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TomTom updated to 1.3 now with Google Local Search!
March 13th, 2010 Uncategorized none Comments

tomtom-update

The AT&T Navigator app and TomTom are my two favorite GPS solutions; TomTom just took the lead with this most recent update.

One of the benefits of the AT&T Navigator app was the ability to search real-time and navigate to a location via the web. Now, TomTom is bringing us that functionality via Google Local Search, and more! Here is a list of changes in the most rescent update, 1.3:

  • Real-Time traffic- The best traffic information available today (an additional $19.99)
  • Google Local Search- Access the latest listings from within TomTom
  • The Latest Maps- The most accurate map
  • Music Fading- Instead of music pausing, it fades when navigation is spoken
  • Automatic Day/Night Mode- TomTom now calculates the sunrise and sunset and changes the map accordingly
  • Add Locations- From other apps and websites

There are some other nuances too such as button placement and how the iPod controls work, but they are definitely for the better. It is disappointing that the traffic component costs an additional $19.99, but to me the Google Search alone is worth this update. Check out some pics after the break!





TomTom updated to 1.3 now with Google Local Search! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog


TiPb After Dark: SinSearch Brings Bad Things to Your iPhone
March 12th, 2010 Uncategorized none Comments

SinSearch for iPhone

SinSearch [Free - iTunes link] is a very bad iPhone app. Not bad as in badly done by any means — bad as in it helps you find things that are bad for your health, bad for your wallet, and/or bad for any chance at a career in public office should they be discovered. (Which means, of course, it should be wildly popular):

SinSearch uses your GEOlocation (GPS) to pinpoint bars, clubs, taxis, spirits, wine bars and many more locations nearest your current location. Scroll through a list of results and click to find locations organized by distance away from you. Address, phone number, map and directions are all provided within the app. Perfect for those of you looking to have a memorable night of fun in a new town or in your very own backyard! It will not only help you find fun but help you get out of trouble with searches for lawyers, churches, hospitals and more!

Nice little shot of redemption there at the end! If you give it a try, let us know what you think!

TiPb After Dark: SinSearch Brings Bad Things to Your iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog


Organize Your Entire Life With Springpad
March 9th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

Our lives are getting increasingly cluttered with ideas, things to see and obligations to fulfill. Fortunately being an iPhone owner, making it all make sense can be as easy as using the new note management app Springpad.

Springpad is the newly released companion app for the popular note taking and information organizing website. It takes note management to the extreme as it helps you gather anything important to you and keeps it organized to review later on.

After registering, you can begin adding a thought simply by typing it in. The app goes further by enhancing the thought using the following markers: type (recipe, book, movie, tasks, etc), attaching a photo note, using GPS to mark a specific location or by using the included barcode scanner to look up a product (powered by Occipital – makers of the fabulous Red Laser app).

Information is neatly organized  in the category you specify. Notes entered into the app are automatically sync’d and accessible on the Springpad website making it easy to follow up on anything you come across in your day to day.

Although note management apps aren’t anything new with standouts like Evernote already available, what sets Springpad apart are it’s very extensive categories and database of products you can look up to help enhance your note. Springpad also makes it fun to discover new things by adding a social component to the service. You can share anything you note or follow your friends to find out about anything new and interesting.

By combining components of several popular note taking apps, Springpad makes for a great management tool. If staying organized was one of your resolutions for the new year, here’s a very good way to make it happen.

Springpad is available for free on the App Store.

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Europe: Never Be Caught Out By A Speed Trap Again
March 9th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

Whether you’re King of The Road or Driving Miss Daisy I can bet my life that a database of Speed Cameras would make driving a whole lot easier and a million times more enjoyable.

SpeedTraps is a free app from AROBS Transilvania Software that can transform your iPhone into a feature packed speed camera warning system. Using the iPhone’s built in GPS, SpeedTraps will notify you as you approach any fixed speed cameras (camera positions provided by www.POIplaza.com).

Features include audio and visual alerts for when you approach a speed camera. The volume, can be either subtle or loud, and the range of the alerts can be set from 100 to 3000 meters to suit your driving style. With the maps feature, using either Google Maps or Open Street Map, the speed cameras can be displayed visually to allow an overview of your journey. A really helpful feature when route planning before you leave home or if you do not have a safe way to access your phone whilst driving.

The database includes fixed camera locations for United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Hungary and Romania. The ability to add and edit new camera locations, for temporary cameras or mobile speed traps, is a really great feature that improves the overall reliability of the database.

In addition, the developer has promised “Custom Database File Uploads” which will be available in next version.

SpeedTraps is available for free, in the App Store.

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Share That Tasty Dish With Foodspotting
March 8th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

Do you have friends in your social network that like to share their dining experiences with Twitter updates and photos of their culinary conquests?   The makers of a new app called Foodspotting hope to take that idea and create the ultimate visual food guide.

Foodspotting is a simple app that allows you to document your food selection for all of the world to see. You can share a picture of the dish, label it and using the iPhone’s GPS, pin it on a map to give everyone an opportunity to visually sample your delicious dish.

This crowd sourced sharing of food photos makes for a pretty powerful tool to discovering new foods. You can search for specific food items and restaurants or simply scroll through photos of shared dishes from restaurants near you. Just be prepared when your mouth begins to water.

There is also a section that allows users to view guides created by other Foodspotting users. These guides are lists of recommendations for specific foods or restaurants and can range from anything like best burgers in Hong Kong or where to get Bloody Mary’s in LA. These guides can also include challenges that users have created to see who can spot and ultimately sample all the foods within any guide. Winners can earn FourSquare like badges for their accomplishments.

Foodspotting is a simple idea but makes for a great way to organize and search out your next meal. Trying out new food is always fun but now sharing your experience is even better.

Foodspotting is available for free, on the App Store.

