GPS

TomTom's iPhone car kit accessory should hit shelves any day now. The device is currently under review by the FCC, and with added software will provide turn-by-turn directions while fixing the iPhone or iPod Touch on the car windshield.

It works in conjunction with the TomTom iPhone application, available now on the App Store for $99.99 (US and Canada version). The car kit has its own GPS chip, making it possible that other third-party navigation apps can be used with the accessory in combination with an iPod Touch or iPhone.

The TomTom iPhone GPS hardware and software combination may have been featured by Apple at this year's WWDC, however Navigon has already hit the marketplace. Navigon is a full-featured turn-by-turn GPS navigation system for iPhone.

Navigon's MobileNavigator North America is available now on the Apple App Store. Although the price sounds steep at $69.99 (increasing to $99.99 on August 16th), this is a one-time cost with no ongoing subscription fees. In contrast, AT&T Navigator is a free download, but incurs a monthly fee of $9.95.

As expected, Apple has announced the arrival of the second generation 3G iPhone. The announcement occured just moments ago at this years WWDC (world wide developers conference) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Steve Jobs announced the next generation Apple iPhone and all its glory to a crowd of anxious observers who had many a set of cross fingers anticipating the announcement.

However, despite the formal announcement and the presentation of a ton of new information about the new 3G iPhone, it won't be available immediately as many had predicted. Instead, the 3G iPhone will be released worldwide on

Navizon, who released a third-party software GPS solution for the iPhone a few months ago, announced today that it is offering a new, free version of it's software. The previous version of the Navizon software offered a 15-day free trial after which the software expired. The new version will switch to a 'Lite' mode after the trial expires and allow users to continue enjoying Navizon's GPS services, albeit in a dumbed-down fashion.

The new Navizon Lite is basically a less accurate version of the fully-functional Navizon software. Instead of providing what Navizon claims to be the 10-30 meter accuracy of the full version of Navizon, Navizon Lite provides approximately 1500 meter accuracy (roughly a mile).

Essentially, Navizon Lite is Navizon without WiFi positioning. This limits Navizon's positioning abilities to cellular tower

There has been a great deal of skepticism at numerous reports iPhoneFAQ has published which have revealed a couple of different ways to add GPS to the iPhone without hardware changes, either via the addition of a GPS chip embedded on a SIM card or by utilization of the E-911 mandated positioning abilities native to the iPhone. Regardless, news out of Engadget this morning has revealed that the latter method is now being used effectively to provide GPS abilities on the iPhone via third party software provided by a company named Navizon. The best news? It's free.

Well, sort of. It's a rough implementation of A-GPS. A-GPS is assisted global positioning that can be accomplished using a handful of different methods. One of these methods does not require a GPS chip