Not sure where to buy a book in San Francisco International Airport or looking for a fine restaurant in New York LauGuardia Airport? Featured in Apple’s recent iPhone commercial and developed by Mobility Apps, GateGuru is an iPhone app targets to be your personal guide when you’re in any of the top 85 US airports.

Just like Foursquare, Flyertalk and Yelp to provide interesting locations and restaurant for cities, GateGuru is the Yelp for airports offering comprehensive information to locate the best food, shopping and service option within airport. It is extremely helpful little app for anyone that does a lot of flying in the US. Not to mention, the app is free.

To get started with GateGuru you need to sign up. Once that is done, the app itself is very easy and intuitive to use. You can allow the app to discover your location or you can search and choose one of the 85 US airports available in the list. Once you have chosen the airport, you then pick the terminal you are in. Or you can let the app to locate your location. From there, you are presented with a tabbed screen that has four tabs: All, Food, Shop and Services.

Under the Food tab, you get a list of restaurants that you can search through. Choose any of them, you will see what type of category the restaurant falls into (Mexican, Italian, etc) and the list of reviews. The app also lets you write a review, bookmark the restaurant or update the listing that they have for this restaurant if any of the information is not correct. This is similar for both shops and services, although really only the restaurants seem to have reviews.

You can easily share your travel experiences with your Facebook and Twitter friends using Gate Guru by linking your accounts. Moreover, you can gain High Flyer points by rating and adding amenities. You can watch as you climb the High Flyer leader board and get your “Captain” wings. Moreover, the High Flyers tab shows the list of high flyers in your airport. The Captain for a particular airport is the user with the most points. You can compete and watch as you gain points against your friends and also nationally for top spot (or Captain), making travelling and finding stuff in the airports you visit a bit of an adventure in itself.

It’s a pretty good app for frequent US travelers. The only drawback I see with this app is it is not available internationally that it only supports the top 85 US airports. Hopefully, some of the more common international locations will be available in a future update. To try this free app, simply click this direct iTunes link to download it.

While many of you are using the built-in Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod touch to surf the web, there are a few alternative browsers available in App Store that offers additional features. Here is one: VanillaSurf.

VanillaSurf is a free mobile web-browser app for the iPhone that rivals the native Mobile Safari app. The app is built-in on the same web browser engine as Safari but it offers some excellent functionality that is not currently available with the Mobile Safari app.

As you launch VanillaSurf for the first time, you should notice its interface is very similar to that of the built-in browser. You have an address line with a search icon at the top and number of icons at the bottom that lets you: surf back and forward, set your options, download, actions, bookmarks, tabs and full screen.

So, you can see what functions quickly set this app apart from the Mobile Safari: download, actions and full screen.

With VanillaSurf, you can download anything from the web, as you normally do on your computer’s web browser. Once you have download the file, you can view the file within the internal browser. Or you can transfer it back to your computer via a web interface. Simply follow the on-screen instruction and you should know to how do the transfer. The process is very straightforward.

The actions tab offers the following: New Bookmark (which I will assume all understand), Send URL, Screenshot, Open in Safari and Lock Rotation. The Send URL will send the URL of the current page you are to the email and embed the link into your email. That’s pretty useful. The Screenshot does just as it states, it takes a picture of the screen and places it in your camera roll (note: it is just a screenshot, not the entire page, just what you can see on the screen). The Open in Safari option opens the current page you are on in the mobile Safari app. Finally, the Lock Rotation sets the web browser to either landscape or portrait mode and disable the auto-rotation of iPhone. That’s handy feature especially you surf while lying in bed.

VanillaSurf offers an option tab to further customize its settings. In the options tab, you can turn “load images” on or off, “Ad-blocker” on or off and enable private surfing, if you wish. There are two different themes you can choose: Classic and Black. Also, you can clear your history and cookies. The options you can set for your tabs are many, everything from how new windows are opened to how they open for the same or different domain.

You can easily import bookmarks with the import/export bookmarks tab. Again, you use the built-in transfer function that allows you to link and authenticate with your computer.

