Yearly is an iPhone app that pulls the birthday and anniversary information stored in your Contacts and displays them in a nice chronological list so you can keep track of which of these important dates are coming up next. When your friend’s birthday arrives, Yearly will send you a notification and you can quickly text, email, or call from within the app.

Since Apple’s built-in Contacts and Calendar apps support birthdays, you may be wondering the point of an app like Yearly. With the beautiful list that Yearly generates, it’s really easy to keep track of who’s birthday or anniversary is next in line and plan accordingly. You can also set it up to send you a notification 1-14 days before the events so that you are reminded if you want to buy a gift. Yearly has also implemented some nice gestures so that sending a Happy Birthday text is just a quick swipe away.

Tapping on a contact will bring you to a stripped down version of the info you’d find in the Contacts app. In nice big letters, Yearly tells you how old the person will turn on his or her next birthday and you’ll also find any notes you’ve stored for that contact, their phone number and email address. One piece of information that you find in Yearly but not Contacts is your friend’s zodiac sign.

Yearly may be duplicating some functionality of Apple’s built-in apps, but it’s focusing on a single function — keeping track of birthdays and anniversaries. The removal of unrelated information and the gorgeous UI is what makes Yearly a desirable app.

$0.99 – Download Now

Your dreams of becoming the perfect home barista who offers up beautiful lattes to your guests will come true with Coffee Art for iPhone. This app will teach you, in great detail, how to add hearts, tulips, and even dragons to the top of your espresso drinks.

Art of Coffee is like attending a class. Before learning how to create your designs, the app teaches you the basics of espresso making and how to pull the perfect shot. It then focuses on how to steam the ideal pitcher of foamy milk. When it’s time to learn about the designs, Art of Coffee provides detailed, step-by-step instructions and photos, and a videos of the designs being poured and etched into perfection.

There are two levels of difficulty included in Art of Coffee. Essential Art will teach you designs like hearts, tulips and seagulls. The Advanced Art section is where you’ll go to learn the extra fancy designs such as butterflies, dragons, and double heart double rosettas.

Although any coffee lover would enjoy Art of Coffee, it’s important to note that accessibility to an espresso machine is required in order to attempt any of the designs. (If you have any recommendations, I’m guessing a lot of us are suddenly in the market!)

$2.99 – Download Now

“Women make up 50% of the global population, 40% of the global workforce, yet women own only 1% of the world’s wealth”. This fact is the first thing you read upon launching Fotopedia Women of the World before diving into this tribute to the diversity, beauty and strength of women on this earth.

Fotopedia Womeon of the World is filled with hundreds of beautiful images and stories of women from 75 different countries. Through photographer Olivier Martel’s art, you will witness the fighting spirit of these women in the face of human, political, religious or dramatic events. In her words,

It’s about giving people their dignity in a photographic homage that takes the form of a search for beauty.

Some of the women you will discover in Fotopedia Women of the world include a woman whose daughter had just been saved from malaria, girl-soldiers in Mozambique, nuns in the convents in France, and Ivory Coast healers who are feared for their power.

This is a must have app for any photojournalism lover. Even if you don’t have time to read all the stories or flick through every photo, Fotopedia has equipped the app with a slideshow so that you can enjoy seeing the images displayed on your iPhone or iPad while going about your day.

Free – Download Now

One of the cool features of Foursquare is Explore, a way to find really great things to see and do nearby to where you are, but until now, most of its features were only available on the web. That’s all changed with Foursquare 4.2 for iPhone — you can now set your location and filter your recommendations by type, or even specific foods like “ham sandwich”. Your search result just got a lot more personalized!

One of the improvements with the new version of Foursquare is that your recommendations are also now dependent on time of day, where your friends have been, and places on the lists you follow. That means many more data points are factored in to the process. You are also no longer restricted to only searching for recommendations in your current location. If you’re on your way downtown and want to search for places to go before you get there, you can move the map to the area you wish to search, or specifically search a specific neighborhood, city, or address.

