Turn on your iPhone, tap on Google Maps, type in Santa, and his jolliness will pop right up on your screen thanks to the Christmas spirit of Google and NORAD. Perfect to help you and your kids keep track of the old elf and make sure his milk and cookies are ready and waiting the moment he pops down the chimney.

Google Earth app [Free - iTunes link], YouTube, and even @NORADSanta on Twitter will also help you keep your sights set on reindeer and sleigh.

(via AppleInsider, thanks Gregg for the tip!)

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

Track Santa on Your iPhone via Google and NORAD

Today's TiPb Top 5 will be directed towards our iPhone and iPod touch wielding readers who love to cook. Just like our other TiPb top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. For the full overview, follow us after the break!

Epicurious

Epicurious is a cooking app with over 25 000 recipies, a shopping list and ratings from others who have tried the meals. If you are going to pick just one cooking application, Epicurious would fit the bill. A vast array of recipes to choose from allows for a lot of versatility in the kitchen. It may not make you Gordon Ramsay, "You Donkey!", but it will help you to impress your loved ones.

The full page advertisements are a bit distracting but the application is free.

Epicurious is available for free [iTunes link].

Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner

Allrecipies.com Dinner Spinner is a cooking app with a bit of a twist spin (Sorry couldn't help myself). Boasting 1000's of recipes Allrecipes.com allows you to pick your meal, ingredients and how long you want to spend cooking it (No “zero minutes” option, though — I checked!). The great thing about this app is that you also get to see the ratings and comments of others people who have tried the recipes. This lets you know about variations/suggestions for the meal. You can also turn on filters for vegetarian, gluten-free and other special diet restrictions.

A great overall cooking application

Allrecipies.com Dinner Spinner is available for free [iTunes link].

Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals

Jamie Oliver’s 20 minute meals gives the user a “personalized experience”. It’s is more costly than most cooking apps but it makes up for it with an sleek look intuitive feel. Jamie also gives you over an hour of videos on topics such as Knife skills, how to make the perfect steak, and how to properly use your cutting board. It's just like having Jamie in the kitchen with you. Each step in the recipe comes with a picture. It also gives you an easy-to-use shopping list. All of the recipies are installed in the application so you don't need to connect to the internet. The one negative to this application is the lack of recipes, with only a a bit over 50 included (though you can access more recipes via integration with Jamie's website).

This application is especially great for those who enjoy Jamie Oliver’s cooking techniques.

Jamie Olivers 20 minute meals is available for 7.99 [iTunes link]

Look and Taste

Look and Taste is an application that gives you plenty for your money. Its clean interface allows you to seamlessly pick which recipes you want to cook. Many recipes also have video included on how to cook the meal (as opposed to other applications that only use video to show you some tips). There are also videos on various glossary terms, food items and chef tips.The recipes can be chosen by cooking time, difficulty, ingredients and main ingredient.

The application is jammed packed with information for cooks of all levels and is well worth the price tag..

Look and Taste is available for 4.99 [iTunes link].

iFood Assistant (by Kraft)

The application has a clean interface and easy to navigate controls. You choose your recipe by the kind of meal you want to prepare (either snack, breakfast, entrée etc), and then your main ingredient. The use of product placements in the ingredients list is a bit disconcerting but they’re easily replaced by whatever brand you prefer. (The strange craving for Cheese Wiz that come with them, somewhat less so!)

Browse recipes, watch the cooking videos or try out the budget wise section, it also gives you tips on how to shop on a budget (US only). You can organize the recipes by prep time, reviewer rating, total time or name. This makes finding a quick meal fast and efficient. The application has over 40 cooking videos, which give you tips, but the video quality is low. The recipes range in difficulty from beginner to advanced, so there’s a bit of everything. (Though it’s not quite up to the standard of the other apps in this list).

iFood Assistant is available for $0.99 [iTunes link].

Conclusion

There you have it, TiPb's Top 5 Must-Have iPhone cooking games. Did we miss any of your favorites? Overlook any amazing food finds? Drop us a comment and let us know your list!

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

TiPb Top 5 iPhone Cooking Apps!

Neither Google Voice nor any Google Voice-related apps snuck back into the App Store, at least not yet, but VoiceCentral aims to fill that void with its Black Swan Edition WebApp alternative. TechCrunch has the details:

The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages.

Using the WebApp calls both the number you want to reach and your Google Voice number, so you’re still using voice minutes, and it can’t access your iPhone contacts so you have to upload (and update) those separately. Still, the voicemail and SMS will no doubt appeal to some. It even does HTML5-style local caching.

Once again, as TechCrunch and Apple themselves point out, WebApps provide a way to develop for the iPhone outside the App Store and associated approval method (and problems).

If you have a Google Voice account and want to give VoiceCentral a try, you can apply for the beta. If you get in, let us know how it works for you!

Video after the break!

[YouTube video link]

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

VoiceCentral “Black Swan” Brings Google Voice to iPhone Browser

‘Tis the season for last minute, high-profile, pre-holiday App Store approvals it seems, as the long-awaited Qik, now dubbed Qik Live [Free - iTunes link] has finally hit the iPhone!

