Do you ride the Metro North commuter train into New York City? Do you have an iPhone?

If so, here’s a way you can take the full schedule into and out of Grand Central Terminal on your iPhone. There’s no internet connection required to read the schedule as everything is stored on your iPhone.

To use the program you key in whether you are going into or out of Grand Central (one flaw is that you can’t use this schedule to show intermediate stops such as whether the train stops at a certain station on the way into Grand Central Terminal).

The resulting schedules is displayed on your iPhone which also includes the estimated travel times and whether the fare is considered to be peak or off peak.

This is a nice little application for those of us looking to eliminate some paper and make fuller use of our iPhones to carry useful information.

Link: Station Stops (iTunes)
Link: Station Stops Web Site

The wait is over.

Google’s open source phone operating system is shipping today (October 23, 2008) initially at T-Mobile. The current selection of phones is slim (and ugly in my opinion) with only an HTC slider (The G1). Since Android is an open source phone software, it means that carriers can freely incorporate it into their handsets.

Unfortunately the G1 design, while incorporating a keyboard, is a rather tired looking copy of the T-Mobile Sidekick. Currently this is the only phone on the market that comes pre-loaded with the Android operating system. There will undoubtedly be several additional models introduced by other carriers over the next six to nine months.

Remember that since Android is an open source operating system that carriers are free to use it without any payment. They also likely will modify it to provide a customized look and feel. Due to the open source nature of the software there will not be any exclusivity period with one carrier.

You’ll quickly see other carriers pick this up and by the middle of next year I think all the major USA based operators will have at least one Android phone.

Here are the quick specifications:

Touch Screen
QWERTY Keyboard
One-Touch Google Search
Real Web Browsing
Easy Access to Google Apps
3G Network and Wi-Fi Access
IM/Text/E-mail
3.2 Megapixel Camera
YouTube™ Videos
Music Player
Android™ Market
Customizable Home Screen

For more information you can check out T-Mobile’s Android G1 site at the link below (My recommendation is to wait and see what other phone models might be introduced in the next 6 months).

Link: T-MobileG1.com

Metro North (MTA) Grand Central train schedule for your iPhone

T-Mobile G1 Android phone goes on sale today

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