I may have stumbled upon my favorite iPhone app of the year. You see, lately I've been looking for a good GPS iPhone app; my Garmin is now three years old, and doesn't have lifetime maps, so it's becoming increasingly useless - in fact, it now consistently tells me the wrong way to go more often than not. Initially, I thought I would upgrade and get a better GPS, but it's also annoying to carry around a bunch of gadgets when my phone does so much already. Hell, it's already replaced my iPod (for the most part), Nintendo DS, guitar tuner, notepad, alarm clock, camera, and TV remote - why shouldn't it replace my GPS, too? Garmin sells a GPS iPhone app, but it's $40, over 1GB in size, and as far as I can tell it doesn't have map updates, either.

Enter Waze. It's a free app, which comes with fully featured turn-by-turn GPS navigation, real-time traffic reporting and police speed traps (user-generated), alternative routes, and a bunch of social incentives to keep people generating the traffic tips. It's also available on Android and Blackberry.

For me, it's a perfectly practical app: I plug my iPhone into my car stereo, and the voice prompts will dim my music down a bit and tell me where and when to turn. It will reroute me if it knows there's traffic ahead, but it also adjusts itself based on my traffic patterns - if I take a certain route to work every day, it will learn my preferences. You can adjust how often it gives you voice prompts as well. Every morning, I turn it on and it calculates the fastest way for me to get to work based on current traffic patterns, which saves me time every single day.

Being that the app is only 18MB in size, it uses your cell phone data plan to stream its maps and traffic data, and initially I was afraid that it was going to eat up my data plan. Turns out I have nothing to fear - on a 45-minute trip it only uses about 1MB of cell phone data.

The only bad thing I can say about the app is that I had a hard time figuring out how to save my current location (you just hold your finger down on the location on your map to save it). I should also mention that the reason it works so well for me is that I have my iPhone plugged directly into my stereo; it'd probably be annoying to have to listen to it through the iPhone's internal speaker. Still, I couldn't be happier with this free app, and I would say it's a necessary part of any smartphone. Check out Waze.com for more info and some informative video tutorials.

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Today I upgraded my turn-of-the-century iPhone 3GS for the new-hotness iPhone 4S. One of the first things I was looking forward to was playing Infinity Blade on my iPhone - my 3GS was too sluggish to play it properly and I have only ever played it on my 1st-gen iPad. Which means I've never really had the luxury of playing this game "on the go". However, I had a pretty good chunk of the game completed on the iPad (I'm currently at level 42) and I didn't want to start all over again. Since the game doesn't support any sort of cloud-based game saves, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

First of all, you will want to sync and back up both devices so that you don't get all mad at me if you screw this up.

Download the free iExplorer (formerly "iPhone Explorer"), which works on both PC and Macs. Next, plug in your iDevice that has the game save you want, and open iExplorer. Navigate to Apps > Infinity Blade > Documents and you should find a file called "SwordSave.bin", which is the game save file. Drag the file to your desktop (or somewhere else that's handy) and unplug your iDevice. Plug in the iDevice that you want to play the game on, and this time move that "SwordSave.bin" file to the same directory. Viola! The next time you open the game it will be exactly where you left off on your previous iDevice.

Keep in mind that in order for this to work, both iDevices need to be attached to the same Apple ID, and that this whole process may not be necessary if you are simply upgrading from one iPhone/iPad to another generation, since they should transfer everything over for you when you activate your new device.

This was so easy that I'm going to go through my iDevices and start making backups of my game saves (keeping in mind that some saves are different file types - ".bin" vs ".dat", etc) in case something goes wrong in the future. I've heard that cloud saving is a part of iCloud, but I am not sure if it's being fully implemented yet - and with game saves only being about 30kb in size, it makes sense that something so tiny and precious should be backed up a more securely.

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Look, I'm a patient guy. When you tell me that something I like is coming out I will patiently wait without turning into some forum troll crying about release dates. But some of these iPhone apps need to come out soon or I'm going to burn a kindergaden to the ground. 

Netfilx and Gamecenter for iPhone were announced alongside the iPhone 4 months ago. Where the hell are they? Almost half of the features I was excited about for iPhone 4 are still not on my device! Can we get those sometime soon? JUST GIVE ME THE RELEASE DATE!... Also: Hulu. Give me my Hulu Plus Pass already, you butt horns.

Next up: Games. One of the awesome new improvements of iOS 4 is that you can use the iTunes music library on your phone in games and apps. The very next day that this feature was discovered Elite Beat Agents and Audiosurf should have been announced. People, LISTEN. These games need to come to iPhone. They are perfect for the device. The fact that they're not available, or even announced yet.... again, the kindergarten.
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I come to you today with two suggestions. First, make it a point to regularly check the website Appshopper.com. They are constantly announcing apps for the iPhone and iPad that are on sale, and if you are looking to get some goods on the cheap, that's your spot. There is always something that has been temporarily made $.99, or better yet - free. Put that in your faves and click it.

My next suggestion is to download that app "Appzilla." If you can get past the stupid name, you'll find one mega-app that contains all those little ones that you wanted to try, but didn't want to spend money on, like Battery Life, Dice Roll, Coin Flip, Fake Call and Text (my current faves), and a ton more. It's not free, but at only a buck and a continually upgrading library, your ROI will only improve. Definitely check it out. no comments

A lot of people didn't think it would happen (including myself), but Apple has approved the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone. I can't wait to try it out; as much as I like the iPhone's native Safari browser, I can't help but feel that it could be improved upon. The Opera Mini app, once live, will be available for free.

via Engadget no comments

I just finished following Engadget's iPhone OS 4.0 Event Liveblog, and here are the most significant features they announced:

1. Multitasking - basically, you double-click on the homescreen to bring up all the apps that are open at once. Since apps can run in the background, this means you can get Skype calls even when the app isn't open, or listen to Pandora while doing something else. This is pretty cool.

