Here's our list of five apps that make tracking, remembering, and motivating your resolutions easier than willpower alone. All of them (except RunKeeper) run on both iPhones and iPod touch models.

RunKeeper for motivating your run

Running is one of, if not the best, exercise plan for those who like immediate, measurable proof of their progress. RunKeeper, a free app that Adam used to roll his own Nike+ iPhone for free, is the data-hound's running companion. Using the iPhone's GPS powers, where and how far you went is mapped out (if with a few glitches), your calories burned and average speed marked, and it can all be searched through and/or synced to the RunKeeper web site. For a similar solution with a different mix of strengths and features, try Fitnio. (RunKeeper Free and Pro)

Weightbot for, well, your weight

For just $2, you can grab an app that makes measuring your body weight sort of (seriously) fun. The previously toured iPhone/iPod touch app has a really slick look to it, and takes your weight down in tenths-of-a-pound increments, along with auto-calculating your Body Mass Index. Your day-by-day progress can be graphed out and tracked against a goal weight, and if you're concerned about friends prone to "Ooh, let me see your iPhone apps!" fever, Weightbot can be password locked before giving away the stats. (Store link)

Remember the Milk for everything else

This one's a bit pricier, but you're getting more than just a nagging reminder to do this or don't do that. With a $25/year Remember the Milk Pro account, its iPhone/iPod touch app (which offers 15 free days to any account) gives you pretty much complete access to all your lists, tasks, alerts, reminders, and whatever resolution you're plugging in. Plus, using geo-location features, you can goad yourself into stopping by Goodwill to finally drop off those clothes, since you're already shopping in the neighborhood. As noted in its Top 10 entry, though, RTM's real benefit is that it syncs itself everywhere at all times. So remembering to buy a better paper filing box while you're at your desk can pay off the next time you're in an OfficeMax. (store link)

iOwn to stop hoarding stuff

Most of us can probably do with a little less stuff, and we're all prone to buying things we already own—I'll point you to a drawer full of barely-used duct tape, if you'd like. iOwn is a one-stop spot for keeping track of those things you always tend to buy more of, or just want to have more details about the stuff you already have at your fingertips (does the DVD player take component cables, or just S-Video?). You can give any item as many attributes as you'd like, and the full $5 version lets you store, and backup online, as many items as you can think of (the free, Lite version is a 10-item trial). It's pitched as a total-home organizer, but if you've just got one collection or acquisition habit you're looking to reign in—spices, music, photo frames, whatever—it's pretty indispensable. (via LA Times Blogs; iOwn free and lite links)

Mint for managing your money

Mint.com's a streamlined webapp for graphing, tracking, budgeting, and otherwise keeping tabs on your money. Its free iPhone/iPod companion is no less a handy tool, and it's just as secure and informative. Check your basic balances, browse your last few days' cash flow, and peek at multiple budgets you set up for yourself from a series of sliding screens. If you fear losing your device and opening up your financial world to the thief, you can remotely deactivate the read-only tool from your Mint.com profile. If you can get your head around Mint's money management, you'll really benefit from this app. (Store link)

That's our flight of five apps, but we want to hear what free or paid iPhone/iPod apps work for goals and resolutions. Share the app names in the comments.

Rooms: Until this week, IRC fans had to jailbreak to get chatting, but Rooms developed this week brings the same Colloquy-based engine to the App Store. The interface could use a bit of pretty-ing in future releases, but all of your basic IRC client functions are there, now without jailbreak. $1

WiFinder: This app pings all of the Wi-Fi networks in range and tries to load a sample web page once connected—saving you the task of checking each network individually to see if you can get a working IP. It could use an interface to then connect to the network in question (currently you have to go back to Settings) but this is handy if you often find yourself squatting, especially in major cities where there are tons of networks in any given location. $3

DianHua Chinese Dictionary: Just about all of the dictionaries in the App Store, be they English or other languages, cost money. Hopefully this excellent Chinese character dictionary, which lets you search for words in English, Pinyin, and traditional or simplified characters, starts the trend of these things being free.

Newton's Cradle: It could use a touch of MotionX's realistic physics, but Newton's Cradle is a fun diversion—bringing the ol' swinging balls rig to your phone. Responds to touch and tilt alike for hypnotizing effects. Wouldn't be cool if it wasn't free, so thankfully, it is.