Oh, and Foursquare also snuck in menu and pricing information in the update. Pretty sweet!

Free – Download Now

Source: Foursquare

Tweetbot, the widely popular iPhone Twitter that also just happens to be a 2011 iMore readers choice, and editors choice award winner, has just been updated with new timeline and direct message views that feature image thumbnails, a redesigned “new tweets” bar, support for readability, and more.

Following the launch of the official Twitter 4.0 redesign, many power users fell out of love with the new, more mainstream direction Twitter decided to take, and switched over to Tweetbot instead. I’ve been using Tweetbot since it launched and it has consistently been one of my favorite Twitter apps.

The Tweetbot 2.0 update has made the already awesome experience even better. Now that the timeline features image thumbnails, Tweetbot meets all my requirements of the ideal Twitter app: gorgeous, fast, native push notifications, and image previews.

The new timeline also features colored links that are single-tappable, a new “retweeted by” bar, and some minor adjustments to the cell colors to improve contrast. The tweet replies view has also received some changes, and the overall performance of the app, including scrolling, is snappier.

$2.99 – Download Now

What it lacks in depth or features, HQ: To Do makes up for in speed, style, and simplicity. For those interested in getting things done, it’s a good place to start.

HQ: To Do for iPhone is for those who need more than Apple’s built-in Reminders app, but not anything as complex or costly as some of the full on GTD (Getting Things Done) or power-user productivity apps available in the App Store. Part of the new generation of big, bold, user experiences, HQ: To Do does a good job of making sure most of what you need is always right under-thumb, and available, with a couple taps or swipes. And it looks great doing it.

Creating projects and lists in HQ: To Do is very easy and fast because the UI isn’t cluttered with an overflow of options. HQ: To Do also makes use of quick gestures like sliding over a project for easy access to checking it as done, deleting it, or making edits.

That makes HQ: To Do a good fit for everything from groceries to packing lists to daily to-dos. The touch targets are large, which makes the interface easy to use while out and about, and there are enough colors and contrasts to easily let your eye quickly find exactly what it’s looking for.

It’s also really easy to see which tasks are still pending, which tasks are done, and which are (long?) overdue. If you’re action oriented, HQ: To Do makes it simple to know what’s next. HQ: To Do also makes clever use of gestures so, once you’ve gotten familiar with it, getting around is as quick as a swipe and a flick. There are even “quick-swipe” filters to rapidly re-order and re-organize your projects.

Again, HQ: To Do isn’t for the GDT or super-productivity crowds. If that’s you, you’ll be happier with Omnifocus, Appigo Todo, or Things. HQ: To Do, however, is a good way to get started.

$1.99 – Download Now

“MyFitnessPal is free, a MyFitnessPal account is free, and if you’re dedicated enough to stick with them, the positive effects they can have on your health are priceless.”

In today’s fast paced, highly mobile society it is often much easier and cheaper to eat fast food on the go than it is to spend the time and money to east fresher, more healthy meals. MyFitnessPal wants to make the switch to a healthier lifestyle easier by helping you track your calories and activity levels, set your weight-loss goals, and monitor your progress.

Losing weight and getting healthy is not easy. It’s even harder to do alone. But if you’re looking for assistance, putting the MyFitnessPal calorie tracking app on your iPhone (or iPad, it’s universal), is a great way to get keep you going in the right direction, and a great goal to consider for our Mobile Nations Fitness Month.

MyFitnessPal launches and shows you how many calories you can consume

After installing MyFitnessPal you have to enter your personal information. This helps create your calorie goal and intake needs for each day.  The first page that launches gives you your calorie goal, and once you start inputting foods and exercise into MyFitnessPal it will calculate your remaining calories available for the day. Directly below this you will see a news feed that displays your updates, as well as updates from any friends you may have added through the app’s social networking feature as well.

Easily add breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to MyFitnessPal

There are a few ways to add food to your diary; the first is simply by clicking the Add to Diary button that appears right next to your remaining calories counter. From there you can either search for the food you are eating, or if there happens to be a barcode available, you can scan it right in. (MyFitnessPal does a good job finding most products.) The food database contains over 1 million entries for things as simple as an onion or slice of cheese to your favorite meal at Outback Steakhouse or the Olive Garden.

