Turn-by-turn GPS for (jailbroken) iPhones looks promising

It's funny how things work out sometimes. Just the other day, an old friend of mine, after reading some of my past iPhone coverage, pinged me to ask whether or not I felt turn-by-turn voice directions were coming to the iPhone anytime in the near future. She had just bought an iPhone, but wasn't thrilled with the GPS capabilities and was wondering if she should just buy a dedicated unit. I delivered the usual "Apple predictions are hard to make" disclaimer and then gave her an opinion: I don't see Apple doing it in the near future, but I also don't see any other company doing so, as Apple could quickly kill third-party profits by releasing its own.

Well, that advice has turned out to be wrong-ish. Before you get to excited, though, it isn't an Apple solution, or Garamin, or Magellan, or even something you can get in the iTunes Store. Instead, it's an application available for jailbroken phones and iPod touches. Gizmodo has pointed us to the xGPS project, a solution that is quickly becoming a product that rivals standalone GPS units.