I’ve been lucky enough to have an ad-hoc version for a while now, and it’s always worked very, very well, so here’s to Apple and AT&T loosening the 3G chains and letting iPhone users do what Nokia N95 users have been doing for years now — broadcast live from their iPhones!

If you try it out, say to live stream the grandkids opening their new iPod touch presents, let us know how it works for you!

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

Full on Qik Live for iPhone Streaming Video Broadcast Now in App Store

Evernote let us know that their huge, elephant-sized update, Evernote 3.2 [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch snuck into the App Store just before the holidays and brought with it new, note-worthy goodness:

• Zippy-ness all around, from launching to searching, syncing, making new notes, reading old ones. Just. Faster.

• Offline is the new online, as you can create, view, and search notes cached locally on your device. (Premium users can download any or all notebooks to their iPhone or iPod touch for utter availability).

• Convert Rich Text to Plain text for editing.

If you’re big Evernote user and you try out the update, let us know how it works for you!

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

Evernote 3.2 for iPhone — Offline Notes, Local Search, Extra Zippy-ness

AppleInsider has come across an interesting patent from Apple, titled “Keystroke Tactility Arrangement on a Smooth Touch Surface that details a multi-touch tactile keyboard for an iTablet-like device:

“The articulating frame may provide key edge ridges that define the boundaries of the key regions or may provide tactile feedback mechanisms within the key regions. The articulating frame may also be configured to cause concave depressions similar to mechanical key caps in the surface.”

“Preferably, each key edge comprises one to four distinct bars or Braille-like dots. When constructed in conjunction with a capacitive multi-touch surface, the key edge ridges should separated to accommodate the routing of the drive electrodes, which may take the form of rows, columns, or other configurations.”

“Specifically, the recognition software commands lowering of the frame when lateral sliding gestures or mouse clicking activity chords are detected on the surface.”

Another candidate for the rumored “surprising” tablet interaction method?

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

Multi-touch Tactile Keyboard for iTablet — Apple Patent Watch

UPDATE: TiPb asked for AT&T’s side of this story, and here it is:

“The AT&T wireless network is designed and engineered to deliver the highest possible levels of capacity and performance. Our standing as the nation’s fastest 3G network is validated by multiple third-party testing organizations on the basis of millions of drive tests annually.  

“We believe that recent online speculation regarding AT&T wireless network configuration settings is without foundation. Allegations in these posts regarding packet loss network settings are incorrect.”

ORIGINAL: In a post entitled Has AT&T Wireless data congestion been self-inflicted? the blog Communications explores whether the iPhone-on-AT&T problems we keep hearing about are the result of misconfigured buffers in AT&T’s mobile core network leading to congestion collapse.

It appears AT&T Wireless has configured their RNC buffers so there is no packet loss, i.e. with buffers capable of holding more than ten seconds of data. Zero packet loss may sound impressive to a telephone guy, but it causes TCP congestion collapse and thus doesn’t work for the mobile Internet!

The article is way over our heads, but give it a read and let us know your take-away. There’s obviously something going on that results in iPhone users on AT&T, especially in New York and San Francisco having connection issues, dropped calls, etc. Could this, at least in part, explain it?

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

UPDATED: Are AT&T’s iPhone Problems Due to Network Configuration Errors?

As previously announced, the iTunes Connect portal used by developers to upload and manage their App Store apps, is now “closed for the holidays”, and with typical Apple graphical flair it would seem.

Whether that 40+ person review team is getting a break from those 10,000 apps a week, or Eddy Cue is leading an overhaul, we wish everyone at Apple’s iTunes a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous holiday season.

[Via Marco.org]

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

iTunes Connect “Closed for the Holidays”

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Join Rene and Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry.com for Round Robin BlackBerry Bold2 and Storm2 vs. iPhone, mega iTablet, iPhone HD, and iPhone 4.0 rumors, and all the week’s news and opinions. Listen in!

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

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

TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! #81 — Back in BlackBerry!

And the iTablet Saga continues today, with the New York Times blogging that, according to an Apple employee:

“I can't really say anything, but, let's just say Steve [Jobs] is extremely happy with the new tablet."

It’s long been known that Apple has had a tablet in the labs for years, and that the iPhone was a result of leveraging technologies experimented with for a “Safari Pad“, but Steve Jobs and Apple didn’t see a mainstream market for the device and so never released it in its own right. Arguably, they’ve been just fine with the iPhone and iPod touch filling that niche.

Moreover, the NYT post adds that former Apple employee has told them:

"You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet."

Would that we could stare into its black gloss and will it to do our bidding. Is there an app for that yet?

Anyway, if these rumors have any substance to them, what’s changed in Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s minds? The App Store? The maturing of digital media content so that an iTablet could become the iPod of the next decade?

[via MacRumors]

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

NYT: Steve Jobs “Extremely Happy” with iTablet, Surprising Interaction Method?