Photohunt: My favorite bar game (aside from, you know, the normal ones like pool and darts) come to the iPhone, in a version that doesn't look nearly erotic enough, sadly. $5

This Week's App Coverage on Giz:

• Copy and paste framework OpenClip surfaced using an ingenious backdoor trick to bring system-wide copy and paste to all apps without jailbreaking, but it looks like the 2.1 firmware will close the door on the exploit. Frown.
• iBlessing and ParveOMeter keep you Kosher, make your Grandma in Boca proud of you.
• Palringo, the best App Store IM client, gets push-to-talk functionality.
• Microsoft says any Xbox Live App has to be free, and soon you'll hopefully be able to add friends via your phone with the best Live app, 1337pwn.
• We saw a preview of the next version of the Facebook app, which goes a long way toward looking like real non-iPhone Facebook.
• Snapture adds multi-touch zoom, instant-delete, color filters and more much needed improvements to the iPhone's camera. It's Jailbreak-only at the moment
• iPhone Myst is coming. I can almost smell my old Packard Bell's CD-ROM drive chewing on those Quicktime movies!

From the novelty/ridiculous bin:

• Two bucks gives you Roshambo, taking the great game us normal people know as Rock Paper Scissors and turning it into two douches shaking their iPhones at each other.
• Tie-a-Tie, your guide to being a man, comes in both Lite ($1) and Deluxe ($2) versions. Sigh.
• Lolcats lets you haz that cheezborger on the go. Free

And this week's trend: Apps for Pilots

FAA Wait: Unlike a few of the other aviation apps this week, FAA Wait is actually very useful for non-pilots as well. It pings FAA's live database for air traffic control delays at airports around the country. Great for getting news of your 3-hour wait on the jetway straight from the source. $1

FltPlan Airport Guide: Comes loaded with the full official listing of our country's airports large and small, and all the relevant info you need like radio frequencies, approach information, and nearby alternates to plan your Cessna jaunt out to them. Free.

Gulfstream Tanker: And on the opposite end of the niche spectrum is this app for owners of Gulfstream GIV or GV jets—rappers and Fortune 500 execs only, basically—which calculates how much money you might save by loading up with fuel for your return trip before you depart, factoring in cruising speed, trip distance, and the price of fuel at your two stops. Hov, your app is finally here. $20

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

I've always been a Windows user, which means I've always been subjected to the ridicule of holier-than-thou Apple fans. You know what I'm talking about: blue screen of death jokes, spelling Microsoft with a $ in place of the S, saying "it just works" with a smug, chubby-faced smirk. It's always been annoying, and it's always made me want to avoid using Apple products just so I wouldn't turn into one of those people. But then the iPhone came out, and I wanted it. But I being a Windows dude, I knew to wait a year for what I thought would be a more complete, less buggy version. It was Apple's opportunity to get me into the fold, to make me a member of the cult. And boy, did they blow it.

I really would love to know where Apple got this reputation of creating lily-white products that never need fixing, created by a company that cradles its customers in fluffy clouds of superior technology. According to my first experiences with an Apple OS, that's a whole lot of bullshit.

The iPhone 3G is infuriatingly buggy. It crashes. It doesn't get great speeds when it should, switching to EDGE in areas that have 3G coverage. Coming out of the subway, it takes minutes to find a signal again and stop claiming to get "No Service" in the middle of Manhattan, often requiring a restart. Requiring a restart to get service! What is this crap? And when I do have service, calls still drop and fail all the time. The keyboard lags so much that writing text messages is more annoying than using T9 texting on a number pad. The orientation switching when you rotate the phone is inconsistent at best. Backups take minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes, the audio output dies and it needs to be restarted to listen to music through headphones. If you've got an iPhone 3G or have been reading news on Giz, none of this will come as a surprise to you. What's surprising to me is how they're reacting to to the problems.

I called Apple famed customer support to see if they had any solutions for these bugs. Their fix for my problem getting service when coming out of the subway? Turn Airplane Mode on and off. If there's a more ghetto fix for a problem than that, I'd like to hear it. Last time I checked the C train didn't have wings. As for when all of these bugs will be fixed, the guy on the phone said "Sooner or later it'll be working to its full potential." Oh, great. How helpful. When asked if I could revert to a previous firmware version, I was told to just wait for the next release. Great, thanks for nothing!

Overall, the customer service reps I talked to were friendly, but they've clearly been overwhelmed with calls about the iPhone (my average wait time was about nine minutes for the iPhone support number). They're overwhelmed because they're the only facet of Apple that's available to talk about just what's going on with the iPhone. Officially, Apple hasn't recognized any problems, only releasing two patches that say they offer "bug fixes" without going into any more detail. It's the standard Apple technique; giving no information whatsoever unless they feel like it suits them. And this arrogant company causes such heart palpitations in you fanboys?