The “tabs” window lists all the current open tabs that are available that you can tap on to view.

The full screen button hides the address bar and bottom icon buttons, but it leaves a little (+) button that, when you press, gives you your bottom icons as a see-through set of buttons. If you press (+) again it returns back to the regular screen view.

Performance-wise, it is as fast as Safari. All in all, VanillaSurf can be a great alternative for Safari browser. It may not replace your mobile Safari, but it will be very useful when you need to download a file. To try out the browser, you can download it directly via this direct iTunes link.

Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs attended the Oscars and his company took this advantage to air the first iPad commercial. With an upbeat song, the 30-seconds short video shows you all the magical features on iPad.

As announced earlier, the iPad will be available for pre-order from March 12 and debut on April 3. For international customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, it will be available in late April.

You can check out the video below or simply watch it on Apple’s website (with higher video quality).

iBlueNova is a cydia application that lets you transfer any file (including photos, music, document, etc) from iPhone to other bluetooth devices. Formerly known as iBluetooth for iPhone OS 2.0, iBlueNova supports OS v3.0 or up. Same as iBluetooth, the bluetooth app is a paid application that is available for US$5.99. But it also offers a 15-days free trial period before you need to purchase the app.

iBlueNova claims to allow you to transfer any type of files on iPhone to other bluetooth devices including computer and mobile phones. The app is pretty easy to use. After launched, simply enable both “Enable” and “Visible” to activate the bluetooth transfer service. Then you’re ready to transfer files over bluetooth.

The app offers 4 types of file manager: Pictures, Music, Videos and Other files. “Pictures” lets you access your camera roll and photo album to select the photos for transfer. If you need to transfer songs from iPhone, the “Music” file manager lets you access those song files. To send video in iPod app, the “Video” manager will do it for you. For other kinds of files, you can use the “Other Files” manager which lets you access any system files on iPhone.

To transfer a file over bluetooth, say a photo, you can tap on “Pictures” and select any photo from camera roll. Then tap the lower-right button. This brings you to a “Select a device” interface. Tap “refresh” button on the top-right to discover all available bluetooth devices. Just select the device you want the file to transfer to and it’ll kick off the transfer process after the other end accepts the transfer request. You can always view the transfer activity to see the progress of transfers or stop a transfer.

The app also offers a comprehensive setting screen. You can add a PIN to require an authorization before accepting a bluetooth connection. If you would like to send out all the images as JPEG, there is also an option for you. On top of that, you can choose to save all incoming images to the camera roll.

I have tested the app for nearly two weeks. Overall, it’s pretty easy to use and work as advertised. I can transfer file to my Mac and PC over bluetooth. But the app still needs to be further polished as I experienced a number of crashes and transfer failure. Anyway, you have 15-days free trial period before you need to pay. If you are in search of a bluetooth app on jailbroken iPhone, remember to check out iBlueNova.

Note: Please note if you want to transfer file between iPhone, both iPhones should have iBlueNova installed.

To learn more about the app, check out the video for a bluetooth file transfer demo:

Have you ever experienced this situation while using iPhone?

You tap on an app icon to launch the application. It launches and then closes unexpectedly.

I believe it’s not a rare issue for iPhone users as Apple has officially published a support article about how you can deal with the issue.

First, why does the application close unexpectedly? According to Apple, your device is running too many memory-intensive tasks and has begun to run low on application memory. So, when you try to open up extra application, the device does not have sufficient memory to handle the app launch and thus closes the app consequently. As the article suggests, here are some situations that represnts your iPhone is running low on memory:

• If you have many Safari web pages open on your iPhone or iPod touch, Safari may close and the iPhone or iPod touch will go back to the Home screen (where it shows all the application icons).
• When listening to music or podcasts, watch video, etc. playback may stop and the device may return to the Home screen.
• While using Safari or Maps and listening to music or podcasts, iPod audio playback may stop.
• Applications purchased from the App Store quit immediately after you tap them.

