Hasta La Gadget!

True, it’s not the first app offering turn-by-turn driving instructions for the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS — but it is from TomTom, an industry heavy-weight that is finally delivering on years of rumor and speculation. After starting with New Zealand a few hours ago, the iTunes App Store is now populated with region specific TomTom apps for NZ ($95), Australia ($80), US and Canada ($100), and Western Europe ($140). If that sounds expensive… it is; dedicated TomTom navigators start at $120. In other words, this isn’t one of those knee-jerk 99 cent App Store purchases. Naturally, that price does not include the announced TomTom iPhone car kit (rumored to cost £113.85 (about $194) with bundled mapping software) that mounts and charges your iPhone 3G or 3GS while enhancing its GPS performance, speaker, and microphone. Our advice: wait for the reviews before dedicating your non multi-tasking iPhone to the dashboard for navigation duties.

Update: Recombu took the software for a spin and seem duly impressed by their ability to navigate streets with an iPhone taped to the dash (not a joke). They say that when a call comes in, the TomTom app “turns off but restarts as soon as you finish the call.” Lame. See the video overview after the break.

Update 2: TomTom says the upcoming car kit dock / windshield mount will also work with the iPod touch and third-party apps — it contains a faster, more accurate GPS chip than the one in the iPhone. Check a video of it after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read [Warning: iTunes link]

Continue reading TomTom navigation for iPhone 3G and 3GS arrives (update: Video!)

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

TomTom navigation for iPhone 3G and 3GS arrives (update: Video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sid Meiers does a thing; Duke Nukem makes an appearance, exactly as you remember him; social conspiracies are aired; eBay!; and a thing called “e-mail.” All this and more in your unusually 90s-centric weekly app dump, after the jump.

Civilization Revolution: Real-time strategy doesn’t really suit the iPhone—it can be a little frantic, and controls aren’t perfect. So how about an iPhone adaptation of one of the greatest turn-based strategy games of all time? $10 is right at the acceptable ceiling for non-professional iPhone apps, but this is real, true-to-form Sid Meier stuff, right here.

Duke Nukem 3D: Oh, by the way, everyone who likes strategy games is a nerd, right guys? Because real men play DUKE NUKEM’, with the boobs, and the cursing! This is a fairly direct port of the classic game, but with crappier—though not terrible, for the iPhone—controls, and sadly, no iPod Touch 1G compatibility. Three dollars for a reasonably long, surprisingly playable game.

eBay: eBay has updated their app to support two pretty awesome things: Push notifications, to tell you when you’ve been bidsniped, because that’s pretty much all that shopping on eBay is about nowadays, and PayPal payment support, so you don’t have to log onto a PC every time you want to seal a deal. Still free, OBO. (via)

reMail 2: iPhone mail search is fine. reMail iPhone mail search is actually good, if it works for you. Two things: there’s no Exchange support (sorry suits!), and there’s only support for one account at a time. But within that one IMAP or POP account, reMail archives all your message text as far back as you want, letting you search full text—not just subjects—without a network connection. The five dollar price is a little shameful, though.

Pastie: Lets you make a list of preset text snippets that you can quickly send as emails or texts, rather than having to type out a unique message. It’s a timesaver if you’re the kind of person who responds to everything instantly and succinctly, or if you just like having a large clipboard on your phone, but beware: it doesn’t work on iPod Touches, at all. (via)

My Gay Agenda: Are you gay? Do you have a well-formed sense of irony? Would you like to spend three dollars to make everyone is totally aware of these two facts? Great! Though in all seriousness, this faux-pernicious calendar/to-do list is pretty funny, and a portion of the proceeds go to charity.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

• Qik Video Sharing Application Now Available for iPhone 3GS

• iPhone App Developer Uses Fake Tablet Video to Promote their Crappy Game

• The 10 Most Expensive iPhone Apps

• Apple’s Phil Schiller Continues Quelling Faithful’s App Store Unrest With Polite Letters

• Sex Offender Locator Back in the App Store For Some Reason

• CourseSmart Dumps 7,000+ Textbooks Into the iPhone App Store

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.

So, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Qik for iPhone 3GS is now available, and it’s completely gratis to download. The bad news is that it probably won’t do exactly what you want it to. You see, those on Symbian S60 have grown used to a Qik that can actually stream live video to the internet, whereas this app is currently just a “capture and upload” piece. Moreover, it only works via WiFi, so if you’re not near a hotspot once your video is done, you’ll have to wait until you wander back over to one before it automatically begins uploading. Though, you can let the app automatically inform viewers of where the video was taken (in case you feel like pampering guests who show up unannounced), and you can also frame the video horizontally or vertically. The Qik team assures us that an update is in the works to add 3G uploading, but for now, it’s WiFi or bust. Which is kosher so long as it’s free… we guess.

[Thanks, Jackie]

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video, Software

Qik for iPhone 3GS now available, still not capable of live 3G streaming originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The problem with banks, you see, is that they’re one of the few remaining weak links in our ultimate goal of eliminating all human interaction. If you’ve got a check you need to deposit in your account, you’ve got to trek all the way out to your local branch; sure, granted, you can slip the check in an ATM, but your odds of encountering another living creature in the process of doing that are nonzero. Fortunately, USAA — which counts military personnel as a significant percentage of its customer base — is helping to close that loop with its “Deposit@Mobile” service, a component of its just-launched mobile banking app in the iPhone’s App Store. The secret, you see, lies in the iPhones magical camera which can “take” a “picture” of the check, transmit it to USAA, and boom — your cash is instantly deposited. No muss, no fuss, and no pesky people to get between you and your hard-earned cash. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got to get the check from someone in the first place… but, you know, one thing at a time.

[Via The New York Times]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

USAA’s Deposit@Mobile app puts check deposits a mug shot away originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This week in the unseasonably entertaining App Store: Another bizarrely amazing music app; free turn-by-turn directions of questionable reliability; a fat man on a tightrope; an interesting take on the classic-est of classics; and a treat for our dear developers.

Pac-Mac Remix: This is an official, sanctioned Pac-Man remake, and accordingly a pretty good one. Purists might be turned off by the 3D graphics, but the gameplay hasn’t really changed; in fact, using finger flicks to change direction is a brilliant way to control Pac-Man. For $6, as is, this is good; for $2—even if that would mean losing the flashy production—it would kill.

Mujik: An instrument-slash-synthesizer made of books, flies, cardboard and whimsy. It takes about five minutes to figure out what the hell is going on with Mujik, but once you do, it’s beautiful, and the musical possibilities are tremendous. This is as good as Brian Eno’s Bloom, if not better—not least because it’s free. (via TUAW)

Tightwire: A fat man on a tightrope wire, in 3D, who you keep alive by tilting your iPhone. The graphics are good, the impact animations forceful and satisfying, and difficulty level high enough to keep this simple concept entertaining for more than a few minutes. One dollar.

Waze: To be honest, crowd-sourced navigation sounds like a pretty terrible idea, but who am I to judge: Waze has been available in Israel for quite a while, and people swear by it there. In the US, its userbase is a little lean, and most the features don’t yet work as well as they’re supposed to—turn-by-turn navigation included. If more people join, I guess, the user-contributed information, like common speed traps, road quirks, and whatever else you can think of, should get much better. Cool, but couldn’t Google just do this by enabling user layers in Maps? Free.

Call of Duty: World at War Companion: Ha ha, that icon got you all excited, didn’t it? Sorry, this isn’t a new Call of Duty game for the iPhone. Actually, no, not sorry, because for anyone who plays COD: WaW (nice acronym), the detailed stats-tracking and player communication features are pretty neat. Free.

iSimulate: Alright kids, step outside—this one’s for the developers. iSimulate lets you display iPhone apps on your computer screen, mainly for the purposes of demo recording, which is tough in the SDK emulator on account of its awkward accelerometer and multitouch implementations. $8.

The Week’s App News on Giz:

• Gross Virtual Girlfriend App Is One-Upped by its Gross Fox News Coverage

• Apple Yanks Sex Offender Locator From App Store to the Relief of Perverts Everywhere

• Giz Explains: How Push Works

• Apple’s Phil Schiller Explains They Don’t Actually Censor Dictionaries

• Now Apple’s Blocking All Ebook App Store Submissions? Update: No

• The Stupidest App Store Incident Yet: Apple Censors a Dictionary

• Third Largest App Store Developer Gets Banned, For Sucking

• Windows Mobile Wants In On the iPhone App Action, Literally

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.