A Police officer in New York used his own iPhone to catch a thief and retrieve a victim’s iPhone after she was robbed in a handbag store on Thursday night. A man walked into the store brandishing a black handgun and took the woman’s iPhone.

After a fruitless canvass of the area, one officer, Robert Garland, tried another tack. Using the 24-year-old victim’s iTunes account information and the iCloud feature on his own phone, Mr. Garland was able to track the victim’s iPhone. Officers then followed the cyber-scent to the area near 49th Street and Eighth Avenue. As they searched the area, the suspect, who the police said had placed the phone in his boot, walked past the officers. The victim’s phone began to beep. And, soon, the suspect was placed under arrest.

Source: The New York Times

Want to know how to find the closest sushi restaurant, or pizza, or who to call to make a reservation when it's your anniversary and you completely forgot to make a reservation? Never fear, the native Google Maps app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is here! We'll show you how it can save the day -- or at least save yourself from pizza famine -- after the break!

1. Launch maps
2. Get your current location by tapping the arrow button at the bottom left.
3. Using the search field at the top right, type in the type of food you want, the name of the restaurant you're looking for, or anything you can remember about the address. For example, I’m in New York City near Broadway and Reade Street and I’m in the mood for Pizza. Typing “pizza” will then search the environs for the nearest pizza joints and drop a pin on their precise locations.
4. Tap the pins to get more information. You can click the small blue chevron to bring up more information about your chosen pizza place, and if it has a Google Streetview icon on the left, you can even see the place and its surroundings!
   
5. Tap the link to the homepage of the restaurant, or if you're on an iPhone, simply tap of the phone number to call it right up (so they can have your pie hot ‘n ready for you when you get there).
6. Finally, tap the “Directions to Here” button at the bottom of the info page and select if you are driving, taking public transit or walking with estimated time it takes to get there.

That's it, a few simple steps to find the food, Starbucks, burger joint, pizza place, or 5-star restaurant of your choice, all right on your iOS device! If you have any other Maps tips, let us know in the comments!

[Special thanks to Master from the iPad live chatroom for this tip!]

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

iOS 4.2 will finally give iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad the ability to find text on a Safari web page. It can be hard to find a specific snippet of text on a long, paragraph strewn web page. On Windows or Mac, you just hit CTL-F or CMD-F, type your text, and off you go. Now in iOS 4.2 beta 1 you just use the regular old search field (still confusingly labeled Google by default) and start typing the text you want to find.

Where previously you only got suggested search terms, now you get a second list at the bottom for words you can search on the page. Tap one and the first match on the page is highlighted in yellow and a set of buttons slide up on the bottom for "Next" and "Done", as well as a counter for how many matches of the word there are on the page, and which one is currently highlighted (e.g., 7/16). Hit next until you find the one you want, hit done when you're finished. If you want to change the find term, the search box is repositioned alongside the controls to make it convenient.

No more manual scanning, no more javascript bookmarklets. Just happy surfing.

One more pic after the break.

If you're browsing the web on a PC, you can just hit CTRL-F or CMD-F and quickly find any text on a webpage. It's great for finding things fast, especially on long reams of text, and Safari does a nice job of it -- just not Mobile Safari on the iPhone, not yet.

Editor emeritus Mike Overbo brought something very similar to us two years ago (along with a ton of others -- check that link!) when iPhone 1.x made bookmarklets all the rage. Since then, Apple has added a lot of functionality, but still hasn't deigned to gift us with Find... on page. Rafael Cimatti (via App Advice) is keeping the handy Javascript bookmarklet alive via Cydia (though it works on any iPhone). It can't fully replace a built in command, with next, back, etc. options, etc. but if it isn't 100% right, it is 100% "right now".

Here's the bookmarklet: Find...

Either bookmark it on your desktop browser (drag it to the bookmark bar on desktop Safari) and sync it over, or on your iPhone copy the code after the break, bookmark a random page, edit it, change the name, and paste in the code (check the App Advice link above for step by step instructions).

And next time you're on a page, hit the bookmark, type in your text, and find away!

Have an iPhone Pro Tip of you own to share? Send it in!

[via Daveizzle]

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