• WHAT: An easy way to get live traffic reports for anywhere you might be traveling.
• WHY: Very few in-car navigation system have integrated real-time traffic reports... and how good is a navigation system if you don't know what the traffic will be like?
• COST: You must own an iPhone and subscribe to the prerequisite data plan. 

There are a lot of features and cool things to discover buried in the iPhone and I'm enjoying discovering them every day.  One that has been of tremendous use to me is supplementing the in-vehicle navigation system that I have in my car... but I don't use it for navigation.  I'll explain why in a minute, but bear with me for a moment while I rant about the incredible uselessness of in-vehicle navigation systems - the vast majority of which don't have real-time traffic reporting.  I've often wondered why not, considering that there's radio gear galore (FM, satellite, etc.), GPS and all kinds of other connectivity built into today's cars.  But the important fact is that they don't have that function (all except the Acura series, which makes those cars very unique and desireable, but not enough for me to swap out my current car for one) and it renders the navigation system as only half-helpful. After all, what good does it do for a "nav" system to tell you which way to go if it can't tell you that the traffic is backed up from here to Timbuk3 and you won't make it to your destination until a year from next Tuesday?

So I've put my iPhone to good use here and, with about ten minutes of preparation time, you can, too.  The key to making this handy and working easily is to enter some of the more common destinations you travel to, or using some notable landmarks along routes instead.  Here's what I mean...

In the iPhone's "Maps" function there's a small icon that goes virtually unnoticed by everyone that I've asked about it.  When you're on the Maps page look in the lower right corner for the icon of the vehicle - don't click it yet, just find it.  Now, at the top of the Maps page there is a search function which works very conveniently... when you start typing something into that search box the phone's smart system begins matching what you've typed to what's in your address book (the "Contacts" portion of the phone function).  If there's no immediate match it will let you complete your entry and then you can click the "Search" button that appears in the lower right corner of the keyboard.  Before you click that button, though, make sure that you've given the map query system enough information. 

When you click the "Search" button a couple of things can happen.  First, if you've entered a specific street address a point on the map will be illustrated with a red push-pin.  Alternatively, if either the address has more than one match, or if you've searched by a name of an establishment instead of an address, multiple push-pins will appear.  For example, if you search for "Hyatt Hotel, Los Angeles, CA" many push-pins will appear.  If you click on one of the push-pins you'll be shown the detailed information for that location and you can then choose to call the location, get directions to or from there, or "Bookmark" it.  That's what we want to do - bookmark it.  In fact, you're going to want to do this with many landmarks or specific addresses all around where you live - the more you have the easier it will be to get a real-time traffic report for that area. 

So, for example, I've set up bookmarks for many of my friends' homes, some business locations, the nearby airports, etc.  And this is where the secret sauce comes in... in virtually every case I know my way from Point A to Point B when I'm driving somewhere in my local area.  However, either before I leave or while I'm in the car (please don't do this while driving - I do it at a stop light) I select two bookmarks that are as close to my departure and destination point as I can get.  The idea is to pick the bookmarks that include the roads that you'll be traveling on along the way.  

The top search box in iPhone's maps function defaults to showing just one fill-in-the-blank field; you can add the second field by clicking the icon in the lower left corner that looks like two vertical lines with arrows at opposite ends of their tips.  When you do that it will add a second search box just below the first.  In the active search box you will see a blue icon that looks like an open book - that's the icon you touch to bring up your list of bookmarks.  Click the icon and your list appears and you can choose one of your bookmarks - in this case I'll choose "Home."  Once I've done that I move to the second search box and click the bookmark icon again and bring up the bookmark list.  This time I choose one that's near where I'm going (or the exact address of, say, a friend's house if I've bookmarked it because I drive there frequently).  Once the two fields are filled in with your bookmarked locations click "Route" at the bottom right of the keyboard.

When the route appears you'll see that car icon in the lower right corner of the screen - touch that icon and that's when Google does its magic... you will soon (depending on your connection speed) see a color-coded overlay of the highways showing the speed of traffic in green, yellow and red indicating normal, slow or traffic-jam speeds.  Voila - real-time traffic report!  And, what's more, as you're traveling along the route you can update the report by simply clicking the car icon to turn off the traffic report and then clicking (OK, touching) it again to relaunch the traffic reporting function.  Google, in its infinite wisdom, presumes that you want a fresh look at the traffic and updates it for you.

As I said at the top, I don't really use the iPhone much for navigation (although it does come in handy occasionally).  I do, however, use it for updated, real-time traffic reports right in the palm of my hand - in any car, any house, anytime.  This is one of the iPhone's great little features that should be more actively promoted as it would almost certainly generate some additional interest from people who are on the fence about spending $400 to buy one.