Meet iDistress – The iPhone App that we hope you will never have to use! When activated iDistress automatically sends emergency SMS and email messages containing your location and phone number to up to three contacts, while simultaneously dialing the local emergency number.

Every year hundreds of thousands of emergency calls are placed for accidents, crimes, and natural disasters. Being caught in a bad situation is a fear we all have, yet have little control over. iDistress is an application what will allow you to get help quickly and easily. Have peace of mind with iDistress!

How it works?
After opening the app for the first time, you can enter up to three SMS and email contacts that will recevie your iDistress notification if the app is ever activated.
When the app is activated, it will send out an emergency message to your contacts via SMS and email containing your present location, while simultaneously dialing 911 (or any other number of your choice).
Each email will contain a link to a map. This will allow your contacts to view your location from a desktop or smartphone.

iDistress is an iPhone App that we hope you will never have to use! When activated iDistress automatically sends emergency SMS and email messages containing your location and phone number to up to three contacts, while simultaneously dialing the local emergency number.

Every year hundreds of thousands of emergency calls are placed for accidents, crimes, and natural disasters. Being caught in a bad situation is a fear we all have, yet have little control over. iDistress is an application what will allow you to get help quickly and easily. Have peace of mind with iDistress!

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Chad’s Pick: Lumines

This week I am picking Q Entertainment’s Lumines. This game came out a little while ago with poor fanfare due to the horrible controls. Good news? There is now and update that fixes these issues and this game is now a pleasure to play. You even have in-app purchasing for additional theme packs. The music is not as good as the original IMO, but still fun!! [$2.99 - iTunes link]

James’ Pick: TripIt

As a consultant, I am on the road each week. In order to keep my life organized, I would always enter my trip details (hotel info, flight numbers, etc.) into calendar entries. TripIt makes my life easier by automatically creating my trip entries for me. The service syncs with various iPhone apps like FlightTrack Pro [$9.99 - iTunes link] and they even have their own free app. If you don’t have any room for one more app, you can subscribe to an iCal feed right on your iPhone. Perfect for the road warrior. [Free - iTunes link]

Leanna’s Pick: KENKEN

As someone who loves math and anything involving logical thinking, I am quite the sudoku fan. KENKEN took it to the next level. Just as with sudoku, each row and column must contain every number exactly once with the additional requirement that the bolded groups of blocks must add, subtract, divide, or multiply into a specific number. I love a great challenge and KENKEN is a great way to get that brain working and have fun at the same time. [$4.99 - iTunes link]

Matt’s Pick: Pocket Tunes Radio

II was initially wary of purchasing Pocket Tunes as there where other apps at a much cheaper price, however, more recently Pocket Tunes made some significant changes and addons that blows all other competition out of the water – with the ability to play streams in the background, record your favorite stations(& play them back later), and the ability to play AAC+ audio ($3 in-app purchase, but highly recommended), and if you have sirus/XM subscription, pocket tunes will play that as well! Quite frankly I got rid of my XM subscription because I could use Pocket Tunes instead! [$6.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: NetNewsWire Free/Premium

I need to keep up with RSS, and I’ve tried every RSS reader on the iPhone. Each have their pros and cons, each makes a tradeoff somewhere between interface and feature sets, and while I wish I could just stuff several in a Hadron-esque collider and god-particle myself the one perfect reader, they just won’t (and shouldn’t) grant me access to CERN. So, I’ve been using NetNewsWire Premium a lot lately, simply because it gives me my Google Reader-synced news fast enough, lets me see the most recent updates across all my feeds, allows me to star and email out complete articles, and/or save them to Instapaper for later offline perusal. It’s not perfect, but perfectly usable for me, for now. [$4.99 - iTunes link] or [Free - iTunes link]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lumines, Tripit, KENKEN, Pocket Tunes Radio, NetNewsWire — TiPb Picks of the Week

Before Google showed off Chrome OS, essentially the Chrome Browser running on top of an ultra-lite Linux Kernal, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington tried to will something very similar into existence — a capacitive touchscreen CrunchPad tablet that would run Firefox and nothing else.

The rumored price tag rose and “delays” seemed to abound, and now it looks like the little CrunchPad that almost could will never be:

Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. [partner and Fusion Garage CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan] said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifiying Apple a couple of days before launch that they'd be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

Like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Microsoft Courier proof-of-concept, we were really interested to see more attempts to define this still nebulous “tablet” style device, and given the browser-centric nature of the CrunchPad in particular, it would certainly have niche appeal (we’re looking at ourselves there).

We’ll keep some hope, however, that Arrington can find a new partner. (Maybe a Google sponsored Chrome OS CrunchPad?) If for no other reason then to help faster shake-out this space before (or rather if) Apple enters it with an iTablet…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mythical iTablet Competitor CrunchPad Dead Before Arrival

You already knew TiPb’s very own store is having a huge sale today and if that isn’t enough, Amazon has an excellent deal on the 2nd generation 8GB iPod touch. For $158 you can nab one with free shipping along with a small bonus of a $5 Amazon MP3 Store credit.

