ThingsAmongMany

As a devout tech geek and also reasonably enthusiastic car guy, anything that demonstrates the collision of the two (no, not literally) is of immediate interest. Back when I owned a car - a joy that I both miss and and dread returning to - I went through my fair share of radar detectors and other gizmos (the Valentine One earns my vote in that department).

Of course, this was well before the iPhone was available and every manufacturer had their own app store. Now that this is the case, there’s a whole new tech gadget available for your in-car needs. I’ve already used my iPhone as a wayfinding tool on trips out of town, etc. But I don’t bother to travel with a radar detector, which did cause me to be a bit more conscious of my speed on my last trip…

This is where Trapster comes in handy. Essentially a virtual, socially powered radar detector, Trapster is an application available for a variety of mobile devices. Power it up while you’re driving and simply click on the map as you pass a speed trap. When another Trapster user drives by the same spot, they’re warned of the impending speed trap, which they can also click to confirm.

There’s also a brief demo video on the Trapster site (but be forewarned, it’s pretty corny).

I’ll keep this short and to-the-point: Camerabag is the only iPhone app that I’ve ever paid for. And I’m glad I did!

We all know that the iPhone camera leaves a little something to be desired, but this app definitely helps step things up to a presentable level. It’s simple to use too: just snap a photo - either directly from the app, or from the standard camera - and load it into Camerabag. From there, you can select from 9 filters. Think of them like Photoshop presets for your iPhone camera. Like what you see? Save the image and then jump back to your photos folder and there it is.

As far as functionality goes, I’ve only had a couple of issues. It does crash my phone occasionally, requiring a restart (yeah, that’s a biggie). And every once in a while, the images saved by Camerabag come out really small and low quality, but usally a simple resave takes care of that. It does look like they’ve updated it since I purchased it too, so maybe those bugs have been taken care of…

Either way, for 99 cents you can’t go wrong (on holiday special). And they’ve also introduced a Lite version that’s free.

While many owners of this now-ubiquitous device would be hesitant to admit that its anything shy of perfect, the crew over at the FullSIX Group didn’t agree. While they’ll readily admit that they LOVE their iPhones, these guys were so adamant about some missing features on the device that they created a new site devoted to the missing pieces. Enter PleaseFixTheiPhone.com, a digital wish-list and peitition engine that anyone can add their iPhone wishes to in hopes that the God of all things Apple will hear their pleas.

Currently topping the list of desired features are copy & paste, MMS (picture messaging), and the inclusion of Flash in the phone’s capabilities. Of course, that’s only a few of the more than 1700 wishes that users have shared with the community in hopes of bettering their beloved devices. And those wishes have garnered more than a quarter of a million votes as of this morning.

But don’t mistake their wishlist as a fire-into-the-ether vocalization. The list of wishes that have already been fixed by recent updates is pretty impressive. So if you’ve got something that you can’t help but think would make your iPhone ownership experience just a bit better, get over there and let them know what it is. Hopefully someone in Cupertino is listening.