Several readers have urged me to try the Gokivo Navigator for the iPhone [iTunes link], so today is the day. The app is U.S. $4.99, but that only provides you with GPS navigation for 30 days. After that, the app costs $4.99 monthly or you can purchase a year of service for $39.99. That's quite a bit less that the AT&T nav solution [iTunes link], and makes the Gokivo app quite competitive. The app includes a Traffic Tracking Center, text to speech so street names are announced as you drive, and it has iPod controls so you don't have to leave the app to change your music.

Like the AT&T app, if you are out of range of the data network, you won't get maps. And like most of the competition, Gokivo gives you an estimated time of arrival, distance to your destination, and your current speed.

The map doesn't work in landscape view, which I consider a strong negative. It's easy to navigate to your addresses in your Contacts app, and the feature is nicely integrated.

We're seeing a lot of updates to navigation applications, and the latest is for the CoPilot Live app [iTunes link] for the iPhone. As promised, the company has updated the map data to fix mistakes or omissions that were reported by users. The latest update also adds iPod controls within the app, which many users were requesting.

The update fixes a reported address search issue, improves GPS reception and makes some improvements to the user interface.

The previous version of the U.S. $34.99 app added text to speech and a better method of text entry.

As we've mentioned before, the competition in nav apps is going to get very interesting if Apple allows the Google nav app into the app store. It will be free, and has a host of features that are not currently available in the paid apps that are shipping for the iPhone now.

With the FCC watching the relationship between Google and Apple, I'm thinking Apple will have to let the app in, but Apple has surprised me before, and not always in a positive way.

When the latest G-Map app covering navigation in the U.S. and Canada was updated with text to speech, it didn't make owners of the older East and West [iTunes store links for each] versions too happy. Now that has been corrected, and both iterations of the U.S. $24.99 app have text to speech, iTunes integration, and the ability to resume navigation automatically after a call.

Traffic will be added soon to both apps as an in-app paid update.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Canada version has been pulled from the app store. According to the company:

'we found a critical issue in the new update of G-Map US & Canada. In order to protect our current users, we have no choice but to temporarily pull the app from the App Store. We already corrected the problem and re-submitted the G-Map US & Canada for approval. Please allow us a few more weeks to serve you. We will do our best to minimize any inconveniences that might occur to you.'

All the G-Map apps have been reasonably priced, but a bit buggy which has not pleased buyers. I'm working on a holiday buyers guide for nav software for the iPhone, but the whole landscape will change radically if Apple approves the free Google nav app with turn by turn directions and photo realistic rendering of routes. The app is shipping in the new Android 2.0 phones, starting with the Verizon Droid, which is scheduled for release tomorrow.

Just when you thought it was safe to buy a nav app for the iPhone, Google goes and announces a free app for Android, and says it's going to be available for the iPhone if Apple will let it into the App Store.

The app, called Google Maps Navigation, will ship with phones running the Android OS 2.0 and includes search by voice, search for points of interest by voice while in route, satellite and street view, and support for a hardware dock for 'certain devices.'

This won't be great news for TomTom, Navigon, or any of the rest. Google says the app is U.S. only for now, and will be seen first on the Verizon Droid which will appear in November.

Talk about disruption! With the FCC watching it will be most interesting to see if Apple allows the app onto the iPhone and, whether yes or no, the effect on Android sales.

I can't wait for all the fur to fly. You can watch a video of the app in action in this YouTube clip. Admit it. You want this!

The long-awaited TomTom car kit for the iPhone has finally arrived at the Apple store. The hardware/software combination hardware unit sells for US $119.95. [Sorry about the mixup. As noted in the comments, the app is an additional $50-$100 depending on your locale.]

The cradle is designed to enhance the TomTom GPS app [iTunes link], which has been available since July.

The kit provides secure docking and enhanced GPS performance with its own built-in GPS receiver. The car kit will charge your iPhone and give you for hands-free calling. The unit also has an audio out connector so you can play your music through your car audio system, however, the cable that enables this is not included.

The TomTom solution has been criticized by some for being too expensive because the car kit plus the cost of the Tom Tom navigation application is more than $200. One could easily buy a standalone GPS for less than that, although you have more hardware to carry.

The TomTom has also fallen a bit behind the best-selling Navigon application which includes a text-to-speech feature and has received generally better reviews from consumers.

According to the Apple Store, the car kit is not yet available, and there is no time estimate of a ship date. (Note: some of our readers are getting December 4 ship dates from the Apple Store.)

[Thanks to all our readers for tipping us to this story]

Every so often an app comes along that you just get excited about. Well, I'm excited about the Layar Reality Browser [iTunes link], and even better: it's free!

