Every golfer on the planet is susceptible to buying gadgets that will help them improve their game. Unfortunately, most of them end up in the closet with all of the rest of the scams that do nothing more than make us look like fools out on the course. Well the iPhone has an app that just may do more good than bad in the GolfShot: Golf GPS app.

Golf GPS devices have become pretty popular over the last few years, and this one has few shortcomings as an app. First off, it is less than $30 and that is a far cry from the hundreds of dollars stand alone devices will run from the likes of Golfsmith. It is packed with special features and while there are some flaws, it is pretty respectable for the price.

One of the toughest things for any golfer to figure

out on a new course is the range from tee to green and from their approach shot to the green. This app can not only do that, but will also be able to give target ranges as well. When you need to know how far it is down to the water hazard from where you are standing, just point and the information pops right up on the screen.

Golfshot has long been associated as the best of the best when it comes to having GPS devices for golfers, so it is no surprise that this app is considered to be one of the best available for the iPhone. There are currently well over 22,000 courses that have their information available on the app, so it will be a rare course that can be played where the information will not be in the palm of your hands.

A new patent application from Apple suggests the company could be working on proprietary global positioning system software that would calculate road trip times and recommend routes, based on real-time data collected from numerous users, and uploaded to a centralized server.

In the recently revealed U.S. patent filing, Apple describes a system for obtaining drivers’ personal travel data and using it to estimate driving times. Such a system could take into account speed, time of day, location, driving patterns, season, route type and features, traffic information, road conditions and location data.

Originally filed for in 2008, the patent could save drive times and other data

on the local system, and also upload it to a centralized database where the data would be shared with others.

“These features provide customized travel time estimates that take into account a user’s driving habits, the characteristics of the vehicle being navigated, road conditions, seasonal conditions, traffic congestion and other factors,” the patent application reads, “which cannot be accounted for by conventional statistical calculations based on data samples obtained from a test vehicle or device traveling the route.”

The described system would take into consideration a plethora of factors, like stoplights and railroad crossings, and store the data on a server, time-stamped and indexed for easy access.

I made a round trip motorcycle trip from Fort Worth TX to Kansas City Mo recently and had a chance to try out the GPS on my iPhone. I used G-Map for the trip and to my knowledge is the only (currently available) turn by turn gps app that does not have a monthly fee. AT&T has an app but there is a $9.95 monthly fee to use it and it requires constant data access in order to work. In other words the maps are not installed locally on your iPhone.