View a breakdown of each meal in your daily diary

In addition to logging the food you are taking in, it is equally as important to log any exercise you have completed for that day because that will help ensure that your calorie goal remains accurate. With over 350 different exercises in the application, logging the exercises you complete should take only seconds. Each day you can enter your weight into the application to help you keep track and on the right path. If you have a specialized fitness device, like a Fitbit, MyFitnessPal can interface with that as well.

Monitor your progress with a chart of your daily weigh-in information

Your weight will show in a graph so you can visually see if you are headed in the right direction or not. At the end of each day there is a button to complete logging your food entries for that day, and this will then pop up a message which gives you how much you would weigh in five weeks if you continued to eat and exercise the way you did that day.

In addition to the iPhone app, MyFitnessPal also works on the iPad. The iPhone is ideal for entering data while on the go during the day, but the iPad is nice for looking over and analyzing your progress when you have more time. You can also log anything and everything through the MyFitnessPal website so even if you don’t have your iPhone or iPad handy, you still have a way to stay on track.

The good

• Barcode scanning makes adding food quick and easy
• Links with popular fitness devices like Fitbit
• Social networking features help keep you motivated (peer pressure!)
• Also available for iPad and via the web

The bad

• Cardio activities are more confusing to add since you don’t always know the specifics of speed, heart-rate, etc.
• If a particular food is not in the database, adding it is difficult

The conclusion

MyFitnessPal is is free, the MyFitnessPal account is free, and if you’re dedicated enough to stick with them, the positive effects they can have on your health are priceless. It’s the dedication part that’s really important. You need to be completely honest about what you eat, how much you are working out, etc. If you’re looking to take better control of your weight or your fitness, get MyFitnessPal and get one step closer to a healthier lifestyle.

Free – Download now

TinyWorld is a fun little app that turns your photos into miniature planets that you can save or share with friends. Specifically, it warps what your iPhone camera sees in front of you into 360 degree spheres, making your room, your garden, your skyline, your tourist shots — whatever you want to take a picture of — into the surface of a planet.

TinyWorld was recently updated and now allows you adjust tilting after taking your photo to fine tune where the two ends of you flat world meet. You can also convert your preexisting photos into a TinyWorld. Additionally, exporting your photos directly into Instagram is now supported.

I’m having a lot of fun with this little app! Now I just wish I was back in San Francisco where the tall buildings would make for a fantastic TinyWorld photo.

If you pick this one up, please share your little planets in our Photography Forum. We’d love to see them!

TinyWorld turns your environment into miniaturized worlds. The app’s “One Click to Shoot” process makes this simple and fun, while the live preview editor allows you to see the results before they’re created. And with easy exportation to eMail, Twitter, and Instagram, it’s never been more fun to create planetoids from your iPhone!

• Live preview guarantees quality in the finished product
• Easy exportation to popular social networking services like Twitter and Instagram, as well as eMail
• Seamless creation of planetoid-like photos from shots of your environment
• Fine-tuned controls allow for streamlined editing of shots, even after the shutter has closed

Update notes:

• Even better performing live warping preview
• Warping of existing photos is now also supported
• Adjust the tilting afterwards, to fine tune your planet’s shape
• Gradually adjust the softening of the stitching seam
• Share using email, Twitter or Instagram

TinyWorld is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

“Smash Cops brings the excitement of high-speed car chases to your iPhone and iPad with top-notch graphics, high intensity game-play, and interesting (if challenging) controls.”

Smash Cops recently hit featured status in the App Store, and after playing it for a few days, I can see why. It’s a deceptively simple racing game that provides excellent controls, fluid graphics, and has some signature local evening news flair to it.