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Apple Rejects Electrosmog Measuring App – Keeps Us In The Dark
March 7th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

While latest studies seem to demonstrate the opposite, we all live with some sort of fear regarding radiations emitted by our dear iPhones. To address this concern, Tawkon, an Israeli startup came up with quite a brilliant concept; a radiation counter app. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t want to hear about it.

Some background first, to connect to surrounding cell towers, as you probably know already, your iPhone emits radio signals. The power of this signal however varies importantly depending how far you’re situated from the tower. If you’re close, it stays low, if you’re far away, it goes up.

You can actually easily consult your iPhone’s current emitting power by going in test mode, to do that, just type *3001#12345#* on your iPhone’s dialpad and hit call. In short, the idea of the app was to take that data, and turn it into something more human-readable.

Alright, it’s a little more complicated than that and Tawkon went a little further:

Algorithmic magic analyzes your phone’s dynamic SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) levels, location, environmental factors, as well as unique smart-phone capabilities such as bluetooth, accelerometer, proximity sensors, GPS and compass. The level of radiation a person is exposed to during calls is determined by analyzing several dynamic parameters, including the impact of environmental factors such as distance from cellular towers, network and weather condition, terrain, antenna’s proximity from the body, antenna orientation (if the user is holding the phone vertically or horizontally) and travel speed.

While we have no way to tell how plausible those measurements are, it did look like an interesting tool. However, like so often before, Apple rejected it. Because in their opinion:

a diagnostic tool of this nature would create confusion with iPhone owners from a usability perspective.

I’m reading “this would freak iPhone owners out” here, what’s your take on this one?

[via TechCrunch]

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Splinter Cell Is Coming To The App Store – Your Target: Apple’s HQ
March 4th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, the very successful video games series is on its way to the App Store.

Following an unconfirmed announcement in a Swiss hotel in Zurich last year, Gameloft has just posted a teaser website for the game at Samsnewmission.com. The website, reported by TouchArcade, was registered by Gameloft only a week ago and consists for now of just the above illustration, and a set of GPS coordinates.

Interestingly, these coordinates, known to all Apple fanboys, are those of Apple’s very own Headquarters in Cupertino, California.

While we don’t know anything more for now, my take is that your next mission might very well consist in extracting some prototypes, and maybe tranquing Steve in the process. Remember the iPhone ad?

Anyway, we’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, what’s your take on this one?

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UK: Calling All Nosey Parkers
March 3rd, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

I have lost count of the number of times I have parked my car in a City Centre only to walk past a cleaner, cheaper, more secure Car Park on my way to my destination. Even when I have gone to the trouble of planning my parking in advance, I am often left with unanswered questions and a journey clouded by uncertainty.

Will the Car Park accept Credit Cards?, Will it be the cheapest? Will it be secure? Will it have parent and toddler spaces? The list goes on!

If only there was app that could do this for me? Well thanks to Stardotstar Ltd, There is! Nosey Parker is the first and only car park location app covering the UK.

With access to a database of over 13,400 car-parks across the country and using your iPhones in-built GPS, you can find the closest and most secure Car Park available. Further access to 5000 free car parks in the UK will definitely ensure that Nosey Parker will find you the Cheapest Car Park too!

This app is a must for anyone who travels into City Centres for business or pleasure. It provides honest and reliable reviews and the addition of information on the number of parent & child spaces, disabled spaces and Safer Parking Awards makes this app a real winner. It will take some of the hassle out of your journey and make parking your car simpler than ever.

Nosey Parker can save you time, petrol and money.

It is available in the app store for $2.99 and to quote the developer “at that price this app could pay for itself the first time you use it!”

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(BUMP) – The City Of Boston Is Listening To Your Complaints – With An App
March 3rd, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

The City of Boston has been busy getting its legion of iPhone owners together to report graffiti, potholes, and malfunctioning traffic lights to the Constituent Relationship Management System (CRM) with their Citizens Connect app. The CRM is responsible for tracking reports and complaints from the community and assigning service teams to resolve them.

In an effort to improve on the user experience and possibly get more people involved, the soon to be released Boston Urban Mechanic Profiler (BUMP) app will utilize the iPhone’s accelerometer and GPS antenna, allowing you to “bump” your road-related grievances to city officials.

The technology is analogous to Bump Technologies’ Bump app, which allows users to exchange photos and contact information by bumping fists with their phones. Similarly, motorists, bicyclists, and even pedestrians will be able to report their road condition gripes to the CRM with a gentle nudge of the phone.

Boston’s city officials are also considering equipping city workers with BUMP to cover destitute neighborhoods, where the iPhone population is at a minimum to make sure all areas are reported.

Now, if only the City of New York could come up with something like this, yesterday’s flat tire could have been avoided!

[via The Boston Globe]

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AutoPark – A Toolbox For Big City Drivers
February 28th, 2010 Appstore Apps none Comments

Have you ever asked yourself whether you parked in the orange section or the purple section? How much time is left on the meter or where’s the nearest bathroom? I know I have.

Thanks to its set of tools, FrolicWare’s AutoPark App wants to make sure you’ll never have to ask yourself those questions again.

It comes with a GPS car finder, which allows you to mark your car’s location on a map and makes it easy to find later (just like Find My Car does). If you’re on the clock, it also includes a meter timer, letting you know via Push Notification when you have to run back to your car to drop in another coin.

Parked in a parking garage? It will keep track of your floor, section, and space number so you don’t get lost Seinfeld style. You can even take a picture of your car and attach it a note if that’s your way of finding it.

Lastly, AutoPark’s Nearby services gives you a list of banks, gas stations, and public bathrooms near you to figure out that next stop……before it’s too late!

It’s $5 and just won Macworld’s Expo Best of Show distinction so go check it out.

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