I broke down and bought Spore Origins for the iPhone. Let me introduce Spot, my proto-creature. This is his level 10 self, with four eyes, three spikey things and two newly acquired mouths to feed.

Let me start this brief review by saying I don’t game much. I tried Cro-Mag Rally on the iPhone, and found it difficult, at best, to control. I find Moonlight Mahjong, which doesn’t make any sudden moves, more my speed — though any serious gamer would call that dull. I like Moonlight because what I often want out of a game on the phone is a bridge to carry me over a few minutes of down time.

Spore demands a little more, but makes for a fun way to spend that time. In evolution mode, I bet most gamers would find it easy, but to me it’s just hard enough to challenge. I got stuck on level 8 for a few sessions, but managed to move on. To me, that mean’s I’ll probably get hours of play out of this game and have a real go of it as levels and difficulty progress. That’s not bad for the $7 sale price. I haven’t tried survival mode yet, but that sounds like more of a challenge. If so, it’ll just extend the life of this little game for me.

Between levels, players can tweak their creature by adding things like spikes and eyes that allow safer navigation of the ether or more effective hunting. The creature editor makes evolving fun, since every pinch and squish you put your creature through is punctuated by a noise that evokes the Pilsbury Dough Boy.

In all, I give Spore high marks for being accessible for a lame-gamer like myself (but not too easy), and for being beautiful in both graphics and implementation.

For the last few weeks I’ve shaken my head and lowered it with a pinch of shame every time I checked updates to Apple’s iTunes App Store. I waited with baited breath for it to open, and now I find myself wishing for a little self restraint in the approval process.

I speak of such useless bits of coding as iFart Mobile. I instinctively think, surely no one actually downloads a flatulence simulator. But thousands have paid a dollar for it. Really? Whoopie cushions haven’t been funny for, um … like, ever. Why would a digital version elicit laughs from anyone but a 10-year-old or a person with the intellectual capacity of one? I’m all for having fun, and even own a couple of pointless, just because, apps (see Koi Pond). But c’mon.

Enough screed for now. I don’t want to be a complete hater, so I thought I’d run down a few of the apps I find useful, innovative or both (in no particular order):

Zenbe Lists: This list-sharing app is one of the first I downloaded last summer, and I still use it every day. It holds my to-dos and grocery lists.

SteadyCam: I just downloaded this one. It uses the accelerometer to know when the phone is still so low-light pictures come out better. It’s not perfect, but anyone who knows me knows how steady my hands are, and how much I need this functionality. It also has a timer for taking group photos, but I haven’t tried that yet.

12seconds: This one works with 12seconds.tv, a Web site that’s a Twitter-like video service. Since Apple hasn’t seen fit to allow the iPhone to capture video, this app takes three photos and 12 seconds of recorded audio, and creates a mini-slideshow. The output appears on the 12seconds site, and cross-posts to Twitter (which in turn cross-posts to Facebook). Nifty concept.

FStream: I’m not much for the stock radio streams here, but I love that I can enter URL to any streaming audio source. I use this app to get an NPR fix on the go from the two local affiliates.

Pace: Keeping track of miles in a running log is a great motivator for marathon training. This log has every feature I need without bogging down with GPS functions (which I can’t use, since I have a 1st gen iPhone). It also tweets my runs, so anyone who cares can follow my progress.

Moonlight Mahjong: This is the first app I paid for, and I still find it more than worth it. I didn’t know mahjong from a hole in the ground before, but after hours of gameplay I can’t get enough. Plus, the developer adds new layouts regularly.

Facebook: I prefer the Facebook iPhone app to its browser-based cousin. Simple and elegant.

Air Sharing: Turns my iPhone into a wi-fi hard drive. This useful app would qualify as über-useful if, like Readdle Docs, you could email in and out of it over Edge.

iTalk: Voice recordings limited only by the iPhone’s available space. I recorded hours of lectures with iTalk at a recent seminar I attended, and even used recordings from it as the basis for my final project in Soundslides. It records aiff files in three quality settings and easily syncs over wi-fi. Plus, you can start a recording in two taps, which is great for brainstorms at traffic lights. I found this app so useful that I upgraded to the pro version from the free ad-supported one.

Google: Like most products from the Big G, this one keeps getting better. It was useful when I first got it, then they added voice search. Now, it’s sweet.

I just finished this piece in the New York Times Magazine, and had a few thoughts. Essentially, it takes a sociological view of how sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like affect our lives. It focuses on the news feed aspects of these Web services, and what it means to have the lives of all our friends — close and tertiary — pushed out to us like ticker tape.

Mrs. Blocletters signed up for Facebook before I did, and I probably wouldn’t have joined nearly as soon if she hadn’t. But, like the iPhone (and, coincidentally, partly because of the iPhone), it’s taken a prominent role in my digital life. I get a big kick out of reading updates on others’ lives, which seem at the same time superficial and intimate. I enjoy writing status updates, and have even taken praise for the quality of my statuses (though I’m not sure what criteria one might use to judge).

Why?

What do I care that a former coworker is getting new glasses? Does knowing what friends think of the new “90210″ show — a show I’ll never watch — enrich my life? Not exactly. But Facebook has helped me keep connected with people from jobs past, and even reconnect with some I’d lost track of. That has value in lives like mine (and those of many other Gen X- and Gen Y-ers) where work is prominent in, if not the center of, social interaction.

Facebook also allows me to, in effect, swim in the conversations of people I see regularly. I see current coworkers and we’ve already cut through the initial few minutes of catch-up conversation. I don’t have to ask, “What did you do over the weekend?” I already know, so we go right to, “Did you enjoy that movie?”

Status updates are part reverse Hallmark card and part haiku. It’s interesting to me, a people watcher, that friends share their workaday experiences, and insightful to see the words they use and try to glean the subtext.

As far as my own updates, the article I linked to sums it up: “The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.” As a headline writer by trade, I find it oddly fulfilling. I’m trained to read a thousand words and boil them down to five. Status writing uses the same toolkit.

I re-read the last few weeks of my updates while writing this — an interesting exercise in itself. A life in small, easily digestible, cartoon balloons. My updates, like those of my “friends” (whether close or casual), are by no means a full account. Still, they convey a bit of me, and for most people, that’s more than enough.

I’ve been on iPhone’s 2.0 firmware for a week, and have had plenty of time to try out a few Apps. My favorite so far is Zenbe Lists.

Though I desperately need an organizational scheme, I find that my life doesn’t quite rise to the level of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” I’ve read the book, and like some of the ideas — particularly the concepts of simplicity and capture. I need a simple system to capture thoughts when I have them. Otherwise, they float away. If you’ve seen “Memento”, you get the idea. I’m not quite tattooing to-dos on my body (yet), but I do have a terrible short-term memory.

Which brings me to Zenbe Lists. The App does one thing well: lists. Create them. Share them. Email them. Embed them. As a bonus, the App syncs quickly over the 2.5G network. Mrs. Blocletters can update the grocery list or the Tar-jay list from her work computer (and eventually, her own iPhone). When I get to the store, I just need a couple seconds to sync to make sure I get the latest. As I check things off, another sync updates the Web site so she can see what I bought.

The interface defines intuitive and easy to use. On the iPhone, three taps get me to entering a new item in any list. On the Web site, it’s even easier.

Since I bought my iPhone last fall, I’ve used Notes for these functions. But, as others have written and I’ve mumbled to myself, Notes doesn’t sync anywhere. Sharing? Forget it.

So, Zenbe Lists fills a niche. It’s more feature-rich than Notes and still intuitive and easy-to-use. Now, as always, the only thing standing between me and organization is me.