Obama Returns to Hawaii to Continue Vacation

HONOLULU â€" President Obama eased back into the relaxing groove of his Christmas in Hawaii vacation on Wednesday after a brief hiatus to wrangle with Congress over a deal to avert a fiscal crisis.

In most respects, Wednesday on the island of Oahu was 5,000 miles away and a world apart from the political brinksmanship of the nation's capital. The morning included a trip to the local Marine Corps base, where the president went to the gym.

And after speaking with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey about the stalled efforts to provide tens of billions of dollars to the states to aid their recovery from Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Obama hit the golf course.

The White House announced Mr. Obama's golf partners, as is standard protocol, and they once again included a friend who always creates a bit of a stir whenever he is spotted with the president. Bobby Titcomb, an old friend of the president's f rom their days at the Punahou School here, was arrested in 2011 on a charge of soliciting prostitution after being swept up in an undercover sting. He later entered a plea of no contest.

The president's group also included Marty Nesbitt, a Chicago friend. Mr. Nesbitt was an early backer of Mr. Obama, and he later served as treasurer for his 2008 presidential campaign.

The third in their foursome was Allison Davis, a Chicago developer and lawyer who was one of the founders of the firm the president once worked for and who was another financial backer of his early political career.

The White House also released a new taped message from the president on Wednesday in which he outlined his priorities for 2013 â€" listing them in order as winding down the war in Afghanistan, reforming immigration and gun control â€" and cautioned that many of the issues that made the tax-and-spending deal so difficult remain unresolved.

“Obviously there's still more t o do when it comes to reducing our debt,” he said. “And I'm willing to do more as long as it does it in a balanced way that doesn't put all the burden on seniors or students or middle-class families.”

Can Your Phone Find Your Car?

From left: Find My Car, StuffFinder and Sally Park.

Two years ago, my parents celebrated their 40th anniversary. Toasts were given, tears were shed and when the last of the dishes were put away, my mom surprised everyone with a slide show of never-before-seen photos of my parents skiing around the Western United States - she five months pregnant with my eldest brother - celebrating the last of their days sans children.

It was a delightful evening. But just two years later, their 42nd anniversary nearly ended in divorce.

My parents celebrated with a film and dinner in San Francisco. My mom was recovering from knee surgery, so my dad dutifully dropped her off at the restaura nt and afterward went to pick up the car.

The way my mom tells it, she was left standing on a street corner, in the pouring rain, with men trying to pick her up (“I was dressed very nicely and they were honking,” she recalled) for 30 minutes before my dad called to report that he had lost the car.

Calls to towing companies were not fruitful: “We could only remember four of the numbers on the license plate and not in the right order.” They asked a cabdriver to drive them up and down nearby streets. “It was the end of his 12-hour shift and, after an hour, he wanted to go home,” my mom said. “But I can be very tenacious.” At midnight, they debated taking the train home but decided it was too late. Finally, after several of my mom's motivational speeches to the cabdriver and a $70 fare, they found the car. (As to who spotted the car first, the debate continues.)

I suggested that, next time, they use Google Maps to mark their car's location on a map. Other people suggested mobile applications specifically designed to help people locate their car. My dad and I gave six apps a whirl:

Find My Car. (Free, iOS and Android) Using the phone's GPS, Find My Car locates your parking spot and fixes it on your phone's map. You can take photos using the phone's camera and jot down notes, which comes in handy if you park in a massive airport garage. But the app could be more intuitive. It lets you set a timer for a parking meter, which is useful, but it took five minutes to find that feature within the app. Also, my dad needed his reading glasses for the fine print - major point deductions there.

Find My Car's developers recently unveiled a new app, called Find My Car Smarter, for the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, that syncs with your car's Bluetooth and automatically stores your car's location when you park. The only time you need to open the app is if you misplace your car. I might be willing to fork over $1.99 for that, but my dad, who has never used Bluetooth, didn't seem keen to start.

ICar. (Free, iOS) The iCar app offers everything Find My Car does, except it does not take photos. It also locates nearby gas stations and parking lots, but when we tested those features, we got an error message. This was one of our least favorite options because of all the apps we tested, this was the only one with annoying ads. Note to iCar advertisers: When someone is desperately searching for their car, they are probably not likely to click on a Sam's Club ad.

