Say you spot a rare super car, cool classic or bizarre project vehicle. You can (and probably do)snap a photo with your smartphone's camera and share it in any number of ways: email, text, Facebook, Twitter. That's the basic premise behind CarZar. But the free iPhone app adds its own social networking spin by letting you connect with fellow car freaks and earn badges a la Foursquare and garner followers as on Twitter.
After downloading the app, you register by entering the usual info: name, password and email address. You can also list your first car and favorite car and connect to your existing social networking accounts. Then you can start snapping and sharing your favorirte car finds.
A menu bar across the top of the home screen has tabs for a profile photo, your name, favorite ride and a running tab of how many followers and badges you've accumulated. The bar at the bottom of the screen includes tabs for Spot a Ride, Badges, Friends and My Profile. Hit the Spot tab to browse through recent postings from fellow CarZar users. If a car catches your eye, you can tap on it to get a larger image and more info.
By hitting the camera icon in the upper-right corner of the Spot screen and following the prompts, you can post a photo of your own automotive discoveries and share info on the car and add comments. In addition to linking your CarZar activity to your existing soical networks, the app lets you earn badges so that you can become the CarZar of, say, the 1971 Chevy Vega, if there are any of those still around.
The app also uses the iPhone's GPS capability to geo-tag the location. So we hope that car thieves aren't a part of the CarZar community.
For the full review of CarZar, jump over to Edmunds.com.
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