Navigation
I'm thrilled to see so many choices in Turn-by-Turn navigation Apps for the iPhone. Being an early adopter of a few of these Apps and still really loving the Navigon App, I know that it's fierce competition in this market that makes it great for all of us. However, what do you do when someone offers Turn-by-Turn navigation for FREE? Hmmm. Well that's exactly what Mapquest Mobile has done! Now you have to keep in mind the difference here between an App like Navigon Mobile Navigator and Mapquest. Besides the price, Navigon includes the maps in the App itself. So no internet connection is required to use it. However, with Mapquest it's pulling everything in from the internet as you drive. For urban areas, that's probably not a problem, but for areas where you might lose your data signal you would also lose your navigation. Rather than go on and on about this App myself, I'd rather turn you over to the review that my buddy Jack Beckman wrote here. This is his first Navigation App for the iPhone and he compares it with his Garmin Nuvi 765t. See Jack's full review here.
Get it here:
by Mordy Golding
I do enough traveling to have been named a Road Warrior by American Way Magazine, back in 2006. I'm also Jewish (Orthodox) and eat kosher. Put the two together and the result is me usually trying to figure out where I can grab a bite to eat as I travel the world. There's a great kosher restaurant database that you can find and search through at www.shamash.org, but the folks at Rusty Brick have created an app called Kosher which taps into the power of your iPhone.
The Kosher app is actually linked to the shamash.org database, so the listings are current, and when you launch the Kosher app, it connects to the database to update all listings. In the Kosher app, you can choose to either search for a specific restaurant, or my favorite feature — click the Find Near Me button. After detecting your GPS location, the Kosher app will list any kosher restaurants or food establishments in your vicinity. You'll get exact distances from where you are, basic information such as kosher certification (hashgacha), price, and even rating and comments from other travelers. With a single click you can call the restaurant or get a location and directions with Google maps.
Although I'm a fan of GPS devices in general and couldn't live without GPS navigation, I have resisted buying a car kit. I've resisted these gadgets for one reason and one reason only, I believe they are generally overpriced ($129.99). Don't get me wrong, I believe they are working great and definitely improve GPS reception for navigation apps on the iPhone, it's just that at the current price it's hard to justify a car kit that basically goes for the same price as a full blown (low end) GPS unit. With that said, I'm not opposed to reviewing one if a company is generous enough to send me one and Magellan is just that kind of company 
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth?…
I've tried a lot of different movie showtime apps! I do really like the features in Flixter, i.TV and the others. However, recently I went back to the first Movie Showtimes App I ever used.
It wasn't long ago that I reviewed the TomTom Navigation App for the iPhone. At the time the only other app that I had to compare it with was the Navigon app, which came out first. When the TomTom app came out it really wasn't any better than the Navigon app. Sure there are some things that were nicer like more POIs, but overall the app had basically the same major limitations as the Navigon app. Well Navigon has released two updates since then and in the latest update they gave us TTS (Text to Speech) so that when you're approaching a turn it says the name of the street that you're about to turn on. This plus integrated iPod controls an automatic day/night mode and a few other fixes plus a cheaper retail price makes Navigon my app of choice. Check out the Navigon app here on the App Store:
One of the things that I had originally dinged Navigon for in their GPS turn-by-turn navigation app was the lack of Text-to-Speech (TTS). This is the feature that tells you the name of the street you're about to turn on. ie. "Turn right on Maple Street". Well to keep the pressure on TomTom and others, Navigon just released their update as promised. They also added an Automatic Day/Night adjustment for adjusting the display for the time of day.
Now let's have Traffic Support and we'll be really good to go!
Navigon also recently announced that they were developing their own "car kit." Although the TomTom car kit seems that it will do more and offer the much needed GPS signal boost. Not to mention that the TomTom one will work with other apps besides TomTom (like the Navigon app). Both car kits are slated to ship in October. In the meantime I'm using this iPhone Vent Mount.