The premise is that you’re driving a cop car, and you have to chase down bad guys through a winding route, and ram into their vehicle often enough to make them crash. There’s a healthy amount of variation on this theme, including timed challenges, obstacle courses to test your finesse, and scenarios where you’re the one being chased. Whatever the goals of the level may be, you’re usually provided with helpful waypoints at intersections so you know which direction to go. There’s plenty of civilian traffic in the way, posing slight obstacles, but for the most part, they can be plowed through with little worry.

The default control scheme was fairly new to me. You press the screen behind your on-screen vehicle to adjust its steering, letting go to stop the gas, or tapping the screen with your other hand for a quick burst of speed. You can switch this up to a traditional virtual joystick, but the default is novel to play with, if nothing else. The controls are certainly intuitive, but I find they’re often more challenging than they should be. At times, you can turn a corner very sharply, while at other times, you drift and lose a lot of control. There may be a trick to this that I’m just not getting, but so far it has made nimble driving difficult, especially in the obstacle course stage. Having played a bunch of Need for Speed on the PlayBook, I think an option for accelerometer control would be really nice.

Knowing if you'll be able to make a turn sharply or if you'll need to accommodate for drift can be tricky.

The overall gameplay is still great. There’s a real solid “Channel 9 Evening News” angle, where the camera following you is accompanied by the sound of a news chopper. Many of the UI elements are fashioned after TV fly-ins. I would have liked to see a few more unlocks beyond the five cars you made available over the course of gameplay. Maybe some vehicle tweaks to increase boost regeneration, or bump speed up a notch. There are a few microtransactions available, but they feel forced. For $4.99, you can unlock all of the vehicles without having to play through the game. For $0.99, you can pick up 3 Super Cops. These are one-shot upgrades the make your cop car awesome and help you blast through tough levels. While I appreciate being able to earn these in the challenge missions, I doubt my frustration would ever reach the point of spending money to beat a level, especially if I’ve already shelled out $2.99 for the game. Now, if there was a free version of Smash Cops, maybe with ads and fewer cars and missions, microtransactions might be a more viable route. Personally, I find the gameplay is polished enough that Smash Cops would do very well as a free title.

Smash Cops features a wide variety of game modes

The graphics deserve top marks. The lighting is extremely realistic, the models are believable, the animation is fluid, and though the physics are a little exagerrated, it suits the gameplay. Fans of the Burnout series will definitely appreciate the scinematic slow-mo crash sequences. The only graphical problem I’ve had is that that after being flipped over, sometimes a robber’s car will disappear and respawn further down the road. This makes sense if the wreck lands in undrivable terrain, but sometimes it doesn’t, and the respawn screws up plans for follow-up attacks.

Smash Cops goes into a cinematic slow mo every time you flip a perp's car

The audio is decent, but I really wish there was some high-octane racing music while you play. The menu screen has some great music and gets me in the mood to race, but once the game is launched, you’re listening to a police siren and a chopper sound interspersed with the odd crinkle of smashed bumpers.

Overall, Smash Cops is a fast-paced, challenging racing game with polished gameplay and graphics. With a few control tweaks and increased depth for unlockables, I could see myself killing a lot of time with this game. For $2.99, you’ll get your money’s worth so long as losing a few times drives you to steely determination, rather than flipping over to another game.

$2.99 – Buy now

The good

• Excellent graphics
• Polished (though sometimes difficult) gameplay
• Good variety of game modes

The bad

• In-app purchases aren’t compelling
• Limited variety of unlocks
• Controls are often too difficult

The conclusion

Overall, Smash Cops is a fast-paced, challenging racing game with polished gameplay and graphics. With a few control tweaks and increased depth for unlockables, I could see myself killing a lot of time with this game. For $2.99, you’ll get your money’s worth so long as losing a few times drives you to steely determination, rather than flipping over to another game.

Our challenge this week was to find an app that could capture a still image — a photo — while simultaneously shooting video on the iPhone. With the default camera app, you have to stop recording video, switch to still camera mode, shoot a picture, then switch back to video and start recording that. Not ideal. Neither is trying to screen capture while recording, since there are way too many controls visible, cutting into the picture.

