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Update: per comment below, Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Pro are only available in Canada for now whole ngmoco tests their servers. Wide release to follow soon!

First-person shooter Elminate Pro [Free - iTunes link] and virtual pet sim Touch Pets Dogs [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch, first shown off by ngmoco at WWDC 2009, have begun making their way into iTunes App Stores around the world (we’ve confirmed them in Canada, other countries should be getting them soon as well).

Both games utilize the plus+ network for community gaming, with Eliminate looking to bring the classic Golden Eye/Halo style gameplay to Apple’s platform, and Touch Pets Dogs, the Nintendogs virtual pooch model. (Sadly, no, there’s doesn’t seem to be a way to cross over within the two games yet, and hunt the mean soldiers with doggy cuteness — or vice versa).

The price for both being zero, we’re guessing Apple’s new policy of “free games can charge for in-app purchases” is having an immediate an obvious effect. Demo without risk, and if you love one or both, they’ll figure out levels or gear or powerups or accessories you can buy to enjoy to love them even more.

Touch Pets Dogs video after the break, and if you try them out, let us know what you think!

[Thanks Alexander for the tip!]

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To go along with the shiny new iTunes 9.0.2 and Apple TV 3.0 software released today, Apple has also bumped their Remote app [Free - iTunes link] to version 1.3.2, which:

“provides bug fixes and compatibility with iTunes 9 and Apple TV 3″

If you have an Apple TV and haven’t tried the latest version of Apple’s Remote app, download load it and do it. The lag for Wi-Fi to connect between sessions is annoying (though you can disable auto-lock, burn battery, and stay connected if you choose), but using the iPhone or iPod touch as a slick touch surface controller… gesture bliss.

[via @WyattLeCadre]

Streaming music has gotten pretty popular among iPhone owners and today we’d like to introduce you to one more option, Lala.

Lala gives you the ability to listen to any song for free one time. If you happen to like the song you pay $0.10 for unlimited listening. And at $0.10 per “Web Song” you can pretty much purchase a full album for a single dollar. That may not convince all of you but Lala has one more trick up it’s sleeve — you can upload your entire music library from your computer to the cloud for you to stream back to your iPhone, completely free. Lose you data connection for some reason? No worries as Lala uses caching to save your music. Exactly how much is cached is not known just yet but it’s a nice feature regardless.

This is definitely an app worth taking a closer look at when it hits the App Store. It should be free to download and you can expect to see it available within the next few weeks.

[Via TechCrunch]

The internets are a rocking with posts about the iPhone’s App Store unofficially hitting 100,000 apps, but while we wait for official word from Steve Jobs, the blogsphere is also debating the important of the sheer quantity of those apps, and whether that’s more important that quality.

It isn’t.

Scoble (and others, I think MacBreak Weekly covered this earlier) suggests that the huge number of apps makes for a greater chance each individual user will find that unique assortment that best fills their needs. In other words, while everyone has the same iPhone, they don’t all have the same apps, and those apps essentially create a personalize experience — a different iPhone — for each user.

What’s more, those must-have apps, and the money, effort, and time spent in acquiring, setting up, and becoming proficient in them, creates a cost that prohibits users switching to another platform. To go from iPhone to Android, in Scoble’s example, means you lose Tweetie, Tap Tap Revenge, Photoshop.com, NASDAQ, etc. (Never mind if you’ve bought Navigon or other, high-priced content).

John Gruber, for his part, asks if the App Store is popular because the iPhone is great, or is the iPhone great because the App Store is popular.

The number of apps already in the store — and, even more so, the momentum with which new ones are being added — almost certainly guarantees the continuing popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch for the next few years. But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.

But the iPhone isn’t Windows. Neither popularity levels not quantity of software can be used to balance that particular equation.

Unlike the iPhone, Windows has never been a poster-child for great user experience (Windows 7 may alter that, but it’s just going to market now). Fact of the matter is, the iPhone debuted in 2007 without an App Store at all, and sold for the entire first year (until the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0) without an App Store. It sold on the strength of its user experience.

It’s that focus on usability that makes the iPhone great, and that in turn makes many of the apps great. Just like with the Mac, Apple has built in core technologies and development tools to handle a lot of the heavy lifting. So, while it still takes the very best developers to make the very best apps, even fair-to-middling developers can make apps that are surprisingly usable.

Those great apps, combined with a large quantity of usable if not inspired apps, is what makes the iPhone so compelling. The App Store itself is proof. Where Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and RIM have had apps — many thousands of them — as well, it took Apple to create a single place, with a single home screen icon, to find and acquire them all. If it was just quantity, Apple would have had a hard time catching up to them.