This app has been available on the Android platform, and iPhone users have been eagerly awaiting it. Wait no more.

The Layar app will only run on an iPhone 3GS because it really needs that built-in compass. So what does it do? Quite a lot. The app displays real time information based on your location and the direction you are facing, overlaying the camera with locations and information that you are looking for.

Yes, like other apps with augmented reality, it can find food and shopping, but that's only the beginning. You can find apartments for rent, Flickr photos taken near your location, mountain peaks, tourist information, and the list goes on and on. The Layar screen shows your live camera view, a radar-like display showing you a 360 degree view of 'hits' near you, the accuracy of your GPS fix, and the number of items it has located.

The Layars app is based on an open architecture, so it can interact with an unlimited amount of information set up to talk to the platform. It is globally aware, not just U.S. centric, and lots of 3rd party developers are jumping in.

In operation it generally worked very well. I didn't see any crashes, but at times some of the many servers supplying information did not seem to be up and running. When I wanted to see some information on the mountains in my area, it worked great one time, and the next time it said there was nothing around, even though I was standing in the foothills of some 5,000-foot peaks.

Generally though, the app was well behaved, and as you explore the riches it contains your mind races with all the possibilities an app like this has. You don't have to use only the camera view. You can get a list of nearby points of interest or see everything on a 2D Google map. Wikipedia is even available. When I brought it up, it gave me some information on my town, a nearby school, and some info about nearby parks.

I hope this app really grows, because the potential here is limitless. Try it for yourself. There's no cost, and no risk. You'll be surprised at all the stuff around you. I'm going on a trip soon, and can't wait to explore with Layars.

Let us know how it works for you.

Several of our readers suggested that we take a look at Waze, a free navigation app [iTunes link] that depends on other users for reports of traffic tie ups, accidents, and speed traps. It also functions as a turn-by-turn navigator with spoken directions, although it doesn't have text to speech capabilities for naming streets or points of interest.

As a navigator Waze is fine, but it seems to be missing a lot of residential addresses. Waze had a nasty habit of jumping my vehicle icon to a nearby parallel street, and while it was nice to have both 2D and 3D maps, the software seemed to change the zoom factor without me telling it to. This erratic zooming seemed to happen when I went to a menu and then returned to the map.

The maps aren't very attractive. There are both day and night views for the Waze maps, but even when set to 'auto,' the night map comes up no matter what time of day it is. The maps and POI data are all downloaded from the internet, so if you're in a "dead zone" for data, you have no navigation.

As for the social functions of the app, they are a great idea, but in reality you're only going to get information in a densely populated areas. Even then, you may not get much of anything in terms of reported incidents. If you go to the Waze web page and look at the national map for reported incidents, it is pretty lightly populated. Of course, that should get better as more and more people use Waze. A clever aspect of the app is that it keeps track of where you are while you're navigating, and uses your speed to add to its database of road conditions.

I think Waze is promising, and if you don't want to spend money on a turn-by-turn nav app, it's a start. To be really useful some of the bugs need to be fixed, the address data needs to be more complete, and there need to be a heck of a lot more people using Waze so there is more incident reporting.

This app is free and implements some creative ideas. If you're thinking about getting a nav app, but you're on the fence, make the risk-free download of Waze and see if it enhances your driving.

It's here, at least if you are in the U.K. One of our readers tipped us that he was able to buy the TomTom kit for £99.95 from the Apple Store at Bluewater in Kent.

The kit has its own GPS chip which is supposed to be more sensitive than the GPS chip built into the iPhone. The car kit is listed as 'coming soon' at the U.S. Apple Store. It's expected to cost US$119.95, and when added to the cost of the TomTom app brings the total to more than $200.

That high price has caused some to question paying that much money for a GPS unit, when a standalone model can be bought for less. We'll be following the user comments on the car kit, and hope to get one ourselves for testing soon.

The whole category of GPS solutions for the Phone is moving very fast, and it seems almost every week a new app comes out with more and more features giving the iPhone parity with the separate units you can buy.

TomTom hopes to offer a high performance solution while still letting a person carry one device that does it all, unless you count the car kit as another device, of course.

Thanks to Stu for the tip.

If choice is a good thing, iPhone owners have a veritable bounty of navigation apps in all price ranges and features. MapQuest has now released their own navigation app, and frankly it's a mixed bag.

Like the AT&T nav app, MapQuest Navigator [iTunes link] needs the internet for its data, so if you frequently drive where even the Edge network is a sometime visitor, forget using this app.