If you try to go through the PR channels, you get the Apple standard "no comment." Supposedly, Steve Jobs himself emailed one single person and promised fixes next month. That doesn't count as an official statement. In fact, that's worse than nothing at all, because it just shows how little respect Jobs has for all of us. He has time to tell one jerkoff who files a bug report that fixes are coming in September but can't release a statement that says just that? Screw you, Steve.

When the Playstation 3 got some new firmware that bricked a number of consoles, Sony didn't keep mum on the subject. They rushed a new firmware out in a matter of days and kept in touch with reporters about what was going on. They even apologized: "We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and appreciate your understanding and continued support." Apple hasn't acknowledged the iPhone issues to the press, let alone saying sorry for them. Because saying sorry would mean admitting that they screwed up.

The problem is that Apple has this reality distortion field that they use, which is a brilliant handling of PR most of the time. They give out tiny amounts of information, and by being so stingy they make everyone beg and salivate for little scraps But in the end, Apple is just a company like every other company. They screw up, they release things before they're ready and they botch crisis control. The reality distortion field can't cover for things like that. Their shit still stinks.

Before I got my iPhone, I was actually considering buying an Apple laptop. Can you believe it? Me, the Windows guy on the Giz staff, thinking of switching. Eventually, when the time comes to buy a new computer, I probably won't want to jump to Vista, after all. Why not try a Mac?

Now, after this experience, there's no way I will. I don't trust the computers to "just work," and if problems arise I don't trust Apple to handle them in an open way with customers. In fact, I expect them to try to keep things from me, I expect to continue to feel disrespected by King Jobs and his merry minions. And I'm not alone on this one. What could have been an amazing opportunity to introduce thousands of people to the Apple OS experience has turned people off rather than getting them hooked.

AppleInsider says the app crash bug affects newly downloaded and updated apps, where they instantly quit upon launch. Sometimes reinstalling them helps, sometimes it doesn't. While the 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates have done nothing to remedy the problem, some speculate that the problem revolves around root permissions. Either way, this is the first Apple acknowledgment of the problem. [Apple Insider]

I am sure a lot more people would like to buy it—but currently can't do so. I have no idea why they [Apple] did it [retire the application] and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store. The App is a work of Art and included a "secret mantra"—that's all.

The fact is that he's right. If there are people wanting to buy a piece of useless software for $999, why not let them do it? After all, people buy even more expensive crap that is completely useless, from paintings to collectibles to other commercial software. The market decides if a product is worth its price tag or not. And at least eight people got this, even if one is claiming that it was an accident. Accident or not, the fact is that Heinrich has pocketed $5,600 and Apple received $2,400 in 24 hours.

Not bad for a bad graphic and a silly phrase. [LA Times]

He also goes on to say that it's almost as strong as a PlayStation 2 and an Xbox 1 at launch. Think back to the games you played on the PS2 and Xbox. Now think of the games you're playing on the iPhone. Doesn't quite match up, does it?

It's strange to us that Carmack is throwing out so much hype for Apple, seeing as he's got a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with the company.

The verdict is also out on whether Apple has a concrete grasp of gaming, the id co-founder said. The company's reception to criticism has also been counterintuitive, which has led to its relationship with id being something akin to a roller-coaster ride.

Apple essentially kisses his ass when they need him to show up for one of Steve Jobs' keynotes, but then throws him the cold shoulder the second he passes judgment, Carmack said.

[Apple Insider]

Previous Carmack coverage

Update: Having problems setting it up on my iPhone 3G. I follow the instructions and the phone seems to "connect", but that's about it. No connections shown in the NetShare app, and nothing goes through.

Update 2: Now we're getting the message that it's not available in the US store. Sucks.

1. Make it Less Crashy
The iPhone with 2.0 software feels a little… buggy. It'll randomly crash or slow down to the point of unusability until you restart every few days with normal use. That's not right; this is a cellphone. It shouldn't feel like an unstable computer.

2. Fix the Keyboard Lag
A good chunk of the time, typing on the iPhone keyboard is made even more difficult due to the lag involved. Typing quickly means the letters pop up four keystrokes after you hit them. Make the keyboard move as fast as the user can type.

3. Fix Safari Orientation Switch Lag
Sometimes, Safari takes its sweet, sweet time switching from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone. This should feel almost instantaneous, not something you have to wait for.

4. Make Backing Up Faster
For some, "backing up" whenever you plug in your iPhone can take upwards of 30 minutes. What is it doing, exactly? The iPhone sync should be near-instantaneous when you plug it in if you aren't moving large files back and forth on purpose.

5. Make it More Efficient
The 3G mode is a battery hog. You can turn off 3G completely, but if there was an option to only use 3G for certain programs, such as Safari and Maps, it would go a long way towards making this a phone you aren't afraid to unplug in the morning when you aren't planning on getting home until very late that night.