UPDATE 3: As pointed out in the comments, there’s no sign of ad support in Google Maps Navigation (at least not yet). It’s just free as in free.

UPDATE 2: According to Gizmodo, Google:

implied they are working closely with Apple now on [Google Maps Navigation].

iPhone 2.2 saw Google Street View, could iPhone 3.2 see Google Maps Navigation? Let the drooling begin!

UPDATE 1: Replaced video with official version, moved TechCrunch preview below the fold. Enjoy both!

ORIGINAL: Just a few hours ago TiPb posted about the rumors surrounding a free (with ad support, of course) Google Navigation app, and now TechCrunch has the goods — it’s real, and it’s (so far) exclusive to Android 2.0. And we quote:

• Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.

• Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.

• Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.

• Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.

• Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.

• Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.

• Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

To quote our own editor-in-chief, it looks “bad@$$”, and so far it also looks exclusive to the US, and to Android 2.0, at least for now. But come on Google, you want to give it to everyone outside the US too, right?

[via Chad!]

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Google already provides the free Google Maps service (with Street View, pictured above), but could they be planning to step up to full on turn-by-turn navigation? Forbes thinks so:

Google, which generally gives its software away for free and recoups its investment through advertising, would likely sell ads within the navigation application rather than charge users, experts say. The ads could be particularly valuable because the program would know users’ precise locations and destinations, allowing advertisers to pinpoint specific kinds of consumers. Google recently started running sponsored link ads in Apple’s ( AAPL – news – people ) iPhone map application, which it helped build.

Forbes cites competitors who think Google will enter the “small but lucrative” space, and it would be a great value-add to Android, extending Google’s control over the software to an area some carriers still want all to themselves (with the monthly subscription feeds that go with it).

Before international readers get too excited, however, like Google Voice, it might be US-only, especially at first. That, and other factors have potential competitors already getting their shots in:

“Millions of customers use our service because of its reliability, ease of use and additional features,” [Mary Beth Lowell of TeleNav] says. [Steve Andler of Networks in Motion] contends the mobile market is different from the Internet, where “everything’s free and always in beta. People are willing to pay a premium to have something work all the time on their phones.”

Translation: they won’t try to compete with Google on price.

But what about you? Would you let Google monitor your GPS coordinates and activities, and send you targeted ads, in exchange for free navigation?

[via Fierce Mobile Content via Engadget Mobile]

Metallica and iPhone apps seem to be pretty popular as of late. First they released Live Metallica and now Tap Tap Revenge Metallica has just been released into the App Store. [$4.99 - iTunes Link] For your money you get the following 10 tracks:

• Enter Sandman
• Sad But True
• King Nothing
• All Nightmare Long
• Some Kind of Monster
• Master of Puppets
• Seek and Destroy
• Fuel
• One
• For Whom the Bell Tolls

This Tap Tap game may seem to be no different than the rest but it the first of the series to include battles over Bluetooth. This Bluetooth battle mode allows players to challenge their friends to a point-by-point battle where they can deploy bombs and other special objects to distract the opposition and come out victorious. Tapulous then added another all new fast-paced Arcade Mode where players are challenged with even more bombs and other objects that make the game that much more difficult.

So if you are a Metallica fan and have $4.99 to spend, we highly recommend checking this one out as you will not be disappointed.

[Thanks to Phil for the tip!]

NASA for iPhone [Free - iTunes link] lets you:

enjoy fast, direct access to accurate, up-to-date space mission content from a wide range of U.S. Space Agency sources – all in one easy-to-use mobile platform. [...] Receive and share dynamic NASA mission updates, out-of-this-world images, and intriguing video links. Follow the path and progress of space exploration in real time while tracking the global orbits of your favorite spacecraft, all in the palm of your hand.

Our buddy Bla1ze from CrackBerry.com also tells us:

NASA Ares I-X set for launch tomorrow morning watch it on tv or iPhone users you can check out the Ares I-X via the NASA iPhone app!

[Thanks Bla1ze!]

Recently, I have been doing some freelance job hunting and I’ve found CraigsMobileList [$0.99 - iTunes link] to be quite helful in sifting through the craigslist search results.

The app also allows you to bookmark searches, post ads, favorite certain results and set filters for your searches. Also, you can keep a recent city search list (helpful if you are looking state-wide results.)

If you’re a “usual” on Craigslist, then this app if for you!

(Card Ninja Forum Review. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Card Ninja – just the name conjures up interesting ideas as to what the iPhone (and iPod touch) game might be. As it turns out, the ideas may not be that far from the truth.

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