Column: The world in your hands

A first-aid app on Woolley’s phone instructed him how best to fashion a tourniquet for his leg and apply a bandage to his bleeding head. It even warned him against falling asleep after suffering head trauma, so he set his iPhone’s alarm clock to beep periodically as a precaution.

The era of mobile technology playing a powerful, even life-saving, role has arrived. But its scope is not limited to extreme cases like Woolley’s. Mobile phones pervade and enhance our most mundane, everyday activities.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Apple’s App Store, a veritable emporium of digital tools and distractions. By unleashing the energy of thousands of developers who today churn out apps that were unimaginable when the iPhone launched in June 2007, Apple accelerated the mobile-software revolution.

At Princeton, classes pulse with the vibrations and flashing lights of smartphones. Students are no longer limited to bringing laptops to class to tap into the full range of electronic diversions. They play games and send text messages — but they also check Wikipedia before chiming in at precept.

Smartphones haven’t just changed the way we operate in class; they have also begun to impact life outside of our schoolwork.

TigerTransit’s transit visualization system, which uses GPS to show the exact locations of shuttle buses as they traverse campus, has made its way onto students’ iPhones.

“Augmented reality” apps add additional information to phones’ real-world camera views. For instance, by using Yelp’s “monocle” view in conjunction with an iPhone camera, visitors to Princeton can easily locate restaurants. Yelp users need only point their cameras in a particular direction, and the application will tell them which way to go and how far to walk.

Layar Reality Browser takes this technique one step further by allowing users to overlay their camera images with information from Wikipedia or tourism information databases. Some universities, like Arizona State, have already submitted their campus maps to Layar, so visitors can simply point their phones at university buildings for detailed descriptions and histories.

Apps are changing the way we use our most ubiquitous gadgets. Imagine a common scenario: Two friends meet up and decide to find a place for lunch. Now, they can locate a suitable restaurant nearby using an app like Zagat or Yelp, fine-tune their choices based on desired cuisine, neighborhood and cost, and make a reservation using Open Table without ever placing a call.

When they get there, the two can beam their location to friends by using a geo-location app like Foursquare. Whether one wants to find the best wine at a restaurant or a recipe for a dish, there is a utility that will meet that need — and many others.