Your iPhone can keep you connected with the entire world. But did you know it can also help you navigate your local neighborhood? The GPS feature of the iPhone makes it possible for programs to use your current location in new and interesting ways. Two great location apps are Urbanspoon and AAA Discounts.

“Where should we go to eat?” “I don't know, where do you want to go?”

Sound familiar? Urbanspoon will resolve these little moments of indecision in a snap. This free app has a database of restaurants in towns and cities all over North America. It uses your iPhone's GPS location to find nearby eateries without having to enter your address by hand.

Each restaurant is categorized by its location, type of cuisine, and typical price. Urbanspoon's unique slot-machine interface lets you restrict any of these parameters when searching. For example you can specify low-price Mexican food anywhere in the area, or mid-range prices in the North Valley, or let it suggest restaurants at random. If your favorite hole-in-the-wall is not listed, you can easily add it to the database via the www.urbanspoon.com website.

Once you find a place to try, once click gets you a map, or click to call if you need to make a reservation. After you eat, you can vote "like"/"don't like" to help others decide whether to try it.

The AAA Discounts app aims to help you find merchants who offer discounts to AAA members for goods and services. After you start the app, it uses GPS to find your location and quickly shows you a map with pins to locate merchants. Tap the pins to see the name of each business. From there you get detailed information about the AAA offer available there, complete with a click-to-call phone number. As you might guess, many of the entries are lodging choices. There are also pharmacies, oilchange shops, florists, and others.

One strange omission is that the AAA offices themselves are not shown on the map. Perhaps they'll add that in a future version. You don't have to be a AAA member to use this free application. You do need to be a member to take advantage of the discounts, but the kind of instant information provided by this app would be useful for any traveler.

If you are a member, you can enter your membership number into the application. When you call AAA for roadside assistance, you can authorize them to retrieve your precise location from your phone's GPS. That way they can find you quickly and precisely, and you don't have to give someone directions to find you in what may be an unfamiliar area. Both of these free apps can be downloaded directly to your iPhone from the Apple App Store.