Don’t know who came up with these first, but I love the idea. They’re essentially stickers you place over your existing Apple logo on your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook to spice things up a bit. I personally like the retro rainbow looking ones, but they come in all sorts of colors and what not. I found a huge selection of them on Etsy.com for not too much (~$3), but I’m sure you could find them on eBay or the like with a little searching. They have some other interesting designs as well, including entire scenes for the lids of MacBooks.

Haven’t had a chance to pick some up yet, but I think I think the iPhone one would look great behind my smoke colored case. Wouldn’t do you much good, I suppose, unless you had a somewhat transparent case or were crazy enough to go naked.

My love for Google grows with each passing day. If there is a service they offer, I probably use it. From GMail to Maps to just their original search, I’d pay a good hundred dollars a year just to use them, but they’re nice enough (and smart enough) to give them up for free.

Today Google released their much anticipated update for the Google app on the iPhone to include Google Goggles. This little known service basically provides a way to search with images, instead of text. It’s been long available for the android market, but has just now been released to iPhone users.

The Goggles app not only recognizes obvious things, such as logos and trademarks, but not so obvious stuff, such as text and barcodes. For example, the scan of a book will bring up the book itself as a product (allowing you to purchase), the writing on the cover as text (allowing yo to translate or save), as well related websites from a search. Doing a business card does the same, even going so far as to allow you to save the contact information to your phone or call the number directly. You can scan a text page and translate the text, all without having to type in a word. The possibilities are pretty limitless.

They’re expanding the service slowly, to allow for more creative search options; people, plants, etc. It’s still a great feature, and for the price, you really can’t beat it.

August was a pretty good month for automotive adventures. Earlier in the month, I paid a visit to New England Dragway (NED) in Epping, NH. For about $20, you can bring your own car car and make as many runs as you’d like down a controlled and measured professional drag strip, complete with timing light, waterbox, and all. Mostly American muscle and bikes, but a good time none the less. Out of a few runs, I managed a 12.3 sec 1/4 mile run with 0.1 reaction time. Not as well as I would have liked or have run in the past (higher temps and tires held me back a bit) but good enough.

A few weeks later I spent the day with the Connecticut Valley Region (CVR) Porsche Club of America (PCA) for some autocross. For those of you who haven’t done it before, autocross (or auto-x for short) is a low risk alternative to track racing. “Competitions” will often times be held in a large parking lot or abandoned airfield, with cones outlining the course. The object is to complete the course in as short a time, hitting as few cones as possible. Speeds are usually kept bellow 60-70MPH, and there is essentially nothing to hit besides a couple of soft rubber traffic cones. It’s a ton of fun, and you learn a huge amount about the cars handling and performance in the process. I wasn’t in the running for any prizes this time, but I held my own fairly well. Some video for those interested (available in HD on my YouTube channel):
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Few of my favorite apps for the iPhone 4 that I’ve collected over time. All are currently available for purchase from the Apple Store, and it’s highly recommended that you do.

Name: Amazon Mobile
Price: Free
Description: The Amazon app is one that I think a lot of people overlook. Whether you shop at Amazon or not, there’s no denying that they have arguably the largest selection of items for sale of any retailer (no, eBay isn’t a retailer). Use it to look up prices for comparison, find items with their “Remembers” feature (take a picture of the item, and they find it, be it book, compressed air, etc), or simply to make purchases on the go. You can manage wishlists and shopping carts, as well as log into your account to track shipments and orders.

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