I wasn’t sure that I was up to learning any new technology tricks (being almost 70 and just about managing to blog successfully), but I invested in an iphone and its expensive upkeep in a moment of brash consumerism.

But the damned thing has got me hooked.

Away on vacation in Maine for the past four days without a computer and wifi, I had the time and inclination to figure out just how useful my iphone might be.

Of course, there’s the camera, and I knew I would make good use of that feature. If there were a “panorama” app I might have been able to get both the beginning and the end of the rainbow which started on land and went out into the sea, but I can live with what I did get.

The “night camera” app I downloaded before we left enabled to me get some decent photos indoors without a flash.

My “Facebook” app enabled me to upload a couple of photos to keep my friends apprised of the good time I was having while wishing they were there.

My most pleasant surprise in recognizing the helpfulness and ease of iphone use happened on the way out to Maine, when my grandson needed to go to the bathroom and we were all hungry for lunch. Because I was driving, my daughter downloaded a “fast food” app and we got directed to a McDonald’s off an exit a few miles from where we were on the road. How cool is that!

We ate out a lot, so the “tip calculator” would have come handy had not my son-in-law been able to figure it all out just as fast. (Actually, I did use the app just to check his accuracy. And because it was new and I wanted to test it out.)

Before I left for Maine, I downloaded a WordPress app so that I could post to my blog if I wanted to. I posted once, just to see if it would work. I’m used to typing text on a big keyboard, so it was a bit if a problem to use the little iphone one, but, obviously, it can be done. Since I don’t do text messaging (there’s no one I know to text message to), I’m still not used to the little keyboard. But it’s good to know that I can do a blog post if I want/need to.

Since we were in a rented cottage with limited television reception, my evenings were spent using my iphone to listen to the books on tape that I downloaded free from my local library, check in with Facebook, catch up with bloggers whom I follow, follow my son’s exploits on Twitter (I don’t belong to Twitter, but I can read his tweets), and obsessively play my “Bookworm” app game.

While I’m still feeling guilty about the $70 or so a month it costs to keep my iphone connected, at least I’m finding the little machine damned useful. It’s gotten to the point that I’m never without it.

Before the iphone, I had a TrakFone, which I rarely used, and several cheap mp3 players, some of which would not play the WMA audio book files from my library. The iphone covers it all and more.

There are still lots of features on the iphone that I haven’t tried, and I figure that I’ll get to them when I need them.

I have one major frustration at the moment with the iphone. I can’t hear what a caller is saying unless I put on the speaker. Maybe someone reading this can tell me where the hell the phone’s volume control is. I can make the ringer louder or softer, but the voice that’s coming over the phone is barely intelligible.

If I can fix that problem, my love affair with my iphone will be just about perfect.