I’ve recently come to know Ryan Irelan (Twitter). Ryan is a busy guy working with Happy Cog and publishing his own screencast series at Mijingo. Ryan is also the guy did such a great job filling in for Dan Benjamin when he was on leave from 5by5. So Ryan, show us your home screen.

What is your favorite app?

Right now my favorite app on my home screen is Instacast. I only recently purchased it and after using it for a day I promoted it to my home screen. Even with wireless syncing in iOS 5, using Instacast to subscribe to and listen to podcasts is a much better experience than using iTunes.

As you can see from the screenshot, I’m a little behind on my listening. My podcast subscriptions consist of shows from 5by5, The Moth Podcast, NPR’s Planet Money, To the Best of Our Knowledge and, of course This American Life. I used to also listen to the Bob Edwards Show from Sirius XM but they cancelled the podcast version for reasons that I’m sure were ill informed. I’m not in my car enough to catch it on the radio.

Speaking of being in the car: I use the Rdio app and service as my main music source while on the go. As long as I have at least a 3G connection I can access just about any song or album I want. It has offline syncing so I can listen to my favorite albums while on an airplane or those other extremely rare occasions that I am without an Internet connection. To me, Rdio is how Apple would do streaming music.

What is the app you are still missing?

The one described in the stalled project in my OmniFocus database.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

For the last five years I’ve worked from home so I don’t use my phone as much during the day as someone who is constantly on the go or isn’t allowed to access their favorite apps and services from work.

I do use my phone a lot while hanging out with my daughter to capture moments as photos and videos. The photos and videos are uploaded to her private Tumblr site or sent via text message to my parents, family, and friends.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Using it. Okay, that’s not a feature but the devices are a pleasure to use.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

This is probably on the punch list for a future version of iOS but I’d like to be able to customize the Notification Center in iOS 5. It is a huge improvement over the old notifications and you can set per app notifications but there are some tweaks I’d like to see.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I mentioned this in my contribution to the 5by5 Steve Jobs tribute but the iPhone and the apps I use have been vitally important in documenting the first year of my daughter’s life.

My parents travel full time and we have immediate family spread up and down the East Coast of the United States and in Germany. Having an insanely simple, near effortless way to share photos and videos right from my phone makes living far away easier. Those moments you saw in the touching FaceTime commercials really happen.

Thanks Ryan

To read about more home screens, clicky here