Today we finally submitted Bindo the GPS group tracker iPhone App to Apple for review. Check out the BindoGPS website for most updated informations: http://www.bindogps.com

What is Bindo?

Bindo is a GPS tracker that tracks your own location and transmits this to your friends who also run Bindo on their iPhone. So you can see where your friends are at this moment and also your friends can see where you are.

Of course only those friends who you authenticate can see your location.

Features:

• Several different Map Styles, depending on your need.
  • Hiking/Biking Map with contour lines
  • Street Maps
  • Map data is cached, so if you go to the same place again, no need to download the maps again from the internet. You can also use this to download the map data via WiFi (e.g. at home or your hotel). Just pan over the area where you plan to go. Once you are out you can use these maps even without any internet connection.
• Waypoints
  • You can add picture to your waypoint
  • Design the waypoint marker, to mark a camp site, bus stop, car etc.
  • Send the waypoint to your friends, who can import this incl. picture.
    Of course you don't need to quit Bindo for this.
• Trips
  • All your trips are recorded on the iPhone
  • You can send an entire trip to your friends, who might use it as reference for their own journey.
  • Colors and line strength of the trips can be indivodually adjusted.
• Messages
  • You can send instant messages to your friends without leaving the App.
• Website
  • On the corresponding Bindo website (soon to be launched) you can look at your trips, show them on Google Maps, export them to Google Earth (KML) or as GPX file.

Who needs Bindo?

Bindo can be used by many persons

• Hikers, Bikers can track their locations to make sure nobody gets lots
• Families who want to share their locations
• Companies who need to track the locations or their drivers, repair-crew etc.

Screenshots

When you looked at our App Store Database recently you probably have noticed that we made some changes:

• Support for US, German and French App Store.
  When you click on the flag of the corresponding country the App descriptions and the Price from that particular App Store will be displayed. But please note that only some Apps have descriptions in several languages.
  When you change the App Store the website won't reload completely only the descriptions will be updated.
• Hover with the mouse on a short description to display the full description.
  Usually we only display the first few lines of an App description. Now if you move your mouse over this short description, the full text will be loaded and displayed.
• Faster way to show screenshots
  If you click on "Load screenshot" the screenshot will be loaded and embedded into the website, also without re-loading the full webpage.

Coming up, support for more App stores, translation of some texts into several languages and some other small changes.

We added some new features and redesigned our database for the iTunes App Store over the last few days:

1. Most noticeable is the chart that displays the price of an App since the App was released. You can easily see if the current price is really a bargain or not. You can also see the age of an App on the horizontal axis. For new Apps this chart won't be displayed.
   Please note that these chart won't be displayed on the iPhone/iPod Touch, because the load time of the site would take too long.
   
2. You can now hide/show the search function.
3. The description of an App has now a similar layout as seen in the iTunes App Store.
4. You can now also access the App store database with this URL: http://apps.infoxenter.com.

Many people look for RSS feeds to get the latest updates from the App Store. You can subscribe to my RSS feeds which inform you about new and price reduced Apps:
New Apps
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/infoxenter-newapps

Price Reduced Apps
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/infoxenter-reducedprice

Recently released Apps with a User Rating of 3 or more Stars
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Infoxenter-goodapps
Please note that there are no brand new Apps in this RSS feed. Apps appear in this feed usually 1 day after they have been released.

But Apple also offers some official App Store feeds. You can go to this link and create you own RSS feed:
http://itunes.apple.com/rss/generator/

You need to choose the Media Type "Applications" and after that you have two choices for your feed:
Top Free Applications
Top Paid Applications

So there is no official RSS feeds to show all new Apps but you can get the Top 100 for each Genre, which is also not too bad.
Here some examples for official RSS feeds from the US Store:
Top 100 free Apps:
http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/RSS/topfreeapplications/sf=143441/limit=100/xml

Top 100 paid Apps:
http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/ws/RSS/toppaidapplications/sf=143441/limit=100/xml

A few days ago I read this article in The Standard, “Health alert after mainland fake eggs found” (Note: “Mainland” refers to China).
Fake eggs? I couldn't believe it, who wants to produce this. Let alone who wants to EAT this?

The reason these eggs are produced is of course money, The Standard writes fake eggs cost 1 to 5 Hong Kong Cent to produce compared to about 25 to 30 Cent for real eggs.

China is producing many fake goods and is copying designs, products etc. which is already bad enough. But producing fake food makes people sick and can even kill them.
Last year China had this big scandal about Melamine contaminated milk, a few years before fake milk powder for infants starved many babies to death. And there were many other similar incidents.

I really hope these fake eggs won't be available for long or cause a health alert like the last Melamine contaminated milk did.

Are there actually other countries who produce fake food? Please leave a comment if you know other incidents.