With over half a million apps for just about everything, you’d figure there’d have to be at least one in the App Store for this. But with so many apps, it can be hard to find the one you want. That’s where we come in. We’re sorting through the App Store and we’re going to help find just exactly the app for that.

App for that: QuickPix

QuickPix does exactly what Ron is looking for. While filming a video, QuickPix has two buttons: one to stop recording, and one to take a photo. These photos are sent directly to your camera roll along with the video once you end the recording.

Some other features of QuickPick are RapidFire (2 pictures per second), QuickPic (shoot on app launch), and the ability to separately set the focus and exposure.

Now that I have discovered QuickPix, I will use it for all filming I do from now on. There have been multiple times where I had to choose between capturing video or taking photos of a special moment, but now I can do both! Thank you, Ron, for sending me on the hunt for this app!

• $1.99 – App Store link

Thanks to Ron – Ertiguy for the question. Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Ron? Let him — and all of us — know in the comments below.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Head on over to our App for That Forum and let us know what you’re looking for. The iMore community will do our best to find you just the right App for That!

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

The White House — @andrewwray

Looking for a great way to keep tabs on the Obama administration? The White House for iPhone is your best pick, giving you access to news, photos and video of what’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Not only will you have direct access to their blog, which is more of a news source than anything else, but you’ll also be able to browse through archived photos, video and more. I was able to watch the State of the Union address in its entirety earlier this week without strapping myself down to a desk or television. Instead, I just whipped out my iPhone and within a few minutes I was watching the livestream — no questions asked.

Next to the plethora of content, media and information about The White House at your fingertips, you can also setup push notifications to be notified of any major news stories going on in the political realm. Overall, it’s a great resource and the livestream feature is a lifesaver.

• Free — App Store Link

Zite Personalized Magazine – @sethclifford

Flipboard is the app that everyone likes talking about, but there’s actually a few new apps that are doing stylish news aggregation pretty well. One that I’ve really been enjoying lately is Zite, which takes a similar approach to Flipboard, but allows you to customize your reading experience over time by voting stories up or down and then learning what it is you prefer to read and giving you more tailored content.

The setup for the app is pretty simple, and I really like the clean UI. There’s really not much to get in the way and the content really takes center stage. I feel like it’s easier to browse than Flipboard, and while the Flipboard UI conventions are cool, don’t get me wrong – after a while, I feel like I’m really working to see new content, and I don’t feel like I can scan as quickly on my phone (which is a prime criteria for consuming news on the go). Zite feels like it allows me to do that more easily.

The customization aspects are cool too – you basically give stories a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and Zite will remember what it is you liked and in the future return more content like it. There’s a lot of detail here as to how this is all accomplished, and since I’ve only been using it a short time, I can’t speak to its accuracy yet. Also, the type of feeds I’m looking at (tech stuff) usually have a bit of overlap, so it’s hard for me to tell right now. I’m less concerned with teaching the app though, and more concerned with the quickness of information and scanning, and it definitely succeeds there. But the app’s main draw is the personalization of content, so don’t let my particular use-case dissuade you from trying it out. It’s free and a really nice way to get your news.

Zite Personalized Magazine – Free – iTunes link

Messages+ – @iMuggle

I can not explain how happy I am to have a jailbreak on my iPhone 4S. Along with a new jailbreak comes tons of updated utilities and applications for iOS 5. I’ve been using IntelliscreenX and with it comes Messages+. I’ve been a long time fan of BiteSMS but I’m really loving the tight integration Messages+ has with iOS. There’s no separate application or icon, it just works. There’s really nothing to configure. Just set up a quick reply action via Activator and you’re good to go.

You can view images and files right from the quick reply window and then dismiss them. The UI blends perfectly with the default UI of iOS so it looks like something Apple themselves would have made. If you’re jailbroken and haven’t checked out Messages+ yet, I’d give it a try! If you already have IntelliscreenX, you already have a license for it and it comes built-in. If you don’t, you can buy Messages+ separately.

