"I just recently got an iPhone, which I love, especially the GPS feature on Google Maps. Being able to pinpoint all the Starbucks in a one-mile radius of where you are in any city is indispensable. I have about 6,000 tunes so far on my iPod, and an app that I really like is Camena. If you’re playing a song, it can call up the lyrics while the song is playing. Cool!"

— Jeff Pippin, CIO of Pepperdine University

“BlackBerrys are a sickness. They are a barrier to two people talking.” Still, Di Mascio says his 21-year-old son recently recommended SitOrSquat.com, a mobile application he thought was perfect for his father, who travels around the world on business. The free app (also available for iPhone) has a database of 52,000 rest rooms in ten countries. “Who doesn’t need that?”

— Rick Di Mascio, CEO of Inalytics (a London-based firm that provides quantitative analysis of investment skills)

“Like many CEOs, I’m connected at the fingers to my BlackBerry. Apps in the financial industry appear to be news-driven as much as anything else. After the credit crisis and market meltdown that saw Lehman Brothers go down on a Sunday, Wall Street may be more addicted than ever to news, and hands down my favorite feature on the BlackBerry is The Wall Street Journal app. WSJ.com alerts start my morning and provide me with regular updates throughout the day, including breaking news.”

— Robert Reynolds, CEO of Putnam Investments