iPhone Atlas

This 99-cent app serves up a wealth of free Redbox rental codes.

Good news for fans of Redbox movie-rental kiosks: the new Redbox app (free) lets you browse and reserve movies and find the kiosk nearest you. Cool.

Better news for Redbox fans: the new Red Box Free Rental Promo Codes app means you may never have to pay for another movie.

The app aggregates codes from around the Internet and various promo mailings, updating them every 12 hours so you're sure to have the latest and greatest.

When you get to the Redbox checkout screen, just tap "Rent with a Promo Code," then type in any of the codes listed in the app. If one doesn't work, try another.

Red Box Free Rental Promo Codes costs 99 cents, so the first time you nab a free rental, it pays for itself.

I haven't had a chance to put the app to the test just yet (it does require a visit to a kiosk--you can't use the codes when reserving movies), but I'll update the post if I run into any problems. To me it seems like a can't-miss way to score free movie rentals.

While we're on the subject of using your iPhone to save money, be sure to check out "Five iPhone apps that can save you money," "iPhone apps for Black Friday shopping," and eBay's new holiday-deals app.

All this gets me wondering: Could your iPhone actually start paying for itself? I mean, if you can rack up 70 bucks' worth of savings per month by way of various apps, that would cover the cost of AT&T's low-end plan. Hmmm...

eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.

eBay Deals

(Credit: eBay)

Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to bid.

You can browse deals across eight categories, including apparel, computers, electronics, and collectibles. If you spot a deal you like, just tap on it, and its listing pops up where you can watch it or bid on it. Not crazy about the current deals? Just shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, and a new set of deals appears.

If you spot a deal that may be better for someone else, you can e-mail it or share it via your Facebook or Twitter account.

Besides browsing eBay's virtual aisles, you can search for your own deals by entering a product name, category, and price range. You can save your customized search results to return to them later.

Starting Friday, eBay will also be unveiling a "12 Days of Deals" feature promoting a new promotion each day until December 8. Friday's deal will offer Samsung's N120 Netbook.

"As the world's leading online marketplace we have insights into how people really want to shop...and they clearly want to shop on their phones," eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington said in a statement.

Though designed for the mobile crowd, eBay's daily deals can also be found online at the auction site's Deals page.

eBay has been busy lately sprucing up its mobile auction site for the holidays. The vendor recently added social networking to its eBay Mobile app, letting you share a listing through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

Since its launch in 2008, eBay's mobile app has been downloaded more than 5 million times, said the company. With a purchase made every two seconds, the company said, more than $500 million worth of items are likely to be traded through eBay mobile this year.

This Friday, commonly referred to as Black Friday, marks the beginning of the 2009 holiday shopping season in the U.S. Some people love braving the crowds for holiday deals. But if you don't and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, any of the free apps below will help you shop from wherever you happen to be.

Amazon Mobile

Shopping Amazon for Dachshund themed gifts

The Amazon Mobile app (iTunes link) lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch to search, shop, compare prices, read reviews, and make purchases on Amazon.com. Existing Amazon customers get complete access to their existing shopping cart, wish list, payment and shipping options, order history, 1-Click settings, and Prime membership benefits.

One experimental feature, Amazon Remembers, lets you snap a photo of a product while you're out, so that you can refer to it later. In addition, the app will try to find the product in Amazon's catalog.

B&N Bookstore

B&N reserve in-store

The B&N Bookstore app (iTunes link) lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch to search books, DVDs and Blu-ray, CDs, toys and games, home and gift items, video games, and practically anything that B&N sells. Locate retail stores and browse additional store features such as cafes, event schedules, children's story times, author appearances, and free Wi-Fi.

The app also makes interesting use of the iPhone's camera. Take a photo of the front cover on a book, DVD, or CD, and the app will find it for you. Once the item has been found, you can get information about it that includes editorial reviews, customer ratings, and a chance to reserve a copy for pickup at your local store. You can use the Discover section of the app to get ideas for gifts this holiday season.

Best Buy Weekly Deals

Best Buy weekly deals

The Best Buy Weekly Deals app (iTunes link) brings you the latest weekly deals from Best Buy and lets you browse or search its inventory. You can access product ratings, reviews, accessories, and large product images. The app also lets you manage your BestBuy.com shopping cart and complete the purchases on a mobile version of Best Buy's Web site. Like all the other apps we've written about, this one has its own tool (called IdeaGiftr) for finding gifts. This app is definitely worth a look if you want to catch the Black Friday bargain sales at Best Buy this year.

Best Buy - Gamers Club

If you know someone who's an avid gamer, you might consider the Best Buy - Gamers Club app (iTunes link) that offers a lot of what the Best Buy Weekly Deals app offers, but concentrates specifically on gaming.

eBay Mobile

eBay shopping for Apple iPhone

One of our favorite iPhone apps is eBay Mobile (iTunes link), released in 2008 and later seeing some nice improvements.

eBay's app gives you nearly 100 percent of the eBay experience on your iPhone. It's not as feature complete as the Web site, but it works well enough. You can search for items to purchase or bid on, place bids, watch items, and purchase items all from your iPhone. Once the sale or auction is complete, you can even pay for your purchase on your iPhone.

Target mobile app

Target mobile app - no wiener dog would be caught wearing this

Target's iPhone app (iTunes link) lets you search for products at your local store, check their availability, and even find out where the item is located inside of the store. Like the Best Buy app, this one lets you browse the weekly deals available at Target.

Additional features include referrals to other store locations if your store is out of stock on a particular item, plus gift suggestions based on gender, age, price, personality, or occasion.

Toys "R" Us Big Book Favorites

Toys "R" Us shopping deals

The Toys "R" Us Big Book of Favorites iPhone app (iTunes link) helps you to find toys by category and popularity. You can use the app to make a list of your favorites and share the lists you create via e-mail. Product details are readily available including images, descriptions, prices, and customer reviews.

The app includes features that help you to save money on your toy and electronic purchases at Toys "R" Us and includes the usual store location features that we are used to seeing in all apps of this type.

You might want to hide this one from your children, especially if you are keeping your toy shopping list on your iPhone.

Wal-Mart

The Wal-Mart mobile app (iTunes link) is by far the least useful of all the apps and a disappointment coming from a retailer as large as Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart's app is disappointing lacking many basic shopping features that other retailers offer in their apps.

The app's sole focus is on the sale of Wal-Mart's electronics. If you want to see more, the app will refer you to Wal-Mart's full Web site that fortunately is available in a mobile edition. We were surprised to find that this app doesn't begin to touch the surface of the inventory available at Wal-Mart and doesn't offer a way a way to browse Wal-Mart's current weekly sales and specials. However, it does remind you how many days are left before Christmas and helps you locate stores.

Are you armed with your iPhone or iPod Touch and ready for the holiday shopping season? Do you have any other Apple mobile device shopping tips you would like to share? Tell us about them in the comments.

(Credit: CNET)

With more than 100,000 apps in the iTunes App Store and huge success around the world with the iPhone, it would appear Apple has done just about everything right with the launch of its first mobile handset. But as any iPhone app developers will tell you, the app approval process is less than ideal, with some developers waiting well beyond Apple's 14-day waiting period and sometimes longer to get their apps approved. Though Apple has stated it is working on the app approval process, there has been little in the way of progress if you ask iPhone app developers.

Recently, Apple added an automated system for weeding out developers who use Apple's private APIs, a process that may be part of a larger plan to cut down on some of the wait time. Unfortunately, developers are still struggling to get their apps to the iTunes store, finding out at the end of the 14-day waiting period that it was the automated system that turned them down. Hopefully, as more time passes, Apple will be able to figure out a way to make the process more efficient while still being able to provide high-quality and secure apps for everyone. Happy iPhone app developers mean more and better apps, so it's in all of our best interests for Apple to make the process better.

This week's apps include a new (to iPhone) multiservice chat client and a stunt-racing game with beautiful 3D graphics.

Use the tabs at the top to switch conversations

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Trillian ($4.99) is a popular multiservice chat client on Windows machines that you can now use on your iPhone. Multiservice chat clients are ideal for those who have accounts across several services like Yahoo, Google, ICQ/AIM, and MSN, and want to use just one client to access them all. The interface is fairly intuitive, letting you add your user names and passwords for each service, and then letting you log on to all or specific services with only a few taps on your touch screen. Trillian does not support landscape mode for typing yet, but the developers say it is coming soon.

Once you're logged in, the Trillian interface looks a lot like it does in the Windows client, complete with your buddies' avatars, contact categories (friends, coworkers, etc.), and color-coded icons to indicate which service your friends are using. The way Trillian handles multiple chat sessions on the iPhone client is excellent, with a touch-scrollable tabbed interface, making it easy to switch conversations quickly. Also especially useful (and clever) is the push notification system, that sends you the first message of a chain so you know someone is trying to reach you, but doesn't send a huge list of messages when you don't want them. At this time, you can only stay logged-in (with the app suspended) for a maximum of 24 hours, but the folks at Trillian say it will be lengthened to seven days in future updates. Though the price is a little steep in my opinion, Trillian is a high-quality chat client that will appeal to those who use multiple services.

The screenshot doesn't do it justice, but this game looks and plays great

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Jet Car Stunts is a stunt-racing game that runs surprisingly smoothly on first gen iPhones on up to the 3GS. Beyond the beautiful graphics, the driving control system is excellent, using the accelerometer for steering and onscreen controls for gas and brakes. What makes the game unique from other racing games are the controls for your rocket boost to complete big jumps, and the braking system that works both on the ground and in the air.

You can choose from two different game types including Time Trial and Platforming. In Time Trial, you race five laps around a track with corkscrew twists, tight turns, and huge jumps, to qualify for bronze-, silver-, or gold-medal times. Platforming has no time limit, but instead records the number of tries it takes you to complete difficult tracks--and they get very difficult in both game types. Time Trial has three skill levels, with four tracks to complete in each to move on the next skill level. Platforming has five difficulty levels, with five tracks in each to pass before moving on. Overall, Jet Car Stunts is one of the more unique racing games and features excellent graphics, extremely smooth controls, and plenty of replay value, with increasingly challenging tracks. I've had the game for a week and I still can't get over both how good it looks and how smooth it plays.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Were you waiting for a big-name multiservice chat client like Trillian before spending your money? Is Jet Car Stunts hard or am I just not good enough? Let me know in the comments!

Amidio makes some heavy-duty musical apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch; I was particularly impressed with StarGuitar, which gives you a virtual guitar with a bunch of preset rhythms, letting songwriters create quick sketches of ideas when they're nowhere near a guitar.

I created a nice vocal loop from the new Beach House single, then dropped it into Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine." It took me about five minutes.

On Tuesday, Apple approved a new Amidio app, called TouchDJ, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it's both very impressive from a technical standpoint and a heck of a lot of fun. The iPhone can only play one audio track at a time, but TouchDJ essentially fools it into placing two MP3s side by side for simultaneous, real-time manipulation and playback. It's like a two-track digital DJ setup right on your iPhone.

You get a crossfader to control the balance between the two tracks, plus individual controls for each track's volume, pitch/speed (which aren't independent from one another, unfortunately), equalization (three bands), and effects (the built-in real-time effect sounds like a kind of flanger, and there are several lame samples of a low-pitched robot voice, but you can upload your own). Each track is represented by simple waveform images that use a different color for the bass, which helps you match beats more effectively. A tempobend effect, which lets you quickly bend the speed up or down on either track, also helps you get in sync.

The looping functions were most impressive--you can create a cue and loop mark at any point in either track, then return to the cue with the rewind button, move to the loop mark with the fast forward button, or create an endless loop between the two points. All of this is in real time. If you've got an audio splitter, you can even create a separate cue track for your headphones--for example, to set up a loop in your second track while the first one is playing, without exposing your experimentation to your audience--although this requires some serious processing power, and is recommended only for an iPhone 3GS.

There are a couple caveats.... Read more

Having become fairly disenfranchised with all things Star Wars over the years, I didn't really expect to like Star Wars: Trench Run.

And really, the new game from THQ is little more than two kinds of arcade sequences sprinkled with a few familiar cutscenes.

So why can't I stop playing it?

Because Trench Run ($4.99) is a little slice of Star Wars heaven, that's why. It reminds me of the old vector-graphics arcade game from the early 80s--a game that consumed a considerable number of my quarters.

Of course, visually Trench Run blows that coin-op classic out of the sky. And what it lacks in variety, it makes up for with engaging gameplay.

You're at the tilt-sensitive controls of an X-Wing, which you can view from inside the cockpit or from behind. Tapping the right half of the screen fires your guns; tapping and holding the left half engages Force Power, which temporarily slows down the action.

As you might expect from the title, half the game takes place in a Death Star trench. You've got to steer past obstacles, blast turrets, stay out of Darth Vader's gun-sights, and, eventually, "blow this thing so we can all go home."

When you're not racing through trenches, you're dogfighting TIE Fighters just above the Death Star's surface. The only thing that changes from one level to the next is the difficulty.

And Trench Run does get difficult, though a little Force Power goes a long way toward helping you lock in a target or avoid a rapidly approaching turret.

Throughout it all, you're treated to all the familiar Star Wars sound effects along with John Williams' timeless score.

There's not a lot of replay value in Trench Run, and the limited variety means boredom is pretty inevitable. But until then, you'll have a blast.

Cisco is offering a free iPhone app that will allow people to get customized alerts on new security threats and other information for safe Web browsing.

The app, which will be available on Friday in the Apple iTunes store, provides information about new malware signatures, bulletins for how to mitigate against threats, ways to see if particular Web sites are compromised, as well as links to podcasts and videos.

The Cisco SIO To Go iPhone app gets its information from the company's Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) system which gathers information in real time from 700,000 sensors located at customer sites, ISPs, and other sites around the world. The data from the disparate sources allows Cisco engineers to do threat correlation to detect Internet attacks and spam campaigns.

The app is designed for professionals and security geeks, not the average consumer, said Michael Weir, Cisco security marketing director.

"I can make it applicable to my needs and the security needs of my [enterprise] network," he said.

The Cisco SIO To Go iPhone app offers information about the safety of particular Web sites.

(Credit: Cisco)

(Credit: FlightCaster)

There are plenty of ways for frequent travelers to check on their flight's status long before they leave the house or hotel, but fewer that alert you when delays occur, and only one we've seen that predicts airline tardiness.

That app is FlightCaster, which costs $7.99 on iPhone and BlackBerry, with Android support next. FlightCaster predicts flight delays 6 hours before airlines post delay data. FlightCaster works by looking at factors like the local weather at the departure and arrival airports, and if the inbound plane is already delayed.

While the concept applies to everyone, not everyone minds sitting in the airport lounge an extra half-hour or hour. There's quite a bit of missing functionality that FlightCaster co-founder Jason Friedman says the company will address in the next version. Push notification should come soon, as will one-click purchasing for alternative flights. There will also be greater integration with itinerary services like Tripit.

FlightCaster's price point is one that will likely drive away casual travelers, but not corporate or other frequent fliers. Freedman, however, says he expects to knock down the app's price.

How do you like this screen size?

(Credit: Photo by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Strap an Apple iPhone to Dr. Frankenstein's slab and you might wind up with something like this larger-than-life "iPhone" we spotted Thursday at a tech event in Silicon Valley.

Mellmo, the company behind the Roambi (review) spreadsheet visualizer app for iPhone, commissioned an undisclosed designer to give life to this giant faux-iPhone. Although we're not sure who the mastermind is, we do know a bit about the construction. The mammoth touch-screen device is made of a large touch-sensitive computer encased with plastic that's been cast in the shape of the iPhone's rounded-rectangular body. Mellmo runs the Flash version of its Roambi app on the screen.

While the iPhone's classic home screen dimple isn't operational on this massive build, event-goers can walk right up and navigate the screen with their hands. Sorry, guys, no pinch and zoom.

Mellmo wouldn't say how much it costs to supersize an iPhone, but we're pretty sure it isn't subsidized by AT&T.