Honk. (99 cents, iOS) Honk does everything Find My Car and iCar do, but charges you 99 cents for a much cuter interface. The app notes your location, offers directions when it's time to go and lets you take photos and notes - which you can type using the phone's keypad, or scribble using your index finger. Very cute. Like iCar, it helps you find nearby parking lots and gas stations, and also ATMs. And like the others, it lets you mark how much time you have left on the parking meter by swiping your finger along its parking meter icon. You can see on the screen how many minutes you have left, and the app honks when it's time to go, or time to fill up the meter.

Hey Dude, Where's My Car? (Free, iOS) This is basically a more complicated version of Google Maps with a clever name. Bugs crashed this app three times. The app promises you will “never ask ‘Dude Where's My Car?' again,” but it was difficult figuring out how to set the car's parking location. When we looked for app instructions, we found a description of the app developer instead (a “pretty groovy guy in Austin, Texas”). “It may be dude friendly,” my dad said, “but it lost my car and we haven't even parked it yet.”

Sally Park. (2.99, iOS) This was the most costly but also the most intuitive of the apps we tested. All you have to do is open the app and touch the big “Park” button and it automatically sets your locati on. Sally Park also gives you the option to take a photo or write down notes about your location. Like Find My Car, iCar and Honk, it also includes a parking meter timer and reminds you when you have five minutes left on the meter.

My StuffFinder. (Free, iOS) This is the lost-and-found of apps. It not only lets you find your car, but your keys, glasses, wallet, shoes and purse too. Just save the location of various items and the app will direct you back to them. The app promises to get users within 16 feet of their item, but when we tested it in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it only promised accuracy within 596 feet - not ideal when you're trying to find your car keys. But My StuffFinder also lets you take photos of where you left the car and jot down a reminder. One drawback: unlike the other apps, StuffFinder does not include a parking meter timer.

Because all the apps utilized the phone's mapping and GPS technology, they all had the same level of location accur acy. Because of that, my dad said he would probably use the apps with the most intuitive interface and that included photo and note-taking abilities and a parking meter alarm, like Honk and Sally Park. Outside the city, where he doesn't have to worry about meter maids, he said he would be more likely to use My StuffFinder, especially for my mom's things. “Your mom is always misplacing her glasses and keys.” And with that, we'll see whether they make it to their 43rd.

Northeast Republicans Enraged by Inaction on Storm Relief

In a remarkable open display of rage, Republican representatives from New York and New Jersey publicly accused their House leadership of betrayal and hypocrisy for deciding at the last minute to cancel a vote in the 112th Congress on emergency relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Representative Peter T. King of Long Island said the decision by his party's leaders was “disgraceful” and “immoral,” and he suggested that New Yorkers who contribute to the National Republican Congressional Committee should “have their head examined.”

“I can't imagine that type of indifference, that type of disregard, that cavalier attitude toward any other part of the country,” Mr. King said on the floor of the House for the official Congressional record. “These people have no problem finding New York when it comes to raising money . It's only when it comes to allocating money” that they declare the region undeserving.

Republicans balked at putting a, $60.4 billion Sandy relief package that has been passed by the Senate to a vote before the 112th Congress disbands at noon Thursday. Leaders assured lawmakers they could start afresh when the 113th Congress convenes the same day, but under Congressional rules, no work from the last Congress can continue in the next. Mr. King made note that virtually nothing will be done until after President Obama's Jan. 20 Inauguration at the earliest.

Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican whose Staten Island district was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, delivered an emotional address to the House, reluctantly agreeing with Representative Jerrold Nadler, the liberal Democrat who had preceded him. Mr. Nadler had called the behavior on the storm the “most disgraceful act” he had seen in his 20 years in the House.

Apologizing to his constituents for his own party's actions, Mr. Grimm said, “There was a betrayal. There was an error in judgment that is going to cost I think the trust of the American people, not for me individually, not even for members as individuals, but for this body as we move forward.”

Representative Frank A. LoBiondo, Republican of New Jersey, followed with his own denunciation, accusing the House of treating the Northeast differently than Congress treated the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the Republican-rich states on the Gulf of Mexico.

“Yes, anger, frustration, this is all rolled into this,” he said.

Paper For The Paperless Revolution

It may appear that apps like Evernote are intended to cut down on your use of paper. After all, they let you jot notes, store webpages and contact information, while making all of that data electronically searchable on computers, phones and tablets.