When you come across the issue, you may try the following Apple’s recommendations to avoid the issue:

1. Restart your iPhone – this recommendation is just like Microsoft. When you got a problem on your PC, reboot it! To restart your iPhone, press and hold Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until you see a red slider. Then slide the slider to shutdown your iPhone. Press and hold Sleep/Wake button to start it up again. Once booted up, try to launch the application again.
2. Minimize the number of pages in Safari – For Safari, try not to open too many pages/browser windows as each browser window consumes extra memory.
3. Use up-to-date iPhone OS – Make sure you’re using the latest version of iPhone OS. (but for iPhone jailbreaker, this option is not recommended until a solid jailbreaking solution is available)

Personally, I would like to add one more suggestion: Kill the unused applications. When you close an iPhone app, the device normally removes the app from memory. But for some built-in application (e.g. Safari), this may not be the case. Let’s say you launch Safari and browse some web pages. Then you go back to home screen. You may think iPhone closes Safari completely and free up the memory. But that’s wrong. The device actually keeps Safari in memory to speed up subsequent launch. So, how can you completely quit the Safari? There is a less-known feature to kill the app. You can further refer to the post about “How to Force Quit an Application for iPhone 3.0” about how to kill the application.

This technique is very useful and lets you quickly free up more memory for other applications.

What do you think about these tips? Do you have other tips to prevent the issue? As always, leave us comment and share with us.

Apple has just announced the WiFi model of iPad will be available in Apple stores on April 3. The 3G model will be available in late April. In addition, you can pre-order it starting from March 12.

Initially, iPad is only available in U.S. For international customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, both models of iPad will be available in late April. For other countries that are not on the list, iPad will ship later this year.

According to the press release, iPad will come with the new iBook app that includes Apple’s new iBookstore for browsing, buying and reading books. The iBookstore will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster. But initially, the iBook app will be available in U.S. only.

The WiFi model of iPad will be sold starting from US$499, while the price of the 3G model starts from US$629. For international customer, the pricing is not announced yet.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

In January, we covered a cydia application named PushFix 2.0 that fixes the push notification issue for jailbroken iPhone on OS 3.1.x. Many jailbreak users claimed the application worked great. The major drawback, however, is it’s a paid app which costs US$5.99. (Don’t get me wrong. It’s worth the price. But everyone love free stuff, right?)

If you’re waiting for a free solution to rectify the push notification issue, here is the good news. An iPhone developer has released a free cydia app called Push Doctor that offers the same fix as PushFix 2.0.

How to Use Push Doctor

Before installing the Push Doctor, if you have applied PushFix 1.0 on your iPhone, please uninstall it first. Otherwise, you can move on and follow the steps to install Push Doctor.

1. Launch cydia and tap “Manage”, followed by “Sources”

2. Tap “Edit” and then “add” button to add a new repository source (http://cmdshft.ipwn.me/apt/)

3. Tap “Add Source” and you should find a new repository known as “NERV Repository” added to cydia. Tap “Done” and continue.

4. Search for “Push Doctor” to locate the package

5. Tap on the package and then install it.

6. After installation, restart your iPhone and it should fix the Push Notification problem! Now, you can install any app with Push Notification support (say, BeejiveIM or iPusher) to test out the fix.

Why Push Doctor doesn’t work?
First, let us recap how Push Doctor or PushFix 2.0 fixes the push notification problem. As mentioned in my earlier post about PushFix 2.0,

To truly resolve the issue and make Push Notification work on your jailbroken iPhone, the developer from PushFix.info has rolled out the PushFix 2.0 that officially fixes the push notification issue on hacktivated iPhone by providing each iPhone device with an unique certificate.

The highlight is every iPhone needs an unique certificate to make push notification work. As Push Doctor is a free service, the number of unique certificate is very limited. So, if you have installed the fix and found push notification still doesn’t work on your iPhone, it is very likely Push Doctor runs out of unique certificates.

