At WWDC 2009, Apple announced big news of the first known turn-by-turn navigation application available for iPhone 3G and 3GS users made by TomTom, one of the biggest players in portable navigation. This was expected, but exciting to see, as many iPhone users were hoping to have yet another great use for their iPhone: a portable GPS navigation unit for their vehicles.

After TomTom was announced, many people waited for its release, thinking it was the only option. Many of those who knew that there were other navigation applications being launched decided to wait for the release of the TomTom application, expecting it to be the best solution. However, after analyzing millions of online messages with Social Radar, it doesn’t appear to be a clear winner.

We compared the four largest navigation application competitors currently available on the iPhone App Store: Navigon MobileNavigator, TomTom, CoPilot, and AT&T Navigator . Here are some interesting findings.

First, we can see the obvious surge in chatter around TomTom upon its release on the App Store. We can also see that none of the other three navigator apps received hardly any buzz upon their launch.

Next, we did a sentimental comparison of the apps. Overall, these apps all appear to be pretty positive and are quite close in sentiment. CoPilot is slightly more negative than the rest.

And finally, we used Social Radar’s sentiment analysis to determine the most negative words used when referencing these applications to determine the issues and dislikes about each app.

Things worth noting:

The word problem appeared the least when referencing the TomTom app.
The word bad appeared the least in the Navigon MobileNavigator app.
The word slow appeared the most in the CoPilot app.
The word pricey appeared the least in the AT&T Navigator app.

Though it’s hard to make any conclusions of the obvious choice, one thing is for certain: TomTom is not the only choice. If you are in the market for an iPhone navigation device, make sure and do your research before buying into hype.

Last Friday U.S. House leaders outlined a $1 trillion health care overhaul that would provide insurance for more Americans and give them new rights in dealing with insurers. The reform plan could ultimately lead to coverage for 95 percent of Americans and create a new government-run insurance program.

President Obama has made health reform a priority and has said that continuing with the status quo will bankrupt the country. The reform bills promise more affordable insurance and relief to those with large out-of-pocket health costs. But high-income people and some businesses would face new taxes.

How do Americans feel about the legislation?

A USA Today/Gallup poll finds 56% of Americans in favor and 33% opposed to Congress’ passing major healthcare reform legislation this year. However, support is sharply split along party lines, with 79% of Democrats in favor, compared with only 23% of Republicans. President Obama urged Democratic senators to keep trying for a bipartisan deal on health care reform, but left open the possibility that they might have to pass a bill without Republican support.

We used Social Radar analytics to measure sentiment around health reform. Social Radar analyzed billions of online messages and provided in-depth analysis specific to references of health reform as the subject of conversation to get key sentimental insights of the masses. Overall results show 56% of health reform references were positive, mirroring the Gallup poll results.

We further analyzed these conversations throughout the month of July to determine key topics discussed, and in what context. The word cloud below displays these key topics used in health care reform conversations online, with colors from green to red representing positive/neutral/negative tone of each topic.

There certainly appears to be some negativity around this plan directed toward Obama, tax and cost.

The chart below displays the data in another way, showing a trend of the sentiment/tone and total conversation volume around health care reform over the last month.

As the conversations continue to grow, we are starting to see a slight increase in negative tone. We will be keeping an eye on this topic as the Obama administration works toward achieving major health reform this year.

The July 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during July 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during July 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Once again, Twitter holds on to the top spot. MySpace jumped 17 spots, mostly due to MySpace’s new mail service. Amazon jumped 6 spots to #16 from chatter regarding the acquisition of Zappos. eBay jumped 8 spots and Skype joined the list this month due to a legal battle that may threaten the future of Skype.

There were some other surprises this month as well. The LG Chocolate helped LG jump 11 spots. Starbucks joined the list thanks to their Free Pastry day spreading lots of chatter. BlackBerry jumped 15 spots thanks in part to rumors about the new BlackBerry Storm as well as their new app store. Nintendo, Wii, Sony, Playstation and XBox all dropped this month after buzz from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) subsided.

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.