6. Video Recording
This could easily be implemented, as we've seen from apps available for jailbroken phones. What's the holdup?

7. Wi-Fi Syncing
We'd love to have our iPhone sync automatically when it hits our home Wi-Fi network, from app data to photos to music to contacts.

8. Leave App Icons in Place After an Update
When apps update, their icon gets picked up and moved to the very bottom of your last screen. Why? When you updated four apps at once it then makes you awkwardly move them all back to where they were. Just leave them in place.

9. Make Moving Icons from Page to Page Easier
Moving an icon from one page to another takes multiple tries and, unlike most things on the iPhone, feels awkward and user unfriendly. Make this less of a pain.

10. Copy & Paste
Duh.

Dynolicious is an all-purpose automotive performance meter, utilizing the built-in accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod touch to record your driving characteristics. BunsenTech, the makers of the software, claim that it can record 0-60 times within .08 of a second, accurately estimate your current speed and monitor and record any directional G force. The system seeks to perform nearly every function of (much) more expensive dedicated monitoring units, which seems like an awfully tall order for a $12.99 piece of cellphone software.

Fortunately, bloggers more experienced with the dedicated units have dispelled fears that this app is a waste of money. Dynolicious can actually do what it claims, and presents its data in a useful and attractive way. Realtime speedometer graphing and skidpad display may not be much more than pretty toys, but a bevy of data analysis tools can properly process your driving after it's done. Entering your car's weight and estimated power even allows Dynolicious to fulfill its namesake, calculating actual wheel horsepower and drivetrain efficiency with surprising accuracy. Data is recorded for as many vehicles as you want, and car mods can be noted and taken into account over a course of multiple tests.

Some reviewers are scoffing at the $12.99 price, and others are pointing to the cheaper g-tac, though it only records straight-line performance and doesn't offer nearly as complete of a feature set. Perspective is important though, and considering the high cost of roughly comparable dedicated systems and the amount of money avid car tuners spend on their rides, the price is a veritable bargain. This is one of the most creative uses of the iPhone's hardware I've seen that actually delivers.

[Dynolicious, App Review Marathon]

We just tested it ourselves and got to within 24m accuracy, which is pretty darn good for sitting on a couch inside a house. It's free, and you should download it now. Don't be confused with the other app named Here I am, which is much lousier. This one has an envelope icon. Grab that one here.

Stupid note: When you send an email, the subject reads "hereIam", which looks a lot like "HereLam" when read on the iPhone. Seeing as I was testing it out by sending my location to Lam, it was kind of funny. Thus ends the most boring anecdote you will read today.

By the looks of it, it works fairly well, using the magnifying glass tool to drag out a selection, although it looks like it's difficult to place the cursor correctly since you're unable to drag through a line of text without making a selection.

Proximi is planning on releasing its own proof-of-concept videos which further illustrate how their method could be used system-wide (how they will do that under the developer NDA is unkown). But first, the truly interesting question is whether MagicPad will get the stamp of approval from Apple and make it out to the App Store. They've said they don't care, but whether they let a 3rd party app tease what's in such high demand will be the true test. It looks like it's using an unorthodox email system (CAPTCHA??) to email notes as well, which probably lessens its chances. [Apple iPhone Apps]

The next step, of course, is to get some sort of repository for hacked apps going. iPhone developers who are still pissed about the NDA might be receptive to people paying for their app on the iTunes store, but getting TIMELY updates from another source (or direct from themselves). This way users can bypass that week-long waitlist for revisions we're currently seeing in the App Store. [iPhone hacking via haklabs via Macnn]

Two caveats to this. One, you shouldn't interrupt a backup that's in place, because that results in a corrupt backup. It's fine if you perform another backup right after to make a correct one, but what if you forget and try and restore? It's phone corruption time. Two, using this method means you will not have a phone backup. Yeah, seriously. You won't have anything to restore from, so you'll have to go in naked the next time something's broken with your OS. Now that you know what the risks are, here's how you do it:

This command will change a hidden setting in the iTunes preferences that will force it to skip the backup process.

1. - Quit iTunes.

2. - Open Terminal.app

3. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

4. - Open iTunes

5. - Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.

It will take a few seconds, assuming you don't have a ton of music or podcasts.

Changing the 'true' in step 3 to 'false' will re-enable the backup feature.

[Zerologic]

According to their site, WinPwn 2.0.0.1 has the following features:

- Support for both 1.1.4 and 2.0

- Custom Image Support

- Custom Payload Support

- 3g iPhone support

[WinPwn and Rapidshare Mirror]