For those who are not lucky enough to get the certificate, the only solution is to retry again and again. Here is what the developer @anethema said,

The demand is very high apparently, and @anethema is now generating 1 unique cert per minute to put on the server. Try every few hours, eventually it will work. Any errors just means the same that it cannot find a unique cert. Just “reinstall” the package later or the next day.

Anyhow, the fix is free. You can’t complain if there is no unique certificate available. But if you’re frustrated after several trials, an alternative solution to purchase PushFix 2.0 to fix push notification problem.

As always, remember to leave us comment and let us know if the app works for you.

While there are numerous digital ways to write a reminder or leave a message to my wife, I still love to write (and see) message on a chalkboard. It’s just simple (pickup a chalk and write!) and much quicker than typing on iPhone.

Like me, if you also love chalkboard, you probably like this product.

A designer (PlayingGrownUp) from etsy.com has come up with an idea to merge a technologically-advanced device with a low-tech product and created an oversized-iPhone chalkboard. The chalkboard is hand-cut and hand-painted. It measures 14.5″ in width and 21″ in height. The designer can further customize the icons drawn on the chalkboard to suit your need. It will also come with all of the necessary hanging supplies for you to mount the chalkboard to wall.

The chalkboard is available for US$30 (plus shipping). You can order it through etsy.com.

If you haven’t heard of etsy.com, it is large community spans the globe with buyers and sellers coming from more than 150 countries. Unlike ebay that offers all kinds of goods, Etsy focuses on on handmade or vintage items as well as art and raft supplies. You probably can find other creative iPhone-related products there.

iPhone’s built-in accelerometer offers a simple way to switch between portrait and landscape mode. As all know, you can simply rotate iPhone sideway and it responds automatically to display content in landscape. The landscape offers better reading experience for most applications and a wider keyboard for typing. When iPhone was first released, the landscape mode was only made available to limited applications (e.g. Safari). In response to a large number of user requests, since iPhone OS 3.0, Apple opened up this feature and apply it to all built-in iPhone apps (e.g. Notes and Text).

I love this slick feature. At the same time, I find it quite irritating for a simple reason: I hate it turn sideway when I lay in bed to browse web and check my email.

I’m not the only one complaining about this. Someone even setup a Facebook group named “I hate when my iPod/iPhone turns sideways when I lay in bed and use it!” that has already accumulated to over 10,000 fans. Probably you’re already one of them.

Why iPhone Turns sideway when you lay in bed

The accelerometer measures the angle of iPhone relative to gravity, rather to the user. Due to this reason, iPhone rotates sideway when you lay in bed.

How to turn off Auto-Rotation Feature

Here, I’ll show you two ways to disable auto-rotation for iPhone. As always, these tricks are only applicable to jailbroken iPhones.

1. iNoRotate
First, let’s take a look at iNoRotate. iNoRotate is a tweak that lets you completely or selectively turn off auto-rotation on iPhone. It’s a free application that is available on cydia. Once installed, you’ll find a new option named iNoRotate in Settings. To disable auto-rotation, you can simply switch the “Enable” option to ON to completely disable landscape mode for all apps. The tweak also offers additional option to let you disable applications selectively. Say, you want to keep the landscape mode enabled for Safari, simply toggle its associated switch to OFF. Please note for any change in the options, you’ll need to toggle the “Enable” switch to effectuate the change.

iNoRotate gives you great control of iPhone’s auto-rotation feature. But some of you may still think that’s not good enough. Say, you are now using the Safari with landscape mode disabled. For certain reason, you want to re-enable it while you’re reading a web page. In this case, you need to jump back to home screen, tap Settings and re-configure the iNoRotate option.

So, is there any easier way that you can enable/disable while using Safari or other applications? Okay, let’s check out another cydia apps.

2. Rotation Inhibitor for SBSettings
The second app named Rotation Inhibitor is a plugin for SBSettings that also allows you to toggle the auto-rotation feature within any applications. For those who do not know about SBSettings [Full review here], it is one of my favorite cydia applications that brings toggles to iPhone home screen. While using any applications, you can simply swipe the status bar to activate SBSettings. With rotation inhabilitor installed, just tap the inhibitor button to enable/disable auto-rotation.

