Priceless Picks: Don’t let the advertising-crap-app appearance of Priceless Picks turn you off—this free download, branded all over with Mastercard, is great. It combines loads of data collected from a number of sources, including user submissions and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk army, to give wide-ranging recommendations for things to do, eat, drink or experience wherever you happen to be. There are other apps that do similar things, yes, but the dataset on this one already seems strong, the scope—not just restaurants, not just a particular company’s establishments—is healthy, and the 3D map presentation is fantastically cool, and surprisingly smooth.

Griffin iFM Radio Browser: A lot of people will download this assuming it’s a streaming radio app—it’s something else entirely, and actually quite exciting: iFM polls your location to come up with a list of local terrestrial radio stations, providing you with access to song titles, album art, artist info and purchase links for whatever’s playing on your FM station of choice. Think of it as augmented radio.

It’s also one of the earliest examples of accessory integration for OS 3.0, featuring a software interface for Griffin’s Navigate inline iPod remote, which has a built-in radio. Free. (The app, not the accessory. Sorry.)

Snore Patrol: Leave this app running overnight and it’ll provide a decibel readout of whatever weird nostril/sinus/lung business goes down in the duration. The idea is to present a snoring partner with graphical proof of their terrible flaw, which will in turn guilt them into doing something about it. It’s funny, but the pink interface and lady-oriented marketing is disheartening. Women snore too! MUST WE MEN SUFFER IN SILENCE? Your gynocentric passive aggressiveness: Free.

Squash the Street : If the economy’s got you down, and you’re vaguely upset about some fatcats on Wall Street, or at your banks, or something, why not direct a little bit of your pent-up aggression and/or depression into your iPhone? That’s what Squash the Street is for: Pure, possibly misguided venting. Neat 3D-ish graphics give this ultra-timely voodoo doll a bit of longevity. A dollar.

Cyclops: Barcode scanning apps are a no-brainer for modern smartphones: just snap a picture of a product’s label, and they’ll pull down a plethora of information. That’s exactly what Cyclops does. It’s not the first, but it’s the first designed around the iPhone 3GS’s new camera, which has good enough macro skills to make such an app truly useful. Free. [Via TUAW]

iMetal: There are many rules by which app developers live, some written, some not. One of the most powerful is the mandate that no hardware feature on any version of the iPhone shall go unused, or perhaps more accurately, unexploited. The iPhone 3GS utilises a magnetometer for its compass, meaning that it can detect when certain metals are nearby, and that someone could theoretically make an app that acts as a sort of makeshift metal detector. And since nothing stays theoretical for more than a week in the App Store, someone has: it’s called iMetal, and it’ll tell you when you’re iPhone is next to a giant piece or iron, or hovering somewhere near a neodymium magnet. As an actual metal detector, it’s basically useless; as a party trick, it’s pretty neat. A dollar.

The Typography Manual: To most, this app will seem esoteric, or at worst, plain boring. To type nerds, however, this is like kerned, serifed manna from heaven. As its name implies, it’s something of a typography primer and history lesson, but on top of that, it’s a visual glossary, a collection of clever type tools, a directory of keyboard combinations for special symbols, and quite a bit more. Five dollars.

World of Warcraft Mobile Armory: Anyone who doesn’t play WoW won’t know what this is, and doesn’t need to. Anyone who does can download it for free.

This Week’s App News On Giz:

• Portal Gets Played On an iPhone, Sort Of

• Google Now Finds Stuff Nearby Using Your Location in Mobile Safari

• Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Makes Pizza Ordering Easier, More Gimmicky

• iPhone Server Farm Puts Old Models To Good Use

• TwitVid for iPhone 3GS: Guess What It Does?

• TomTom’s GPS-Enhancing Car adapter Should Work With The iPod Touch

• Worms For iPhone: Same Game, Worse Controls

• TuneWiki for iPhone Is Now Fully Armed and Operational

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. Have a good weekend everybody.

We found a video showing an iPhone running World of Warcraft. It looks surprisingly full-featured, but this isn’t a standalone app— more of an evolution of what we’ve seen before.

We don’t think it’s fake; if it is, it’s an unbelievably elaborate one and we’d prefer to think nobody is willing to put in that kind of time and effort for such a dumb prank. It’s done using Vollee, which is used to stream games over 3G, so the video is actually just a stream and the rendering is done on the PC. But it’s much smoother than we’d expect over 3G, and comes with enough features that true WoW addicts will be able to get their fix on the run, buying and selling elves or whatever happens in that game.

According to the comments left by the video’s uploader, the game is completed but waiting for the rights issues to be ironed out between Blizzard and Apple (and, presumably, Vollee), so we have no idea when or for how much this might show up on iPhones near you. [Touch Arcade]

The saddest part about the WoW Pod isn’t the guy eating, crapping and playing WoW inside. It’s that an MIT Council for the Arts grant made it happen.

