Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Mesa Dynamics and CardStar have announced CardStar for the iPhone/iPod touch, its latest mobile application for personal card management."

This looks like a slick program, perfect for those of us with a lot of reward card or club cards. There was a tutorial online showing you how to input your cards to your iPhone by scanning them, but I could never get them to look right. This program from CardStar, available now in the iTunes Store, could be just the ticket. I can never seem to find the cards when I need them, but I always have my iPhone.

"A Lethal app for your iPhone! OK, the headline is a bit misleading. This app won't kill you; in fact, it's designed to inform you about dangerous situations in your vicinity."

Lethal bases your danger level on several geographical factors (lethal wildlife, crime, disease, and disaster probabilities), and lets you know the best option, ie get out now! I wonder if it factors in that the use of this diverts your attention to your surroundings, so if there was something dangerous coming your way, you might not know it until too late?

"In the online social networking space you've got your big guns: MySpace, to a lesser extent Twitter and for business users, LinkedIn. Facebook is also extremely popular and now, Facebook's client for iPhone and iPod touch has been updated to version 2.1."

This update requires the iPhone 2.2 firmware update to work but is supposed to mean fewer crashes, quicker loading of the inbox and improved sync time among others. I've used the Facebook application for some time. The crashes have been irritating so I've been looking forward to this update.

"Just a reminder as Macworld Expo heads into the home stretch, the iPhone/iPod touch travel application HearPlanet is available for free this week only."

Interesting application that has audio tours of over 230,000 locations. Normally $3.99 USD from the iTunes Application Store, it's free at least until tomorrow, the last day of Macworld.

Product Category: iPhone App
Developer: Google
Where to Buy: iTunes App Store
Price: Free
System Requirements: iPhone 2G or 3G
Specifications: Google Earth requires 9 megabytes of free space for the application. You should also have some extra space available for caching.

Pros:

• The information overlays are informative and interesting;
  
• Very responsive over WiFi and 3G;
  
• Fun and easy to use

Cons:

• Slow under the EDGE network;
  
• Information Overlay icons are too small for thick fingers

Summary:
Google Earth for the iPhone is a fun and mildly addictive application. Its incredibly intuitive interface makes it a joy to use. Read more...