2. Folders - this will allow you to put multiple apps into one folder, and it will name it for you based on the apps you add into the folder (or you can name it yourself). This now allows you to put over 2,000 apps on your iPhone at once. I used this on my old unlocked iPhone a little bit, but to be honest, I would forget what apps I had in folders and ended up neglecting them. We'll see how this works out.

3. Enhanced Mail - unified inbox (good for me, since I have four accounts that I regularly check), organize email by thread. Sounds good to me.

4. Game center - Apple's own social gaming network. Basically, Xbox Live for the iPhone. This is huge, because it basically will lay waste to current networks like OpenFeint and the Plus+ network. It's going to have a friends list, matchmaking, leaderboards, and achievements.

5. They mentioned a couple other items offhand, like bluetooth keyboard support (YES!), spell checker, customizable homescreen wallpaper, 5x digital zoom, manual focus for videos, and the ability to create playlists.

The new OS will be out this Summer on 3GS. The 3G will have most of the features, but not all of them (they specifically said multitasking will not be on the 3G). It also is coming to the iPad this Fall, which is good news considering how much processing power the iPad has. Overall, most of what I was hoping for is coming to the iPhone soon, and I'm excited. no comments

Apple is having a press event tomorrow morning, during which they are going to announce the new features for iPhone's 4.0 firmware. There is plenty of speculation afoot in these final hours, and rather than rewrite them all (you have fingers, you can find them yourself) or speculate on what features I think are going to be announced, I'm going to list the features that I personally would like to see.

1. Multitasking. Everyone seems to be banking on this idea, and I'll jump on it. I like it how if I double-click my home button, it opens up a menu that lets me play the last song I was listening to. If they can integrate a more robust way of doing this, or allow me to switch between apps without having to go back to the homescreen, I'd be happy.

2. Bluetooth keyboard support. I could be writing this post on my iPhone right now. If I had a keyboard to use with my iPhone, I would definitely be on my computer less.

3. Wireless LAN support. Let my iPhone connect to my home iTunes network, and stream music from my iMac to my iPhone. I know that there are apps out that that let you do this (Simpify Media, etc) but I think Apple would do a better job with it. Also, let me sync my iPhone without having to actually plug it in.

4. The ability to remove the "Stocks" and "Compass" apps from my iPhone.

5. NES and SNES emulator. What, a guy can wish! no comments

It's 1 AM and I can't stop playing this game. It's like Mirror's Edge meets Forza Motorsport. Jet Car Stunts is so painfuly simple, addictively fast-paced and easy to play that I want to go wake up my roomates to get them into it. Plus it has Open Feint integration so I can whup on everyone, achievement-wise.

If you've ever seen Track Mania then you can clearly imagine this game. You drive a Jet/Formula 1 vehicle miles above the earth on floating tracks. Don't worry! It looks harder to control than it is. And so what about the child-friendly button layout!

Look. It's awesome, okay. Just go try it out and come back and let me know if it wasn't the most fun you've had on your iPhone in about a year.

You're welcome. no comments

Hey dude. Remember that game called PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords? You know, that one that seamlessly mixed RPG elements with Bejeweled-style gameplay, and it was frighteningly addictive? Well, I've found a ridiculously fun substitute, and I call it Sword & Poker. The developers call it that, too.

The game is a unique take on poker that also features RPG elements. You are given a tile of nine cards (in a 3x3 pattern), with four cards in your hand. You then can use two of those cards on either side of the 3x3 pattern to create pairs, straights, flushes, etc. It sounds a little confusing written down, but after about 30 seconds with the game you'll figure it out. Your opponent shares turns with you, and the higher hand you have, the higher damage you give to the enemy. You can also buy better weapons which allow you to cause more damage, as well as use spells which can do things like make your opponent skip a turn.

Truth be told, I haven't paid for an iPhone game in many months, but after a few minutes with the lite version of this game I bought the full version for $4 without hesitation. The lite version is really robust, so I would try it out first before buying it to make sure it's what you're looking for. Regardless, this game is the new awesome. Check it out.

Download:
Sword & Poker (full game)
Sword & Poker (lite version) no comments

I've never seen the appeal of browser games like Farmville. When it comes down to it, I can think of 100 things I'd rather do that play a farming game on my PC. But surprisingly, I find myself playing ngmoco's We Rule a lot. Mostly because it's on the iPhone and it lets me jump in and out of it quickly while on the go. Basically, you build a kingdom and plant crops, which you then harvest and turn a profit, allowing you to buy more crops. You can also use your money to buy things to decorate your kingdom, and the game lets you rearrange them as you see fit, as your kingdom grows.

My favorite aspect of the game is that each of the crops have different growth times; if you know you're going to be in a movie for two hours, you can plant strawberries, which will be ready in an hour and a half. Take too long to harvest, though, and your crops will spoil and you'll have to start all over again.

As fun as the game is, I'm already starting to see the seams in it. For instance, building things like houses and schools have no real benefit, because they give back minuscule amounts of gold and XP. There are some objects, like trees and roads, which only serve to make your kingdom more appealing. But in the end, you can't really "beat" the game anyway, so it shouldn't matter where your money goes.

The game is free, although you can purchase "mojo" with real money, which speeds up the growth time of your crops. Honestly, I like the speed of the game without microtransactions. There's no real point to the game, so I'm okay with taking my time with it. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

Oh, and add me as your friend: onionsaregross no comments