Things We Like

So you think you're pretty great at Rock Band [App Store, $9.99] on your iPhone or iPod touch because you can beat your friends, eh? How about a machine? That's right, tough guy. Joe Bowers has created a machine with no purpose other than mastering Rock Band and putting us humans to shame doing so. It consists of a robotic "hand" that can detect changes in light, and it can play the game's highest level of difficulty without the help of us fleshy types.

I recently got a call from friend of the site Jordan Satok who wanted to tell me about his new project, App of the Day. AotD does one truly awesome thing; it recommends one iPhone app based on user submitted nominations. The app that receives the most nominations becomes the app of the day. Anyone can nominate an app, all you have to do is register. There's a one nomination per day limit to keep things fair, but nominations are carried over each day and no app will appear twice.

If you're addicted to apps (and we know you are), you should definitely check out App of the Day.

Looking for the best halloween costume ever? Sorry, you're too late, because these two guys have taken the cake with expensive, bulky, and incredibly nerdy iPhone costumes. How hardcore are they? Well, not only do they actually show the screens of the iPhones on their shoulders, but they each have a 42-inch LCD TV built into the front, bringing the total of the two to $2,000. We're also guessing the devices both had to be jailbroken to make it work, which means bonus points in our book.

Earlier this week, news of the iDriver application, which was developed by computer science researchers at Berlin's Free University, hit the web. As the name would suggest, the application allowed users to drive a modified minivan, the "Spirit of Berlin." Per PopSci, steering, break and acceleration commands are sent over Wi-Fi and the demo video features researchers are driving it around an airport for testing.

Video below!

The hacks don't stop with the iPhone (despite Apple's wishes) and there are some pretty cool ones out there. One we found today was that's the handywork of developer Steve Troughton-Smith, which, according to SlashGear, essentailly places Mac OS X's Exposé feature on your iPhone 3GS.

If you're hiking and run across a bear that might want to eat you, either give it three dozen cans of beer until it passes out (as was the case back in a USA Today article back in 2004) or feed it your iPhone. Per CIO.com, when Vermont hiker Kris
Rowley was approached by a bear and it kept following her, it proved
more interested in chowing down on her
iPhone.

Maybe there's still something to be said for jailbreaking after all. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, the following footage of SmartScreen, an app that lets you add and use widgets on your iPhone lock screen, has been released:

A TV reporter by the name of Jeremy Jojola in Albuquerque, New Mexico recently attempted to use a jailbroken iPhone running the full version of the Qik live streaming app to broadcast a news story on-site for KOB-TV. The audio and video quality obviously aren't as great as you would get with the standard TV gear, but it got the job done and demonstrates the usefulness of being able to live stream on your iPhone. Video after the break.

Tap Tap Tap's recently released unit conversion application, Convert [App Store], might just be the most lickable conversion application we've seen yet, and that's saying a lot. Up until its release, we'd have probably pointed to Convertbot [App Store] as being our choice for shiniest conversion app, but Convert brings even more shiny in addition to added usefulness (i.e. more units to work with).

So as a special treat to all who love and appreciate impeccably designed apps, Tap Tap Tap has released a video showing the evolution of Convert. Check it out below!

If you haven't been sleeping in iPhone class lately, you'll probably remember the turn-by-turn navigation app that AT&T released last month. The app is free, but to make it work you're required to pay another $10 a month on top of your current AT&T bill. Most of you were less than impressed with the idea of giving AT&T more money and didn't bother trying it. If you're still itching to try it out, we've got an awesome trick for you!

Simply call AT&T (611 on your AT&T iPhone), press 0 to speak with an operator, and tell them that you want a free trial to AT&T Navigator. They'll set you up with a free 30 day trial which will auto-renew. To avoid being charged actual real monies, simply call back to cancel before the last day. And that, ladies and gentleman, is awesome!