It looks like Siri now has a sister. A sister that is smarter, faster, and more resourceful. A sister that is more social too, playing friendly with both Android and iOS people. The sister’s name is Evi and this cross-platform voice assistant looks to be a serious challenger to Siri.

To be fair, there are other voice-based search assistants out there, but Evi by True Knowledge looks like it holds some seriously powerful potential. They say that the Evi app has “almost a billion facts,” as well as the ability to “infer trillions” from that. Evi also looks all around the web for you, gathering information from Google, GPS, Yelp, Wolfram Alpha, and more. There’s also the voting up and down of answers to help improve Evi’s effectiveness. Not surprisingly, Nuance is the tech behind the voice recognition.

Evi appears to have stronger logic and language reasoning too.

“If you ask “Who was President when Queen Elizabeth II was born?” Evi determines who Queen Elizabeth II is, when she was born and then compares this against which U.S. presidents were in office over that time, delivering the results of both serving U.S. presidents during those years. Siri cannot do this.”

And Evi can provide localized information for UK users, something that Siri still cannot do. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it looks like the True Knowledge servers have been overloaded by the flood of new users, so it doesn’t seem to be working. In any case, the iPhone version is available in the App Store for 99 cents, whereas the Android version is a free download.

One of the biggest draws of the native Gmail app for iOS is that it would provide push notifications. This way, you didn’t have to keep refreshing to see when you get that important message. Other nice features include the ability to search your entire inbox, autocomplete email addresses, get a split view on the iPad, use the priority inbox, swipe right to view labels, and more. Unfortunately, none of that is working right now.

Reports flooded the web, complete with screenshots, showing that people were getting a “notification error” on the login screen: “no valid ‘aps-environment’ entitlement string found for application.” Whatever that means. The long and the short of it is that Google has now pulled the new Gmail app from the App Store altogether, posting this update on the official Google Enterprise Blog:

Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app. We’ve removed the app while we correct the problem, and we’re working to bring you a new version soon. Everyone who’s already installed the app can continue to use it.

Are they not rubbing salt in the wound with the “continue to use it” bit at the end there?

“Where are you?” That’s one of the most common text messages sent, because you want to meet up with a friend or you got separated while shopping at the mall. In fact, over 600 billion text messages are sent in the United States each year posing that exact question. The echoecho app is supposed to streamline that so the core text message is no longer necessary.

It’s a “simple location-based mobile application for finding friends in the real world.” In some ways, you could say that it fits somewhere between Foursquare and Google Latitude, but it’ll work with anyone in your address book without having to reconnect through another social network. It’s available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian, and the announcement this week is that Echoecho has received some serious financial backing in the form of $750,000. That seed funding comes by way of Google Ventures, as well as PROfounders Capital, a venture firm based out of the UK.

You send the “where are you” request and when your friend accepts, both your locations are shown on a graphical map. You can use it to set up meeting places, chat with friends via EchoChat, and share your location via the web with WebEcho. They’ve also worked so that the app “doesn’t destroy the battery life of your phone, broadcast your location to everyone in the world or force you to join yet another social network.”

“Checking in” is the hip thing to do these days, but maybe you don’t want it to be all that public. In any case, you can check out the echoecho app (and download it) through the official website.

Imagine that you decided to take a trip over to Germany, but you don’t speak a word of German. You could whip out one of those phrasebooks, but there’s a good chance you’re going to butcher the pronunciation, not to mention that you won’t understand what the other person is saying either. That’s where Vocre comes in.

Presented at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, the Vocre app instantly translates your spoken word into another language. Just say what you want to say, and your smartphone will translate it on the spot and speak it out in the target language. You can then hold your phone in front of the local and have them do the same back to you.

This is quite the fascinating app. It’s not quite instant and you need to wait for the prompts, but it sure beats trying to communicate with charades and broken German. The speech to text part is handled by Nuance, but the translation is said to go beyond Google Translate, using crowd-sourced learning technology. The idea is to mak e the conversation a little more natural.

Right now, it looks like Vocre is being targeted for iOS only. You get your first 10 translations free and then additional packs of 10 more translations are 99 cents. Language support includes English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese. More languages are on the way.

Although we interviewed Vocre and got a demo, the background noise was less than ideal and did not give accurate translations.  It seems Vocre works quite well in quite situations, but if in a noisy restaurant or busy street corner it may not be as accurate as shown in the video.

Even though some cool kids are spending more time on Google+ these days, there’s still plenty of love for Mark Zuckerberg’s baby. If you happen to be rocking an iOS device, you’ll want to know that Facebook for iPhone version 3.5 has now been revealed and it comes with some nice upgrades.

For instance, you’ll notice some new sharing options from the compose screen, making it easier for you to get desktop-like Facebook functionality on your iPhone. Other updates include better privacy controls, redesigned Profile and Group walls, and the ability to tag your friends in posts. The tagging bit is a very welcome addition, since I do that quite often in my status updates. Friends can be added from the compose screen either from a list or through a search. And yes, photo uploads are there too.

