GPS

Whether you're a parent of an existing iPhone owner, or you've recently decided to give in to your kid's incessant pleading for a new iPhone, you may find yourself wondering if you can leverage your son or daughter's shiny gift to keep tabs on him/her. The answer is that, yes, but you will need to convince them to give you the password to their Apple account, or accept your location requests through Find My Friends.

Now, before we go on, let's go over what we know about kids and parents. Kids, especially teenagers, are astoundingly moronic, impulse driven idiots that are typically completely ignorant of their own mortality who spend their time traveling in packs looking for opportunities to trump each other's stupidity. Parents, especially American ones, are overwhelmingly paranoid, obsessive, overbearing blowhards that misidentify harmless coming of age behavior and experiences as threats to their child's well being while ignoring real threats to their mental and physical health such as television and run-amok consumerism.

There is no guaranteed path to success on the app market, but one of the most surefire ways to stand out has always been to provide users with something they didn’t know they needed until it was available to them. If an app can make you say “Why didn’t I think of that?” after hearing about it, there’s a fairly good chance that its creator has stumbled upon something special.

More evidence has surfaced that Apple is working on navigation software for the next-generation iPhone. The company recently acquired online mapping company Poly9. This is not the first tech company specializing in mapping to be picked up by Apple.

Placebase, a mapping services company was also bought by Apple in 2009. Speculation is rampant that Apple may integrate both companies' technology in a new mapping and/or navigation app for the iPhone 5. Google maps are currently featured in iOS products, but the relationship between Google and Apple has been rocky lately. Google has also launched its own competing free GPS navigation app for Android platforms.

Magellan has jumped into the iPhone game with their own car dock and GPS turn-by-turn navigation software. Instead of attaching to the windshield like the TomTom car kit, Magellan's device mounts to the dashboard.

Magellan's RoadMate iPhone app is available on the App Store now for $79.99 (a $20 discount over the normal retail price). TomTom sells its navigation software for $99.99.

The day has finally come for fans of the TomTom iPhone car accessory. The device, which acts as a dock for your iPhone can be ordered through the Apple Store. Unfortunately the product will not ship for another 2-3 weeks.

For a price of $119.95 and free shipping, the TomTom car kit will provide an external speaker for turn-by-turn GPS navigation. It plugs into the car with a cigarette lighter adaptor to provide power to the iPhone.