I was asked what apps on my iPhone get used more often. Here’s a brief list, combined with a rant:

1.  ZipCar. How cool that I can reserve my car, unlock it, and find it in a lot by making its horn beep…. all from the iPhone.

2. Zillow. How much is that house actually worth? Ha! As long as I trust Zillow’s occasionally goofy algorithm, I can get the embarrassing answer while I’m standing right in front of it.

3. Pandora, as long as you appreciate its limitations. “Guy Clark Radio” turns up new thoughtful songwriters. “Robert Earl Keen Radio” is set to deliver songs about going to Mexico and getting drunk… not the right algorithm.

4. Yelp. Just plain essential if you ever go anywhere and get hungry.

5. NPR news.

6. Amazon. The other day I went to Walmart to buy a Smokey Joe mini charcoal grill, found they no longer carry it, ordered from Amazon while I was standing in the aisle. I also like that I can take a picture of something and they will try to find it for me (not always successfully).

7. Tiger Woods Golf. I know, I know. But I have learned a lot of golf by stroking my screen with the tip of my finger.

8. My bank’s mobile deposit feature. A problem that my bank is not in town. A solution that I can take a picture by aligning the check with the screen and deposit that way.

9. Email. This is actually the killer app for me. I don’t read much email in detail, but I do know when somebody is trying to get in touch so I don’t have to interrupt what I am doing and find a wireless connection for my laptop.

10. Caterday on YouTube. I said most used apps, not most used by me. For 8 year olds, a few Caterday episodes make a long car ride pass quickly. Then the battery runs out of juice, and that is even better.

And now the rant: why is it that location based apps (including several of the above) must find your location before they will load any of the program information such as your search box? It makes for a frustrating experience, often means that by the time you get to use the app you have passed whatever you were interesting in, and it just doesn’t seem necessary. WTF?

Like a drug dealer passing out free candy at a schoolyard (my longtime friend Phil Henderson claims this is how they get you hooked), AT&T enabled a prototype of its tethering on the iPhone this past June.  It wasn’t publicly released; you had to go to a special website to install it. But once you did the effect was amazing and liberating: you could now use your iPhone as a modem to connect your computer to the Internet, just by clicking “enable tethering” in your settings and connecting via Bluetooth or a USB cable.

AT&T undoubtedly plans to make this service official, and charge for it at some point. Assuming they don’t get too greedy, tethering trial users will gladly open their wallets. But the trial tethering went away with finality in iPhone 3.1, the latest software release.

If you religiously respond to Apple’s “an update for your iPhone is available” alerts you are already out of luck. Release 3.1 includes a firmware update that now verifies the iPhone each time you connect to the network (like Microsoft’s Genuine Windows “service”) so if you try to reinitiate tethering it will be immediately disabled. Since this is firmware, the “restore from backup” will not fix it.

If you want to try tethering and you haven’t updated, you might try Googling  “enable tethering iPhone 3.0” or some such… just remember you are going to have to pay for it eventually. If you are already on 3.1 you are out of luck.

But if you had previously enabled tethering and now are at 3.1, you are feeling pretty unpopular right now! How do I know? Because you haven’t gotten any new voicemails in days! Well, actually you have but they are hidden. No alerts in the iPhone visual menu when they arrive, and no way to access them and listen to them.

If you have this problem, you might want to Google “restore visual voicemail iPhone 3.1” or some such. For me, what worked was going to Settings>General>Profile, clicking that, then clicking “remove” for the file that is there. (Some have reported the path as Settings>General>Network>Profile; I can’t go back and verify it because once you do this and sync your phone, the “Profile” choice disappears.)

Voila, all your voicemails are back instantly. Including, if you are like me, some action items that are seriously past due. Go ahead and take care of them, you can thank me later.

Consistent and thorough (you might also say obsessive) are words that describe any Apple marketing effort. I got an example when I decided to treat myself today to the just-released Snow Leopard upgrade, speed and various new features for an affordable $29. Was near an Apple store (Knox Street in Dallas) so stopped in.

They had a little VIP line with a delicate white chain set up in the middle of the store. (Which, as Apple stores usually are, was packed. What are all those people doing in there? How many visits does it take to buy a computer or iPhone?) You move quickly through the line and an employee hands you your DVD case, shakes your hand, says “congratulations.” Another employee handles the receipt and puts a little payment confirmation sticker on the case that says “Lucky You”. And the door employee (who introduced herself by name as I entered) repeats the congratulations on the way out.

Compulsive and obsessive are signs of mental imbalance, right? Is that what Steve Jobs means by “insanely great?” But it’s also very effective marketing because it makes customers feel smart and special.

I got my iPhone finally and am happy with all it does. But also surprised at some of the things it does NOT do. Here are a few issues that need to be addressed immediately… I’ll add more as I come up with them:

• Camera needs exposure control and flash. Movies would also be nice.
• Flash player for Safari.
• Global: cut-and-paste between applications.
• Global: a bigger keyboard when you turn the phone on its side, like there now is in Safari.
• Audio directions for the Google Maps directions.