If you spot any other worthy Cyber Monday deals be sure to let us know!

[Via 9to5Mac]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Amazon Selling 8GB iPod Touch (2nd Generation) for $158.00

After making a lot of noise about Android Market not being ready and how they would be scaling back development for the platform, Gameloft has done an about face and looks to be full speed ahead:

Paris – Gameloft®, a world leader in the publishing and development of downloadable video games, plans to launch High Definition games on next generation Android phones like the Motorola Droid and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

"The arrival of this new generation of phones will allow the development of High Definition games that make the most of the technological capacity and the speed of execution offered by the new Android phones. Consumers will benefit from a top quality gaming experience," says Gonzague de Vallois, vice-president of Publishing at Gameloft.

Gameloft also continues to support the current generation of Android phones and announces the imminent arrival of titles such as Assassin's Creed. These titles will be accessible on the Android Marketplace and Gameloft internet sites and will further strengthen our catalogue of Android games already available.

As our buddy Casey over at Android Central points out, the reversal is stunning considering how Gameloft claimed they make 400x as much on iPhone apps as they do Android. (Casey also points out that persistent app size limit annoyance in Android land — fix that Google, would ya?)

We say — awesome. More competition for the handset makers and better games for everyone. Bring the fun!

What do you think, did Gameloft re-run the numbers, see a secret prototype, or did someone from Google use Maps Navigation to find France, pay them a visit, and show them search rankings before and after for their “re-consideration”? (We joke! Don’t Wave us!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Gameloft Flip Flops — Will Develop for iPhone AND Android

Once again Taiwan’s DigiTimes is raising chatter about Qualcomm and Apple and CDMA compatible (or CDMA+GSM dual mode) iPhones, which of course brings Verizon screaming back into the rumor-mill.

This time, however, it seems that Qualcomm just really, really wants to work with Apple (who currently use a GSM-only chipset from rival Infineon), and a hybrid CDMA+GSM iPhone might not even be technically possible until 2011. (Though Qualcomm’s new chipset reportedly does provide compatibility with the upcoming LTE 4G standard as well, which both AT&T and Verizon will be rolling out… eventually).

So, yeah, very little to see here until we see something real here…

[DigiTimes via AppleInsider]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Yet More CDMA-Compatible (aka Verizon) iPhone Rumors

Happy Cyber Monday, TiPb-verse! To celebrate the biggest online shopping day of the year, the iPhone blog store is offering a 10% discount on all iPhone and iPod touch accessories — that includes cases, charges, Bluetooth headsets, stereo headsets, and speakers, chargers and battery packs, and much, much more!

So rev up that internet, hit TiPb store now, and apply your coupon code MONDAYTIPB before midnight PT, Monday Nov. 30, 2009 to get your savings!

(And if you’re not sure where to start, we have our 2009 Holiday Gift Guide and Top 5 Must-Have iPhone Accessory Guides ready and waiting for you!)

Shop. Up.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Sponsored Post: TiPb Store 2009 Cyber Monday Sale!

Welcome to the Best of Smartphone Experts, catch-up edition. We’ve recovered from our tryptophan stupor (yeah, we know it’s a myth) and are back with our favorite stories from the network.

Be sure you pay attention tomorrow morning – it’s Cyber Monday and there’s a 10% off coupon in the offing. Stay Tuned.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Best of Smartphone Experts, 29 Nov 2009

Tweetie 2.1 [$2.99 - iTunes link] — a FREE upgrade for Tweetie 2.0 users — brings support for Twitter’s new Geotag feature (so everyone will know where exactly you’re tweeting from), Twitter lists (what lists you have, what lists you subscribe to, though not the likely less-wieldly lists you’re on), and the controversial new-style re-tweets (where you see the original tweeter in your timeline, not the person you’re following who re-tweeted it).

There are other additions as well: report spam (via API), tweet-stream “gap” detection (looks like a torn gap in your timeline), and a tone of other stuff (including disable pin-stripes for the pixel-haters).

So how does Tweetie 2.1 handle all this new stuff? With Atebit’s trademark buttery-smooth UI. Geotag is a new icon under the tweet-count drop-down menu. Twitter lists can be accessed via the More (…) icon on the bottom navigation bar, and you can view, manage, and even add new lists right on-device. New-style re-tweets get a small pink corner icon on the top right, and tapping on it brings up the original tweet with text on the bottom telling you which person you follow re-tweeted it.

Also, yes, still no support for Apple’s Push Notification Service. If you want push, you’ll need to get a third-party app to handle it for you. (Or use SMS support).

If you decide to give it a try, let us know how you like it. (Or help me try it out via @reneritchie)

Screenshots galore after the break!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Tweetie 2.1 Twitter Client for iPhone Brings Geotag, Lists, New-Style Re-Tweets