Built by Cati Vaucelle & Shada/Jahn, the WoW Pod is an “immersive architectural solution for the advanced WOW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs.” Practically, this equates to a WoWish hut including an integrated PC with surround sound, water supply, hot plate (synced to heat when your avatar cooks) and, of course, a porcelain throne.

Seriously though, MIT, I have my WoW Pod right here. It’s called a bathroom, laptop and one jumbo family pack of Hostess cupcakes. See you guys in a few days. [MIT via Kotaku]

He doesn’t half-arse the WoW-themed décor either. The entrance is a real-life recreation of the opening animation from the game. The dining area, called the Hall of Snow Storms, features large plasma screens showing in-game action, as well as a towering World Tree in the middle of the room.

The owner said he’d created the restaurant in hopes that “people who share his enthusiasm for The World of Warcraft would find a comfortable gathering place.” Well, my account hasn’t been active for over a year, but rest assured, I. Will. Be. There. You know, for the Horde and all. [CCTV]

We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding.

Once they have them perfected, they want to “deploy” these soldiers using something called “quantum ghost imaging”. This will allow to create photorealistic, non-cheesy-fake-CNN-looking holograms out of thin air by “pairing photons that do no reflect or bounce off an object, but off other photons,” whatever that means. Parmentola explains it as “”like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that’s connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen” which leaves me scratching my head as well. He hinted that this is closer than we can imagine.

The rest of their projects are equally mindblowing. Although this used to be the subject of much rumourology and speculation, the Parmentola confirmed that they are working in:

• A project to erase bad memories, which will be critical in helping soldiers with psychological damage.
• Devices that will translate one soldier’s thoughts into electrical signals that can be beamed to other soldiers, to help in stealth operations.
• Growing back body parts, both internal organs and limbs (Parmentola said researchers are not far away from this), using molecular-sized particles that act as nano-scaffolding for the human cells to grow, dissolving after the organ has regenerated.

Let’s hope it’s no all smoke and mirrors, because this research has the potential to benefit countless others outside the battlefield. [DoD Buzz]

I’ve never played World of Warcraft. I’m not sure if the abbreviation is pronounced by spelling out the letters W-O-W or if you just saw “wow.” It seems like the kind of thing where you have to know the difference between an elf and an orc, and I gotta be honest, I just don’t care. But this is so over-the-top that I’m almost interested in finding the one true ring or banging lady-dwarves or whatever you do in that game. Prepared’s setup features a whopping seven separate laptops, four desktops hidden away under the desk, and an array of screens that’s disorienting even in a static image. He might be the only person on earth who’s capable of using the 15-button mouse. Prepared claims that $US5700 a year is reasonable for a hobby, and he’s totally right. I can think of at least three hard drugs that would be more expensive.

Edit: I’ve been informed that our industrious nerd is not Bradster but Prepared. Sorry for the commotion this must have caused Bradster and his family. [Ripten via Crunchgear]

Designed by Blizzard® and SteelSeries specifically for World of Warcraft®, The World of Warcraft® MMO Gaming Mouse provides remarkable benefit to all World of Warcraft® gamers, regardless of level or play style. The mouse can be customised to fit the users personal preferences; the illumination feature allows for up to 16 million colours, programmability of all 15 buttons via an intuitive and easy to use drag and drop interface. The fluid integration of software with hardware will provide the user with an amazing in-game experience featuring superior performance, comfort and control. The World of Warcraft® MMO Gaming Mouse is fully scalable to meet and exceed the requirements of even the most discerning World of Warcraft® gamer.

* 16 million illumination choices * A total of 15 programmable buttons
* Several predefined macros and posibility to create your own
* World’s first gaming mouse designed exclusively for World of Warcraft®

• Cable (braided): 2 m / 6,6 ft.
• 15 buttons
• 800 – 3000 CPI
• 3,6 mm lift distance

November 2008

[SteelSeries]

Holy crap! It’s The White House! Never mind that the “dragon fire” is a spell from Everquest. Mount the griffins and arm the bunker busters! And somebody ask Mummy for $14 because my WoW subscription just ran out!! [Danger Room]

This is a funny concept in the first place, because as anyone who has played WoW know, you do a LOT of running. Miles upon virtual miles of terrain can be covered in a short session, usually at a pretty fast clip. The guys over at Manapotions.com went to great lengths to estimate the actual speed of their avatars, then built a surprisingly effective apparatus out of some old treadmills, bikes wheels and optical mice (for speed tracking). The results was kind of like the ultimate expression of the Wii “get involved in the game” ethos, except with 1000% more exertion and 97% less fun. Click through to see the build process and gameplay notes. [Mana Potions]