If you are more of an urban driver or stick to Interstates, the app has some promise.

Here are some of the touted features:

• Streamlined 3D Interface: Features voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation that speaks directions and street names.

• Regular Data Updates: Search 16+ million points of interest and utilize up-to-date street maps.

• Full Route Corridor Download: Quick route re-calculation for missed turns as well provides continued service in areas of no cellular coverage.

• Traffic Incident Based Routing: U.S. routes are optimized to avoid traffic incidents that might delay your travel.

• A MapQuest Place Carousel: Easily displays locations for hotels, movie theaters, gas stations, and more with a single tap.

The interface is different from almost all the other GPS apps I've used. There is a ribbon, or Carousel as MapQuest calls it, lets you click on hotels, gas stations, food, etc.., and see icons where these points of interest are. To get to one of these places, you have to click on the destination icon, which often requires enlarging the map. I would have preferred a list, because clicking on a map icon can be some extra trouble when various icons are close together.

XRoad gave us one of the first Nav apps for the iPhone. It's still for sale under the name G-Map West or East, and gives users either a Western or Eastern U.S. version. It was pretty basic when it first came out, but there have been many improvements.

Now the folks at XRoad have a new app that covers the whole of the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada, and it's on sale for US$39.99.

The new version of the app brings text to speech to the party, free traffic service for one year, and a claimed update to the Navteq data. Like many of the competitors out there, G-Map offers address book integration, 3D views of the road, detailed renderings of thousands of intersections, trip planning, and it allows the editing of POI information by adding notes or phone numbers.

So how does it work in the world of cars, traffic, and road closures? OK, but it's not wonderful. First, the app is pretty slow. It acquires a GPS signal right away, but then G-Map takes it's own sweet time orienting the maps. For a few seconds, your direction of travel is not at the top. After a bit, G-Map figures it out, but I think if you were launching the app when you were already underway, you'd get some pretty confusing visual cues.

When you get a call, the app stops, and after the call you can go back in. When I did go back into the app, I had to once again acknowledge the legal mumbo-jumbo by tapping on the screen.

MapQuest is now offering a GPS navigation system for iPhone users in the U.S. and Canada. MapQuest Navigator [iTunes link] is U.S. $0.99 for a 14 day trial. After than you have to buy it for $3.99 a month, $9.99 for 3 months, or $29.99 a year.

According to the company, key features include:

• Streamlined 3D Interface: Features voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation that speaks directions and street names.

• Regular Data Updates: Search 16+ million points of interest and utilize up-to-date street maps.

• Full Route Corridor Download: Quick route re-calculation for missed turns as well provides continued service in areas of no cellular coverage.

• Traffic Incident Based Routing: U.S. routes are optimized to avoid traffic incidents that might delay your travel.

• MapQuest Place Carousel: Easily displays locations for hotels, movie theaters, gas stations, and more with a single tap.

Most of the data for the app comes over the internet, so MapQuest Navigator has a small 2.9MB footprint. If you'd like to see a video demo of the app, go here.

We've asked for a copy so we can put it through our rigorous review trials and compare it to the other systems we've used, so more to come.

CoPilot Live [iTunes link] for North American roads is becoming the little engine that could. At only US$34.99 it is quickly adding new features, and in this latest update has added the coveted text to speech capability. For drivers, that means the nav app will say "turn left on Elm street" instead of "turn left just ahead".

Other new features include adding an iPhone-standard keyboard for entering destinations, instead of the one designed for the app (which was clunky). The maps have been updated, and the developer says there is better integration of the address book from the iPhone.

I took CoPilot for a drive. It acquired the GPS signal quickly and I was on my way. It looks like the POI database has been improved, and the text to speech worked as anticipated. It is a great addition, and even the TomTom still doesn't have that feature. Navigon and AT&T both have text to speech in their offerings.

I still find that the maps are way below the quality of every other navigator I have tested. Driving home it couldn't find my street so it just put me on some nearby street. That could be misleading to a driver at best, and dangerous at worse.

The developers say the maps will continue to improve, but maps are what navigation is all about and they need to be up to date. I've talked to some users of this software, and they say their region is very accurate, so it depends where you are.

At a fraction of the cost of the 'big boys' and with text to speech, CoPilot Live is becoming a very competitive driving companion.

User ratings continue to improve, and I think it is very worthwhile at the low cost (if the map coverage in your area is adequate). If you have your own experiences to share, we'd love to hear from you.

I always loved geology and geography when I was in school and have kept up my interest over the years. Living in Arizona, we've got plenty of interesting geography, from mountains and deserts to fascinating road cuts and huge canyons that reveal geologic ages gone by.

