Business
Inside the GPS Revolution: Top 10 GPS apps
In the 17.02 print issue of Wired magazine the venerable tech monthly picks some of its favorite GPS apps for a story called 10 Applications That Make the Most of Location.
Surprisingly only five are for the iPhone:
- Trapster (Wired, iTunes, Free) – "a program that pulls together crowdsourced info about the location of police traps. Drivers report red-light cameras, speed cameras, or cops hiding in wait, which all get added to a map of law enforcement hot spots..."
- iNap: Arrival Alert (Wired, iTunes, $1) – "a travel alarm that keeps you from dozing past your destination on public transit. Just use the Google map embedded in the app to indicate where you'll be getting off, then hit the hay."
- Google Earth (Wired, iTunes, free) – "includes satellite views of the streets and buildings in every direction as well as Wikipedia entries of interesting spots..."
- GoSkyWatch Planetarium (Wired, iTunes, $10) – "pinpoints where you are, then checks the current date and time to figure out what stars are above you. To get the name of a given cluster, just point the back of your phone toward it."
- SitOrSquat (Wired, iTunes, free) – "find public bathrooms in your vicinity, complete with user ratings. Facilities are shown in order of closest location. Once you spot a near-enough john with a decent-enough rating, the application connects to Google Maps directions so you can start the cross-legged shuffle..."
The GPS apps that Wired picked for Google's Android platform include: JOYIty (a digitally enhanced game of tag), Cab4Me (taxi finder), ShopSavvy (scan UPC codes and compare prices), Locale (location-based ringer settings), SafetyNet (shake the handset to send your location to friends and dial 911).
Only two of the apps (Trapster and SitOrSquat) are also available on the Blackberry platform.
My takeaway from the article: I need to get an Android phone! Especially for Locale and ShopSaavy which have the potential to be truly killer apps.
What's your favorite GPS application?