$7.99 – Cydia Search Link

Going back to a #TeamPure iPhone – @chrisoldroyd

This week I decided to give the new Absinthe Jailbreak a go on my iPhone 4S. I have always tinkered around with jailbroken devovces and do love apps like BiteSMS and SBSettings. This time the experience has been awful for me.

Installing the jailbreak was simple enough, I had to wait a bit longer as I am a Windows user. Anyway, to cut a long story short, my phone is all jailbroken in minutes and I installed BiteSMS and SBSettings and nothing more. A few days later and I try and listen to my music in the car and things start to go terribly wrong. Album artwork shows the wrong song playing and most songs start to play then stop or don’t play at all.

I turned iTunes Match on and off, and even synced again with iTunes, transferring all my music back on manually, still the same issue. Only option I had was to go back to a stock install and lose my jailbreak. That is where I am at now and guess what? Yep my music is now perfect again!

Squrl – @Bla1ze

I don’t watch a lot of TV and the shows I do want to watch are usually found on iTunes or Netflix but there isn’t a lot of good stuff out there these days any how in my opinion. For filling that void, I often scour the web looking for good online content to watch when I have some spare time but keeping track of that stuff has proven to be a difficult task over time. For Christmas I got an AppleTV and found Squrl. Squrl basically aggregates a lot of popular online video sites and various other content providers and provides a beautiful UI that allows for tracking videos, saving them for later viewing. Couple that with an AppleTV and you can amass plenty of content to watch in place of television shows. Social network integration as well as netflix, it has become a key resource of entertainment for me and it’s available for free in the iTunes App Store.

• Free – App Store link

Rdio – @jdipane

Music is a huge part of my life, and the ability to have almost any song at my fingertips without eating up all the space on my iPhone is a huge plus for me. Rdio is a subscription based service similar to Spotify, but I find that more songs that I enjoy to listen to are available through Rdio. Whether I want to select a certain song, album or just listen to a particular artists stations I can do so with a few simple clicks from within the application. I have various playlist’s set up, one for work out, one to relax, and I can add and remove songs with ease. Rdio also ties in with my home Sonos system which is great as I can listen to the music through my headphones, the speaker of the device or through the Sonos to keep me motivated. The application is free, but the service is paid, hit the link below to start your free 7 day trial!

• Free – App Store link

Puzzle Juice – @JorjLim

Tetris? Boggle? If you can’t decide which game to play, then Puzzle Juice is a sure winner.

The game starts as a standard game of Tetris; coloured blocks fall from the top of the screen, and you have to form a line at the bottom to score points.

However, unlike traditional Tetris, once you’ve completed a line, it won’t disappear. Instead, every block will turn into a letter and you’ll have to form words to score even more points. Here’s the fun part; while you’re looking for words, the next Tetris block has started falling. If you need more letters to form a word, tap on 3 same-colour blocks that are adjacent to one another to reveal more letters. There is also an optional Zen Mode, which challenges you to score as many points as you can in 90 seconds.

The game itself is well designed and even the menu screens have a pinch of character. You won’t see a “Ok”, or “Start” button throughout the game, instead you’ll see phrases like “Sounds Peachy” and “Totally Got It”, just to add that extra flare to the game.

The game is a mind-game, a fun-game and a challenging game all wrapped into one neat parcel, and will keep you busy for hours!

• $0.99 – App Store link

Doodlecast Pro

My day job is teaching two Intermediate Algebra courses at my local community college and this semester I’m experimenting with making videos for my students on new or difficult topics. Doodlecast Pro for iPad has turned out to be the best app to help me accomplish this. It records both my voice and handwriting and allows me to export and upload my videos directly to YouTube. If I made some mistakes along the way that I want to edit out, I can export to my Camera Roll instead and edit in another application like Avid Studio or iMovie. My only complaint is that the handwriting strokes are not really that great. I would love to see Doodlecast match the quality of handwriting to apps like Penultimate and Noteshelf.