Now, someone has created what I would say is the ultimate app for Geography/Geology amateurs and professionals.

I've been using Geology AZ, [iTunes link] which for US$4.99 overlays a whole lot of information on a basic map of the state. You can add town and cities, roads, counties; you know, the usual stuff you find on maps. Then you can dive much, much deeper, with maps of new and old fault areas, earthquake sites, old and current mines, public lands, fire history, and nicely rendered terrain elevation maps. I'm just scratching the surface here, so to speak. You can go to the developer web site and get a lot more information about what is available.

You use standard finger gestures to zoom in and out, and the level of detail is amazing. The items on the map are color coded, so you can tap something and get a lot more detail. You can use the iPhone's built-in GPS to plot your position on the map, and find out all sorts of interesting features that are near you. Thankfully, I'm not living on a fault line.

You can also capture one of your custom maps and output it in high resolution to your computer. If you're not interested in Arizona there are currently maps of Oregon/Washington, California, Texas, Florida and New York, with other states on the way. You can check them out here.

This is a great tool for education, enjoyment, or a heads-up about what geological formations or geographical highlights are near you. You can change the transparency of each layer, superimposing data across several layers of the map.

I can't say enough about how clever this app is, and the price is very reasonable considering the mountains (pun intended) of data it contains.

The Arizona map data is about 42MB, and using the app does not require any data from your cell provider. It runs on either the iPhone or the iPod touch, but getting a GPS fix is only possible on the iPhone.

Check the gallery for some screen shots and click here to see a video of this app in action.:

Bionic Eye [iTunes link] is an augmented reality app for the iPhone that displays businesses around you superimposed over a live camera picture.

It sorta works, but doesn't solve any problem I have. It's cool to rotate around and see a Burger King logo or a Hilton Hotel logo pop up when the actual locations are nearby. The problem is, I can get that kind of information from Google Maps and hundreds of other free or paid apps that can give me the same info, although not in such a sexy way.

Even worse, the app is very, very slow. It takes Bionic Eye anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to fully launch. If I go to the settings menu to change something, it takes another minute to absorb that change and bring me to a usable screen.

If you turn your iPhone horizontally, you can see all the nearby locations in a list, and when you select one a blue arrow points you to the actual location. Whee!

I had a couple of lockups when I went to the setting screen to make a change, which only added to my frustration. The points of interest you are searching for are limited to about a 2 mile range, so it will only guide you to places that are really close. Usually I could look up and see the destination, so I really didn't need the app in the first place. It has a limited list of locations, and they're all brand names, so if you are looking for a restaurant that is not a franchise or a hotel that is not part of a chain, it's tough luck for you.

For an additional fee, you can get guidance to subway stations in New York, Washington and Chicago. There are also versions of the app for the U.K., France and Tokyo.

Bionic Eye is only US$0.99, but it doesn't answer the first question you should ask of any app -- does it solve any real world problems I have. An app should be a novel solution to a problem or great entertainment. Bionic Eye is neither, but it has potential if it can be given a larger database, much faster load times, and crash a lot less frequently. To be fully functional, Bionic Eye requires an iPhone 3GS.

Our Saturday review of CoPilot Live [iTunes Link] raised some interesting questions among users of the US$34.99 app.

TUAW reader Jeremy sent us an email this morning wondering why the Live Local Search feature of the app is now a paid feature, when it was free on the first version that was released. This clever feature used an internet connection to find nearby points of interest, even though the maps and bulk of the POI database are on the app itself. It was a great way to keep the app up to date, using a blend of static maps and info with an internet supplement.

With the latest update to the app (version 8.0.0.096) that feature is now part of a US$19.99 annual update that also adds real time traffic updates and gas price searches.

At first blush, it seems like features should not be taken away in an update. I contacted ALK, the app developer, and received a response from spokesperson Mary Kelly:

"Local Search was included in the first release of the App as a taster of this premium feature. We did not advertise it as being an included feature in our original App or at any time promote it as being included. In fact it was listed on the App description as a premium service 'coming soon'. We may offer similar trials for a limited period for other services in the future. The Live Services which we promote as 'included as standard' remain so, namely: LiveLink location sharing and Live Weather."

The company apologizes for any confusion. CoPilot Live still remains a pretty good deal for a low-end navigation service. I found quite a few map errors and omissions, but the company has set up a mechanism for people to report any problems with the accuracy of the maps.

I can understand users being upset at losing the feature, and ALK should have made it more clear that Live Local Search was just a temporary sampler of a future paid service.