the weekend, unlimited Internet access and unrestricted up- and downloading.

But that's just the subscription.

Aside from the usual sleek design for which Apple is famous, the iPhone itself has:

- A Safari browser with which you can look at Web pages horizontally or vertically by simply turning the iPhone on its side;

- A fabulous touchscreen that you can zoom into simply by pressing two fingers on the screen and moving them apart;

- Preprogrammed direct links to YouTube (where you can, of course, play all the video clips), iTunes and the AppStore, where additional programs cost next to nothing (eat your heart out, Bill Gates);

- A nifty weather function showing temperatures and conditions now and in the days ahead at any number of destinations (I have my own town programmed in so that I don't have to stick my head out of the window to know what clothes to wear);

- A useful stock price function with one-day, one-week, one-month, three-month and six-month charts for those unfortunate enough to own shares;

- Push e-mail (i.e. electronic messages are sent directly to the iPhone the moment they arrive on the server rather than having to be downloaded) and all attachments - be they PDFs, Excel spreadsheets or simply Word files - can be opened and read;

- And of course the usual phone, SMS, calendar, clock/alarm, camera and calculator functions.

Because the new iPhone uses 3G, Web pages are called up very quickly wherever you are. And whenever you come within range of an unsecured or previously stored wi-fi network, the iPhone automatically piggy-backs on the network to give you even greater bandwidth (that's Internet access speed to you, Mum).

But the crème-de-la-crème killer app has to be the built-in GPS. Not only can you find out where you are at any given moment in time (I like looking what part of the house I'm in as seen from above), but whenever you come across an address, be it on Yellow Pages, in your personal address book or on some site on the Internet, you simply click on the address and the iPhone opens up Google Maps and asks if you'd like directions there ("From current location?").

I feel like I've died and gone to techie heaven. In fact, my wife is furious that her company only gave her a BlackBerry.

What luck that I have to buy my own toys.