When I was a kid my uncle owned a Datsun 240Z.

(For those of you too young to remember- Datsun was the orginal US name for Nissan and the 240z was the "poor man’s Jaguar")

It was an awesome looking car that was just begging to be taken out and opened up on the highway. I was just a kid of 7 or 8 so it certianly wasn’t going to be me. Luckily, a member of the family (not my uncle) was willing to take my brother and me for a ride. This particular individual tends to be highly responsible and quite conservative in his actions but that car got into him. He got on the highway and opened the car up up like nobody’s business. (Hence the reason he is going nameless.) I was in the back (FYI kids- it was a two-seater) so I couldn’t see the speedometer but there is no question it was being pushed to the max.

Looking back now I wish I knew how fast we were going and if it happened today I would thanks to an upcoming app from WebIS. 

Speedster is a little app that should be appearing in the App Store in the next few days. It has a nice, immediately familiar, interface and it tells you your speed (in mph or kph), your altitude and your location. 

Speedster is one of those small apps that take advantage of the iPhone’s location feature in uncomplicated and useful ways.

We’ll let you know when it is available.

As I have noted previously, I am a big fan of Note2Self from WebIS. Note2Self allows you to quickly and easily create voice notes of any length and send them to yourself or others. It is a great little productivity app and at just $2.99 I think it is one of the biggest bargains going.

I’m excited to share with you that a significant update is on its way shortly.

The new version of Note2Self brings the ability to–

I still find it kind of hard to believe that the iPhone still doesn’t have native voice dialing app. Every phone I’ve had in the past "I don’t know how many years" has had some kind of voice dialing app built in but not the iPhone. It is hard to believe.

So when third party apps came to the iPhone I figured we would finally see one. Sure it would cost a few dollars, but the convenience of being able to dial by speaking would be worth it. Unfortunately the early apps for voice dialing have been poor.     

That’s why I was so excited to see the VoiceThis Dialer arrive on the App store tonight. The description sounds great–

Description:
Finally, a world class voice dialer for the iPhone! Call any contact in your address book by voice. No training required. One tap to launch app, everything else is voice controlled. VoiceThis Dialer runs completely on your device. No sending any of your private information to servers. No need to worry about your network connection. VoiceThis Dialer is accurate and fast whether on Edge, 3G or Wi-Fi. We recommend speaking close to the iPhone mic or headset mic. Voicethis Dialer is full of useful features not common in most voice dialers: Call numbers in your recent call list Redial a contact 100% voice controlled- No push recording Confirmation on/off Even quit app by voice! Plus, look for other VoiceThis products for the iPhone coming soon!

So I immediately bought it…  Bad Call!

Most of my iPhone-focussed time today has been consumed with making the transition from my upgraded Gen1 iPhone to an iPhone 3G. The process at Apple was relatively quick and would have been even quicker had I not walked in just as half the staff walked out for lunch.

Overall I’m liking the 3G a whole lot. As numerous others have reported it certainly FEELS thinner even thought it is a tad thicker. I like the accuracy of the gps more than I expected and the reception does seem to be a bit better. The 3G is getting 2 bars more than my original iPhone. Yup- I’m now getting… 2 bars. (I happen to live in a house with almost no cell service.)

ToDo, my iPhone task app of choice, received a substantial update this evening. Among the improvements are…

–support for repeating tasks

–Multi-line task name editing

–The ability to set a default due date setting

–The ability to set a default list setting

The update also improves synchronization (I find it MUCH faster now), allows call and email tasks to use phone numbers and email addresses with custom labels, and show last synchronization time in 12/24-hour format depending on your regional settings.

It is a significant update and makes a great ToDo app even better.

I have been looking forward to the release of MagicPad and I immediately downloaded it when it became available earlier today.

I have recorded my initial impression in the following screen caps…

Three weeks after "OS X iPhone" (as Apple calls it) began allowing installation of 3rd party apps, I’ve settled into using a relatively regular collection of applications.

It is a pretty long list, so I’ll do the first half today and the second half tomorrow.

So, what’s on (and likely to stay) my iPhone?

Yesterday marked three weeks since the App Store first opened. In those first 21 days a lot has happened.

–The Apps Store has gone from 500 apps to over 1000
–The percent of free apps has fallen from 25% to 20%
–Many key apps have seen at least one or more update adding both features and stability
–Some developers have discovered what a goldmine the App Store can be
–People have struggled as, on the one hand, their iPhone and iPod Touchs have been transformed into far more powerful devices, while at the very same time time their once rock solid handhelds have been plagued by instability and reduced battery life.

Over these 21 days I have become an "App collector" and the picture at the top of this post proves it. Yes, those are the apps, all 75 of them, currently in my iTunes account.

Tech blogger supreme Wayne Schulz has an excellent post over on Gear Diary this morning entitled, "How Will Apple Manage A Mature App Store?" It is particularly striking in light of the fact that Wayne is looking to a mature App Store when the App Store turned just three weeks old yesterday.

Wayne asks the excellent question, "Is there any way that we need 24 different programs that all claim to help you calculate tips?"

The answer, of course, is a resounding "NO!" 
While the Tip Calculator is certainly the easiest place to point out that the App Store is currently the Wild West of software distribution it is by no means the only example of it.

True to their word the good folks at eReader have just released version 1.1 of their iPhone and iPod Touch software. The new version includes:

– The ability to browse to other web sites for eReader formatted content (ex. manybooks.net)

– The ability to sort the device bookshelf by title, author or download date.

– The ability to invert screen color 

– The ability to lock screen orientation (Now can we get this for every app please???)

 – The ability to turn pages via tap or swipe

…and more.

If you haven’t done so yet, eReader for iPhone is worth a look.