Archive for February 19th, 2009

One of the most elusive and desired apps for iPhone is turn-by-turn GPS navigation. We heard that TomTom was developing a GPS navigator. To date, it hasn't shipped. Recently, the focus has been on xGPS, an app that requires a jailbroken iPhone to work.

At Mobile World Congress 2009 (MWC09) in Barcelona, Spain, Sygic is demoing a version of their namesake GPS navigation software running on an iPhone 3G. The Sygic software uses maps from TeleAtlas, the same company that supplies map data for Google Maps. Sygic produces similar software for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Applicatin has turn-by-turn GPS directions with voice prompts, points of interest, support for multiple countries, and locally-stored maps.

Tap Tap Revenge developers anounced new version of this popular application:

"The wait’s almost over! The code’s been written, the music’s been added, and our thumbs are numb from all the ‘testing’. Tap Tap Revenge 2 is signed, sealed… and soon to be delivered. Sometime next week if all goes well."

Today is a depressing day for all of the South Park fans out there. The South Park app has been rejected by Apple:

"We first announced our iPhone App back in October, after we submitted the Application to Apple for approval. After a couple of attempts to get the application approved, we are sad to say that our app has been rejected. According to Apple, the content was "potentially offensive." But Apple did admit that the standards would evolve, citing that when iTunes first launched it didn't sell any music with explicit lyrics. At this point, we are sad to say, the app is dead in the water. Sorry, South Park fans."

Rumors say the app was rejected from the Apps store twice. The content is pretty much what you see on the show.

The Rinspeed iChange is an electric car concept promising 0-60 in four seconds along with a transforming rear end that can create two extra seats. And an iPhone controls everything but the driving parts. The dash features an iPhone dock, and as you can see, there really aren't many other buttons—heck, there's not even a slot for the key. So the iPhone is used to turn on the car, control the Harman/Kardon infotainment system with GPS navigation, and, we believe, even handle the air conditioning complete with vents.

During Mobile World Congress 2009 Google demoed a version of GMail that will still work even when Airplane mode is on. Airplane mode effectively takes the iPhone offline, but by using local storage capabilities found in HTML5, users would still be able to browse and manipulate their mail. A video shows it in action:

via macrumors

Nice scene from Family Guy:

Categories allows you to create folders on your desktop. It is a nice application from Cydia, recently updated to version 2.23.

Here is a change list:

• Fixed issue where users behind a proxy had the app close and safari open in some cases.
• Worked on memory usage. Fixed a large memory leak. (There is still a memory leak in the configuration part of the app, but it’s not as big. I hope I get time to fix it in the near future).
• The iPhone 2.1 and newer froze up when trying to respring with less than 7MB RAM. When memory got low, springboard would kill the app causing it to respring and freeze up. The respring flag should now be cleared in most cases when memory gets this low.
• The app will now detect if it gets closed due to low memory and allow you to continue your editing where you left off.
• Memory free and respring state are now in the status bar while the app is running

New iPhone voice recorder travels back in time. A new iPhone app enables users to record speech after it's already been said.

That sounds impossible, but Epiphany is programmed quite cleverly. The moment you launch the app, it's already recording. But it doesn't store the recording until you tap the "Remember that!" button. In the app's settings, you can set how far back you want to record clips (e.g., 30 seconds or 2 minutes).

This will be extremely useful in a number of ways. For example, imagine you're a journalist and you're interviewing a person who rambles a ton but says something interesting once every 10 minutes or so.

Epiphany is free through the App Store (Link).

via wired