• $3.99 – App Store link

LabTimer – Joe (Reader’s Choice winner – Comment #22)

My favorite right now is Lab Timer. It’s a free universal app that gives you 16 timers. They’ll count up or down and will sound an alarm. It’s handy for work so I can have a break timer, a lunch timer and can time how long a process is taking all from the same app. It’s especially handy for the iPad since there is no built-in clock app.

• Free – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 13 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Video Camera for iPhone by i4software is a video studio in your pocket. It allows you to switch between front and rear cameras while recording and snap photos while recording. For those looking for a professional level of control, Video Camera also lets you manually control exposure, focus, and white balance via a triple tap. The recent update also grants the permission to record up to 8 remote cameras.

Unleash yourself from time-consuming camcorders and editing programs—get Video Camera and join the video revolution.

• The most intuitive video app makes shooting, editing and sharing a streamlined process.
• Switch between front and rear cameras while recording.
• Snap photos while recording.
• Optional Date & Time stamps directly into the video.
• Choose one of three professional-quality studio intros for a Hollywood experience.
• Fully customizable titles and scrolling credits.
• Includes rights-free music for unrestricted use, or access songs from your own music library.
• Full-featured editing mode for advanced users.
• Quickly and easily move, duplicate or delete clips.
• Use location services to automatically add location to the scrolling credits.• 1920×1080, 1280×720 and 640×360 resolutions on supported devices.
• Optional manual controls for exposure, focus, and white balance accessible by triple tapping.
• Full zoom control for video, including a smooth auto-zoom.
• Patented Live Non-Linear Editing (LiNE™) makes trimming while capturing a seamless experience.
• Preview and trim clips the moment they’re shot.
• Move, delete, or load clips in your timeline without exiting the main camera view.
• Import .MOV files from the camera roll, including those created with third-party apps.
• With the iPad Camera Connection kit import and edit clips from many popular cameras, including GoPro Hero, Panasonic GH1, Canon PowerShot S100, 60D, and more! Process your final movie right on the spot.

Video Camera is available on the iPhone for $7.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter are a collection of apps that use the iPhone GPS to track your activity while simultaneously providing you with feedback and motivation to go farther.

The upcoming updates for Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter will introduce a new interface that allows you to easily swipe through information making it easy to view data like time, distance, speed, location, elevation, and heart rate even while in the middle of your ride, run, or walk. Each screen is customizable so that you can be sure you are seeing the information that matters to you.

Although there are 3 different apps, each app is essentially the same. So if you purchase Cylcemeter and want to use it for your run, just set the mode of the app to running. Whichever version you purchase is just which activity the app will be preconfigured for.

We got a sneak peak of Cyclemeter version 7.0 while at Macworld 2012.

• $4.99 – App Store link

Cyclemeter turns your iPhone into a powerful GPS-enabled fitness computer, giving you feedback and motivation to go farther, be healthier, and live longer.

• Track – Cyclemeter continually records your time, location, distance, elevation, and speed – years of workouts only take up the space of a few songs.
• Visualize – See your results on maps, graphs, and a calendar, and organized by routes and activities.
• Hear – Monitor your progress with more than 70 configurable announcements including distance, time, speed, and elevation.
• RACE – Compete against your previous workouts along a route, or import and compete against other people’s workouts.
• Train – Keep on track with extremely configurable interval training, zones, and targets. Set up repeating intervals, pyramid intervals, or tempo workouts.
• Share – Use email, Facebook, Twitter, and dailymile to share Google Maps of your workouts, automatically updated every few minutes.
• Import/Export – Import a route or virtual competitor by simply clicking on a GPX or KML link or file in Mail or Safari. Export complete summaries of your workouts, or detailed CSV, GPX, or KML files for use in maps, graphs, or social fitness sites.
• For cycling, running, walking, skiing, skating and more – Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter and are built from the same core foundation, but come preconfigured for cycling, running, or walking. Each supports all features and activities.
• Improve – Cyclemeter gives you the data that helps you achieve your goals, whether it’s to cycle a park or a century, run a mile or a marathon, or walk a block or a march.

Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter are available on the iPhone for $4.99.