Both apps work as advertised and offers you a full control of auto-rotation. However, if you would like to toggle the rotation feature anytime, the Rotation Inhibitor is definitely the best app for you.

Do you find the auto-rotation feature irritating? Should Apple offer us option to turn off this feature and let us control it manually? Feel free to leave us comment and let us know your thought.

Over the weekend, if you are using Google Sync to synchronize your email on iPhone, you probably experienced a synchronization problem with Google and failed to retrieve your email. You may not aware of the problem as there is no error message shown when synchronizing the emails. But when you access your Gmail account on desktop, you probably notice the emails you received are not in-sync with your iPhone.

As explained by Google, the problem is preventing iPhone, Windows Mobile and S60 users from synchronizing contacts, calendar and email with the Google cloud. Here is the response from Google that further explained the issue:

As many of you have noticed, Google Sync is having some difficulties due to an extended problem with one of our datacenters. This has been going on over the weekend, but it’s got significantly worse today, so I’m just letting everyone know what’s happening.

None of your information has been lost, and you will still be able to get your data through Sync, but you will find that Push isn’t working very well. This is because we’re batching up fetch requests to be able to cope with the traffic we’re seeing while this problem is ongoing. As soon as we’ve got the problem fixed, push should seamlessly start working properly again

We’re working flat out to get this fixed, but unfortunately we don’t have an ETA at the moment. We’re doing everything we can to improve the situation in the meantime, and I’ll post here again when I have more news.

Despite there is no official announcement about the status of the fix, it seems like the Google Sync problem is resolved. I have just tested on my iPhone, it just works! Love to see Google Sync is back. If you still experience the problem, remember to leave comment and let us know.

Tip: For those who are still experiencing the sync problem, you may use the mobile version of Gmail at the mean time. Simply point your Safari to m.gmail.com

Apple announced the debut of iPhone in 2007, followed by iPhone 3G in 2008 and iPhone 3GS in 2009. And for the coming March this year, Apple is going to release an iPad.

So, what’s next after an iPad?

We have no idea. But some creative folks from Begeek.fr have extended the iPad design and suggested the next two revolutionary devices in 2012 and 2014. What’re they? Just check out below. You’ll be amazed by the mock-up photos.

[Hint: a much bigger screen]

When you think a camera is just for taking photos, Apple thinks different. As revealed by Patently Apple, Apple has filed a patent application that describes an innovative concept to control iPhone (or iPad) by swiping a finger over the external camera lens. As of today, you can only control iPhone using finger gesture via the multi-touch screen. It’s interesting to see Apple supports camera finger-swipes.

So, what’s its usage? Why do you need to control iPhone via the back camera?

The use of this includes the control of rewinding and fast forwarding voicemail. Just think about how you navigate through your voicemail box. You need move the phone away from your ear and use the dialpad to key in command to rewind/forward voicemail. Here, with the support of camera-based swipe controls, you can simply swipe your finger over the camera to control the voicemail navigation while the iPhone is still up against your ear.

Patently Apple also mentioned another usage for calls:

A similar concept may be applied to control call functions during a telephone call conversation with a called or calling party. The motions described above, namely sliding a finger in various directions across the lens and/or tapping the iPhone could also control call functions, such as merging multiple calls, setting a call on hold/unhold, and switching between or among multiple simultaneous calls. The setting of these motions to correspond with call control or voicemail control commands may be put into place by Apple or customized by the user.

This application of camera finger-swipes does not limit to the control of voicemail or calls. It can also extend to the control of iPhone interface. Say, swiping your finger over the camera in downward direction to scroll down a web page or document.

All these finger gestures innovation targets to enhance the one-handed control. I love the idea to control the voicemail navigation. But there is no confirmation from Apple when this feature will come to iPhone. Hopefully, we can see it in the iPhone 4G.

[Image via Patently Apple]