Some of my favorite applications are what I think of as "last mile" apps: they connect the infrastructure of the Internet into my personal infrastructure. For instance, Spanning Sync connects Google Calendar into my personal calendaring system, Apple iCal.
I've recently added another great last mile app to my toolbox: Tooble. It connects YouTube into my personal video system, which is my iPhone.
I often find interesting content on YouTube that I'd love to watch, but video has such low information density that I refuse to watch it unless I'm offline and my other information channels therefore aren't available, like when I'm on an airplane. (Similarly, isn't it amazing how the nasty $9 airport sandwich sounds like a terrible idea until you get into your seat?) In those situations my iPhone comes in very handy, but until recently I hadn't found an easy way to watch YouTube videos on it offline. Enter Tooble.
Now when I happen across something that looks interesting, like this video of Mind of the Market author Michael Shermer's talk at Google, I just copy and paste the URL into Tooble and start the download. The video is downloaded to my Mac, converted into MP4, and sent to iTunes, which syncs it to my iPhone. Then the next time I'm on a plane or otherwise offline I have something interesting to watch.
If you have any other examples of "last mile" apps you find useful I'd love to hear about them.
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