But you wouldn't recognize them as part of the paperless revolution from the posh notebooks that are being manufactured specifically with such apps in mind.

For one, there is the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. Ranging in price from $25 to $30, depending on size, these 192- or 240-page books are ruled with subtle dotted lines. The lines are supposed to help Evernote's “page camera” straighten your notes or drawings. My test notes, when photographed, didn't seem any straighter than those made on regular paper.

The Moleskines also come with sets of stickers that Evernote recognizes and uses to categorize your notes. For instance, put an airplane sticker on notes about travel, and you can find them unde r the app's travel tags. You can also change the headings that go with each sticker to anything you'd like.

The Smart Notebooks entitle users to three months of Evernote's premium service, which is normally $5 a month.

Evernote isn't the only digital organizer that recommends a paper product as an accessory. Springpad, a service similar to Evernote, had a promotion in October with Whitelines notepads. Whitelines pads are especially camera friendly because they have a slightly gray background ruled with white lines that are supposed to disappear when scanned. Whitelines has its own app, Whitelines Link, for capturing notes and drawings, but users have not rated the app very highly. You may be better just using the notepaper with Springpad.

To make it all a bit more confusing, Whitelines is also allied with Evernote. When you save your notes in Whitelines Link, a button gives you the option of saving them to Evernote or Dropbox.

The Whitelines notebooks come in a variety of sizes and layouts ranging from a 48-page pocket-size notebook for $4 to an 80-page 8-by-12-inch hardbound book for $35. There is also a $12 shipping charge, because the books are coming from Sweden.

There are also the unallied Dot Grid notebooks from Creative's Outfitter. Their pages are a field of light gray dots that can be used as a guide like graph paper. A two-pack of 64-page 4-by-6-inch notebooks costs $7 and a 200-page 6-by-8-inch hard cover notebook sells for $17.50.

Of course, no special notebook is required to use any of these apps. A $1.50 spiral-bound from an office supply store will do just fine. You can always preserve your hipster cachet by writing with a fountain pen.

Paper For The Paperless Revolution

It may appear that apps like Evernote are intended to cut down on your use of paper. After all, they let you jot notes, store webpages and contact information, while making all of that data electronically searchable on computers, phones and tablets.

But you wouldn't recognize them as part of the paperless revolution from the posh notebooks that are being manufactured specifically with such apps in mind.

For one, there is the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. Ranging in price from $25 to $30, depending on size, these 192- or 240-page books are ruled with subtle dotted lines. The lines are supposed to help Evernote's “page camera” straighten your notes or drawings. My test notes, when photographed, didn't seem any straighter than those made on regular paper.

The Moleskines also come with sets of stickers that Evernote recognizes and uses to categorize your notes. For instance, put an airplane sticker on notes about travel, and you can find them unde r the app's travel tags. You can also change the headings that go with each sticker to anything you'd like.

The Smart Notebooks entitle users to three months of Evernote's premium service, which is normally $5 a month.

Evernote isn't the only digital organizer that recommends a paper product as an accessory. Springpad, a service similar to Evernote, had a promotion in October with Whitelines notepads. Whitelines pads are especially camera friendly because they have a slightly gray background ruled with white lines that are supposed to disappear when scanned. Whitelines has its own app, Whitelines Link, for capturing notes and drawings, but users have not rated the app very highly. You may be better just using the notepaper with Springpad.

To make it all a bit more confusing, Whitelines is also allied with Evernote. When you save your notes in Whitelines Link, a button gives you the option of saving them to Evernote or Dropbox.

The Whitelines notebooks come in a variety of sizes and layouts ranging from a 48-page pocket-size notebook for $4 to an 80-page 8-by-12-inch hardbound book for $35. There is also a $12 shipping charge, because the books are coming from Sweden.

There are also the unallied Dot Grid notebooks from Creative's Outfitter. Their pages are a field of light gray dots that can be used as a guide like graph paper. A two-pack of 64-page 4-by-6-inch notebooks costs $7 and a 200-page 6-by-8-inch hard cover notebook sells for $17.50.

Of course, no special notebook is required to use any of these apps. A $1.50 spiral-bound from an office supply store will do just fine. You can always preserve your hipster cachet by writing with a fountain pen.