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Telmap taps NAVTEQ for iPhone GPS solution, understands the inevitable
Man, talk about awful timing. At least TomTom and Navigon were able to sell a few rounds of their pricey iPhone GPS application before Google went and ruined everyone's day (at least in the GPS biz), and now that Google Maps Navigation is but an approval away from hitting iPhone users for free, we've got serious doubts about Telmap's ability to market its newest product. Utilizing NAVTEQ maps and familiar shells like MapQuest Navigation (in the US) and Orange Maps (in France), the company seems quite proud of its newest routing solutions. Oh sure -- there's live traffic, turn-by-turn guidance, in-car and pedestrian modes, etc., but is anyone really doling out cash for a phone-based routing system right now with Google at the wheel? Exactly.
iPhone 3G highly anticipated among readers
Yesterday, we asked you, dear readers, to identify the forthcoming Apple goody that you're anticipating the most. Thousands of you answered, and here are the results.First and foremost, you're looking forward to the 3G iPhone. A full 1,802 (29.4%) respondents put the new phone at the top of the list. Close behind is the iPhone 2.0 software (26.8% of votes) and the App Store (22.6%).More than 700 of you (12.1%) are most interested the online whining that will certainly follow each release, and only 9.2% of respondents are eagerly anticipating MobileMe. We were certain that MobileMe would at least beat out whining. What do we know?
iPhone SDK downloads exceed 100,000, upcoming games get outed
Just four days after Apple announced that the beta version of the iPhone SDK would be available to developers, some 100,000 downloads have taken place. 'Course, it's not like we're shocked by Cupertino's latest horn tooting, but we've all ideas that number pales in comparison to the amount of requests for unlocks. Nevertheless, the real news from the Apple camp is that companies such as Namco and PopCap are apparently on board to bring titles such as Pac-man, Galaga, Bejeweled, Zuma and Peggle to the iPod touch / iPhone via App Store. Furthermore, Six Apart's CEO admitted that it's already developing a "native iPhone application for TypePad," and the VP of THQ Wireless implied that we'd be seeing some of its wares surface here as well. As for release dates? Your guess is as good as ours.
iPhoneDrive becomes MegaPhone, gets R/W Notes access
After getting C&D'd by Apple (a special moment in any Apple Developer's life), Ecamm changed the name of their iPhoneDrive product to MegaPhone. Today, I had an early peek at their new product and was delighted to find that it supports the creation of new notes and editing of existing notes on the Macintosh end. This is great news. Megaphone takes a feature (Notes) that was utterly and completely useless and turns it into a pretty cool way to carry around to-do lists and other text files with you. And there's even a way to get around the hideous Marker Felt issue: When editing a note, use the Edit > Fonts menu to pick a less eye-bending choice. You're still limited to the standard iPhone choices (Helvetica, Courier, Arial, etc) but you no longer have to deal with the M.F. font. The new version also adds batch delete for SMS and phone call logs so you can free up some memory if you're running against the iPhone's log limits. Power user tip: Drag an HTML file into the window with the other notes, and MegaPhone adds it as a new note. The iPhone interprets and displays the HTML properly. I tried it out with one of my 3000-word O'Reilly articles with lots of code and headers and it worked fine (no way to click a link though -- but it will load images and online div sections from the web, according to Ecamm). There is a demo of MegaPhone available, while a full version will cost you $19.95.
Google's iPhone-specific search website
It appears that Google has released a mobile-accessible search page just for iPhone users, which sent us scratching our heads a bit. Isn't the iPhone supposed to give customers "the real web?" If so, why has Google developed a bare-bones search page that appears to be just for iPhone customers? Perhaps this is a work in progress, but since the Safari browser on the iPhone has no problems going to the normal Google search website or Google's xHTML page, what's the point here? Unless you really (really) want a bare-bones Google search page on that new iPhone that doesn't even feature many of Google's search properties, we suggest hitting www.google.com. Sounds pretty easy to us.[via TUAW]