They’ve also worked to fix some bugs and improve overall performance and stability. This is Facebook 3.5 for iPhone, but I imagine a larger version for iPad should be following shortly.

When someone breaks into your car the system begins streaming video to a cloud server to which the car is connected over a mobile network and also notifies the driver. Plus, the video can be stored for later, in case you want to use it as a Court proof. Besides the security system function, the app developed by Intel allows Apple and Android users to open the car door, start their car and other basic functions. A real thief may know this, setup a wireless blocker and steal your car anyway. Whether or not the streaming video is recorded and sotred locally before being sent to a cloud is unknown. There’s also the fact that what if you’re in an area with poor or no coverage, video streaming takes huge bandwidth at a high speed. Unless you want a 320×240 clip to upload to youtube and tell your friends, hey look at my car being stolen!

This technology is still a concept and in development, Intel may have answers for these questions when it gets closer to official release.

Easily one of my favorite arcade games of all time is Time Crisis. There were other on-rails shooting games, to be sure, but Time Crisis revolutionized the genre by adding in that pedal for duck-and-cover action. Now, you can have a similar experience when you pair your iPhone with your iPad and make use of the new iGunCon app.

At least, that’s the idea. Unfortunately, the (free) iGunCon app really doesn’t convert your iPhone into a functional iGunCon, because it doesn’t seem to convert it into a light gun at all. Instead, your iPhone gets connected to your iPad (or Mac) and then the touchscreen controls are mapped to your handheld rather than the gaming screen.

You tap on the trigger to shoot and tap on the different icons to switch guns, but it’s not like you’re really pointing at the screen. From what I can gather, Time Crisis 2nd Strike HD offers touch and tilt controls. With the former, you’d tap on the target, but you can’t really do that with the iGunCon app. So, it seems that you move the crosshairs to tilt your way to your target. That’s not the same at all… it’s like playing Lethal Enforcers on your SNES with a gamepad. It’s just not the same.

That’s how I interpret today’s announcement. Anyone want to give this app combo a try and let us know through the comments below?

The office is not a physical place. It has become an organic being that follows you everywhere. Your email and calendar are stored in the cloud. Anyone can call you at any time, no matter where you are. And now you can handle all your money-managing books on the road too, thanks to the launch of QuickBooks Mobile for Android and iPhone.

Naturally, the idea behind this Intuit product is to link up your smartphone with the software you already have on your computer. QuickBooks Mobile provides mobile access to your QuickBooks data, whether you’re using QuickBooks Pro, Premier or Online. They’ve designed it to work for small business owners on the go.

The mobile app, which is free if you’re already subscribed to QuickBooks Online, lets you create estimates, manage invoices, view customer details and so on. If you have Pro or Premier, you’ll need to sign up for a subscription. The actual download of the app itself is free through Android Market and Apple iTunes App Store. Now you can take your work with you anywhere.

“Upon review of the stories, articles, and photos published by means of the application, one can easily see that this is in fact anti-Israel and anti-Zionist,” he wrote. “Furthermore, as is implied by its name, the application calls for an uprising against the State of Israel.”

The app gives information about protests, provides news stories about Palestine and the Israeli occupation, and links to nationalistic Palestinian songs and media. It also allows users to post photos and stories about anti-Israel protests, and link items to social networking websites.

“Intifada” is an Arabic word that means “shaking off” and is usually translated into “uprising” or “rebellion.” The First Intifada was a rebellion against Israeli occuptation and lasted from 1987-1993. Israeli forces killed an estimated 1,100 Palestinians, while Palestinians killed about 164 Israelis.  The Second Intifada lasted from 2000 to approximately 2004, though the end of the conflict has been disputed. The Second Intifada claimed the lives of about 6500 Palestinians and over 1100 Israelis.

Recent demonstrations along Israel’s northern borders have raised fears amongst the Israeli government that protesters could storm Israeli checkpoints or settlements in the West Bank. Thousands of Israeli police recently took part in a training exercise in preparation for potentially large-scale Palestinian protests. In March, Edelstein requested that a “Third Intifada” page be removed from Facebook. The page called for an uprising against Israel through the use of lethal force, and was removed, though there are many copycat groups currently on Facebook.

Apple recently updated their App Store guidelines to reject apps that reveal DUI checkpoints. Whether Apple will bow down to pressure from the Israeli government to ban pro-revolution apps remains to be seen. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Wednesday the app was removed “because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

The route tracking feature of DashCam records every point travelled on the map and creates a virtual road represented by a red line overlaid on Google Maps. A green pin represents the starting location, the red one stands for the arrival point and a blue pin represents the current location.  Video can be recorded in three resolution modes: high, medium and low and in all landscape and portrait modes.

During video playback on the iPhone, a blue dot displays a user’s location at a given time showing where the video was shot. Speed, average speed and distance are also displayed during playback. The fast forward and rewind features are available and the AirPlay feature let users share the video via AirPlay enabled devices.

DashCam is iPhone 3GS,  iPhone 4 and iOS 4 and later compatible and can be purchased from the AppStore for just $2.99.