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Patent Describes Method Of Pushing Interface To Touchscreen Device

Edward Kirk — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:42:37 -0500

A new patent from Apple (#20090284476) describes a method in which a device might push it's user interface to a smart remote. The patent doesn't talk much about the device, describing it loosely as a small "accessory" with a touchscreen that changes it's UI to match that of the device it's controlling to control playback of audio or video remotely.

Navigon AG Announces Thanksgiving Promotion for MobileNavigator App

Chris Barylick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:58:50 -0500

Navigon AG announced that the company has launched a a Thanksgiving promotion for its iPhone navigation app, MobileNavigator [App Store, $69.99], as well as insights into holiday travel. During this time, the company is offering a special Thanksgiving promotion for its iPhone navigation app. For 10 days only, (November 20-30) MobileNavigator will be on sale for $69.99 instead of $89.99. In addition, NAVIGON’s Traffic Live feature is also on sale for $14.99 instead of $24.99.

China Unicom Executive States 10% Chinese Adoption Rate for iPhone Within Three Years

Chris Barylick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:15:08 -0500

In spite of a slow sales start, China Unicom continues to hold high hopes for the iPhone with an unnamed senior executive citing that the handset will carry 10% of China's 3G users within two to three years. In addition, China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing publicly said this week that he expects the iPhone to be the best-selling smartphone in all of China.

Fix The "Verifying iPhone" Issue In iTunes

Michael Johnston — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:40 -0500

I recently ran into an issue where my iPhone would take an inordinate amount of time to sync but I couldn't figure out why. The step it always seemed to hang up on was "Verifying iPhone," but why? After doing a bit of investigating, I found out that this step is actually a part of iTunes' backup process. So to solve the problem, I deleted all of my iPhone backups under the "Devices" tab in the iTunes preferences. After doing a full backup, my iPhone syncs nice and fast!

Enjoy!

TabToolkit Stores Your Tabs & Plays Them Back To You

Michael Johnston — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:00:24 -0500

After I began learning guitar last year, I grabbed a copy of Agile Partners' guitar companion app, GuitarToolkit [App Store, $9.99] to help me learn chords and keep my guitar in tune. But after a while, I wanted a way to store tabs and music to look at while I was away from my computer. TabToolkit [App Store, $9.99], which was released in late September, is exactly what I needed. It allows you to store tablature and music notation in various forms and play them back in landscape or portrait mode. It even comes with a synthesizer that'll play the parts back to you and a metronome to keep you on time.

The bottom of the screen can display a fretboard (guitar or bass) or keyboard for finger positions while the top shows musical notation and chords. If you play guitar or piano, you should definitely check this app out!

TurkeyTimer Helps You Take The Guesswork Out Of Cooking A Turkey

Michael Johnston — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:30:06 -0500

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and that means cooking a turkey. But how long do you cook your turkey? I honestly don't know, but now there's an app for that too. TurkeyTimer [App Store, $2.99] was designed to help you figure out just how long to cook your turkey based on your turkey's weight, whether its stuffed, and by its desired internal temperature. As time passes, TurkeyTimer will show you how brown your turkey should be and even when it's time to baste!

We haven't tried this app ourselves, but it looks solid based on the reviews and the app's description. Thanks to reader freshjive for the tip!

Smart Alarm Wakes You Up Early When There's Bad Weather

Michael Johnston — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Massie Design Studio has just released an application that'll wake you up ahead of time if there's bad weather on your commute. Normally The Smart Alarm [App Store, $1.99] acts as a standard alarm clock, waking you up when you specify. But if it detects bad weather in your area, it wakes you up early enough to beat it.

This looks perfect for you snowy mountain folks!

TomTom Announces Car Kit For iPod Touch

Edward Kirk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:08:13 -0500

Closely following the announcement that Magellan's car kit and iPhone nav app, RoadMate 2010 North America [App Store, $79.99] TomTom has announced that they plan to release a second car kit geared directly to the iPod touch.

Twittelator Pro Announces Official Geotagging Support, Tweetie On The Way

Michael Johnston — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:36:05 -0500

Today Twitter announced that it has enabled geotagging support for third-party Twitter clients, just two weeks after they began rolling out the new retweet feature. Following the announcement from Twitter, Stone Design announced that Twittelator Pro [App Store, $4.99] is the first Twitter client for iPhone to fully support both features. We've also heard from a little birdy that beta versions of Tweetie 2 [App Store, $2.99] already support both features. We're not sure when that update will drop, but we're guessing that it'll be soon.

Wheelchair App To Let Riders Control Their Chair With iPhone

Edward Kirk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:42:58 -0500

A new iPhone application from Dynamic Controls would turn an iPhone into a sophisticated remote control for the company's electric wheelchairs. The application would connect to the chair over Bluetooth, and allow the rider to control several aspects of the chair in an intuitive and cool looking interface.