The Navigon app is now $69.99 and available here from the App Store.
One of the most anticipated 3rd party apps for the iPhone is here! A few weeks back I reviewed the first full featured turn-by-turn stand alone navigation app for the iPhone – the Navigon App. See that review here. Navigon kinda stole TomTom's thunder a little by being first to market. However, before I passed judgement (and recommend it) I wanted to see the TomTom app.
First off, like I said in my last review, I had no idea how much these apps were going to cost but the $69.99 introductory price seemed high to me. Well now that price seems like a bargain! The TomTom app came out at the full $99.99 price for the US/Canada version. I'm going to put aside the price right now and concentrate on the features of the app. We'll get back to the price at the end.
It works!
The TomTom app performs as I would have expected it to. The apps starts up a little slower than the Navigon app, but otherwise is very snappy. I must say that I like the layout and number of options in the TomTom app menus over that of the Navigon app. Also Navigon has an annoying habit of using really small fonts, the TomTom screens are very easy to read.
Points of Interest (POIs) also load very very quickly. I was stunned by the number of voices available in this app. You can have just about any voice you want including several just in the US language alone both male and female. No custom voices though.
See it in action
Rather than trying to explain how the app works, I recorded this video of a live demo of the TomTom app. Check it out. Caution: some parts are shaky.
One of the apps I had been looking for was an App that would find the mid-point between two people for meetings. One of my blog readers pointed me to Midway, which was my iPhone App of the Week a couple of months ago. I really like Midway, however the one thing it was missing was the ability to enter a manual address. Well now I've found a new App called MeetMe that works just the way I want it to.
The concept is simple. You either use your current location, an address from one of your Contacts or an address that you enter manually as your Point A and Point B locations.
Then you choose a category for the type of meeting location that you want to meet at. MeetMe will then propose a list of locations between Point A and Point B.
When the iPhone OS 3.0 update was introduced, Apple opened the door to 3rd party turn-by-turn apps. They brought TomTom up on stage to show off the app that they were working on. I was impressed by what I saw and thought that this might be a chance to carry one less device when I travel. I'm very fond of my Garmin Nuvi 765T and the chances of a Garmin App for the iPhone are slim. It seems that Garmin would rather compete with a phone of their own (Garmin, look at the Palm Pre. You guys just don't stand a chance against iPhone and Blackberry). So an iPhone app would have to be really killer to make me give up my Nuvi. I'm also a fan of Navigon GPS units too. Actually it's not so much about their hardware that I'm impressed by as much as it is their software. I fell in love with the Navigon 3D Reality View, which pops up a photo realistic image of the road signs you're going to go under so that you're in the right lane. Not long after the TomTom announcement was made, Navigon announced that they would have an iPhone app too!
It's a race!
In many cases first to market can definitely get you a leg up on your competition. If you have a really good app, then it makes it that much harder for your competitor. It's pretty clear that Navigon wanted to be first. Why you ask? Two reasons: for one they are offering their app for an introductory price of $69.99 until August 15th. Then the price goes up to $99.00. This of course creates a sense of urgency. The second reason is that they state right on their App Store page that a free update is coming with additional features. I would argue that a few of those features should have been in the first release. What was the hurry? Oh yeah, right. That whole get it out first thing. I remember now.
I often come across great apps for the iPhone/iPod touch that work great and are very exciting to me, however there's a problem. Some of these apps are really only useful to people that have a certain piece of hardware or a certain piece of software on their computer or use a certain service such as a particular bank. If I make one of these apps the iPhone App of the Week, then chances are the app will only appeal to a small segment of my readers. So rather than profiling an app with limited appeal or ignoring the app completely (as I have done in the past), I figured I would group them together from time to time in one post so that there will be a greater chance in seeing something that you can use. So welcome to my first "iPhone App of the Week – Helper Apps!" Here are 10 of my favorite Helper Apps:
