Experience the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games on your Apple iPhone or iPod touch with the NBC Olympics app. Follow all the action with live real-time updates on every event from Vancouver. Check out NBC Olympics video clips and highlights, news stories for every sport, results & schedules, and updated medal counts. Plus, you can follow your favorite nations, sports and athletes on Facebook and Twitter — all from your phone.

Want to know when things happen, as they happen? Set up push notifications for your favorite sports, so you won’t miss a single event. Check out the TV schedule to help you find the events you want on NBC Olympics’ on-air coverage. Or if you missed an event, check out NBC Olympics video highlights wherever you are.

Participate in Public and Private Groups, powered by Huddle, where you and your friends can discuss everything from Team USA’s latest game to Shaun White’s halfpipe double cork. You can also send comments by SMS so your friends won’t feel left out.

[Read more →]

As one of the largest research universities in the United States, the University of Washington brings together 65,000 students, faculty members, and administrative staff. From the laboratory to the dormitory, this thriving academic community stays connected with iPhone and the university’s proprietary m.UW app, which gives students and staff mobile access to campus maps, news, directories, course schedules, and lectures.

“Cambridge, Mass.-based car-sharing service Zipcar this week launched an app that lets you locate and reserve one of its vehicles, unlock it using the iPhone touch-screen and drive it off the lot,” reports Jefferson Graham (usatoday.com). Graham notes that while there are many iPhone apps for autos “Zipcar’s app is the first to control the operation of a car.”

1. Compare on the fly before you buy
With prices and product information so easily accessible online, only the extremely rich and foolish don’t comparison-shop. But what about when you’re standing in the store with the item in your hand? You’re fairly sure it’s a great price, or maybe the item is discontinued and you’re not sure you’ll be able to find it anywhere else. How do you decide what to do? Sol Robots has created Save Benjis, a $1 app for the iPhone and iPod touch that puts a retail shopping search engine in the palm of your hand. Shop for a variety of popular consumer goods—from books and cosmetics to office equipment and home theater systems—using keywords, model numbers, or bar code numbers. The app surveys a long list of big-name retailers and online merchants to find the best price available. Revisit your searches via the recent products screen, or e-mail yourself a link to the best deal. You can even make purchases right from the app itself.

2. Know where you money goes
When times get tough, you need to resort to the financial equivalent of a root canal: a budget. But budgeting can be simple with design by a knife’s Pennies, a $3 expense-tracking app for the iPhone or iPod touch. Each month, enter your monthly spending allowance. Every time you buy something, enter the amount and assign the transaction to an expense category. Add notes for greater detail. As the month progresses, a gas gauge-like meter shows how much you have left to spend, and stat boxes display your top three expenses and per-day spending average. You can export the data in a .csv (comma-separated values) file and open it in a spreadsheet on your Mac. Once you’ve tracked a month’s worth of expenses, you’ll have an informative snapshot of your spending habits. It’s up to you to figure out where to cut back. You can’t avoid the sobering reality that a budget’s limits impose, but the budgeting process doesn’t have to be as stressful or complex as you may fear.

[Read more →]