• Cyclemeter – App Store link
• Runmeter – App Store link
• Walkmeter – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Zynga has released their newest iPhone and iPad game for animal lovers called Dream PetHouse. In this game, you are in charge of raising hundreds of adorable pets in a huge treehouse and making them has happy as can be.

As with all Zynga games, there is a social aspect to Dream PetHouse where you use Facebook Connect to visit your friends’ trees and help each other with various tasks.

• Do you love animals? Then here’s your chance to create the biggest, happiest home for hundreds of irresistibly cute pets in Dream PetHouse by Zynga! Collect the world’s cutest animals and care for them in your own unique tree, staffed by Chipper and his group of adorable chipmunk friends!

• Feed your pets and watch them grow up right before your eyes!

• Connect Pethouses using dynamic bridges and see your pets explore their new home!
• Capture fond memories of your pets’ childhood in family albums!
• Raise your pet families and collect all the Golden Frames!
• Visit your friends’ trees using Facebook and get their help raising your pets!
• Customize your Pethouse with wild-looking trees and unique habitats!

Dream PetHouse is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The Lotto Machine is not your average random number generator. This one has a beautiful UI and is equipped with a physics engine giving you the perception of having some control over the outcome. The Lotto Machine uses the iPhone accelerometer so that as you tilt your iPhone, the balls roll around in the spinning drum.

The Lotto Machine is purely designed to help you pick your numbers for the lottery – sounds boring, right? Wrong! With a gorgeous UI, a spinning drum and physics that you can control with the accelerometer, now playing the lottery is fun no matter the outcome!

The Lotto Machine is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Pad & Quill, the makers of The Little Black Book for iPhone and Contega for iPhone have a nifty littles notes app in the App Store whose design was inspired by their cases.

What makes Pad & Quill Notes so special is the same thing that makes their cases so special — craftsmanship and attention to detail. It looks beautiful. It works smoothly. It’s well thought out.

Your notes will be neatly organized in classic notebooks and stored on a wooden shelf with stylish papers, fonts, and colors waiting to be read. There’s nothing new age or fancy here. It’s for people who like type written notes in hand written fonts, exquisitely rendered and precisely placed. And it’s a universal app so it works perfectly on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

• $0.99 – App Store link

Pad & Quill organizes your notes in classic notebooks kept on a wooden shelf. It’s intuitive, simple and beautiful. Inspired by the Italian bonded leather cases made by Pad & Quill, the app turns your device into books you will truly love.

CORE FEATURES

• organize notes into different books
• sync notes on all your iDevices
• realistic page turn effects
• universal app
• beautifully designed

CUSTOMIZE

• 10 fabulously designed book covers to choose from
• 10 beautiful fonts (font size adjustable)
• different ink colours
• different paper styles (plain, ruled, wrinkled, bookish, squared…)
• customizable note titles
• bookmark individual notes

MORE FEATURES

• automatic page of contents
• e-mail notes
• typing is supported in both landscape and portrait mode
• infinite digital paper & unlimited number of books

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Paper Monsters is a new platformer game for iPhone and iPad. In the game’s world, everything is made out of paper and cardboard, including your character. It’s a classic 2d side-scrolling platformer placed in a 3d environment.

I am loving this game! Paper Monsters has great graphics that are also very fun. My favorite little feature of the graphics is that sometimes things like trees and bushes pop up in front of or behind you in the 3d atmosphere.

Dive into the world of Paper Monsters and watch a living world made out of paper, cardboard, and a few cotton balls unfold right before your eyes.

Paper Monsters takes all of the classic 2d platforming elements, combines them with cutting edge graphics and then packs it onto your iPhone or iPad.

• Classic 2d sidescrolling gameplay with gorgeous 3d environments.
• Original and adorable characters
• Awesome original soundtrack – headphones recommended!
• Fun under water and flying powerups.
• Two control types: “floating” Joystick or classic touchpad
• Game Center Leaderboards
• Adventure and Hunt for hidden Game Center Achievements
• 16 Large Levels across 4 unique worlds
• Tons of secret areas!
• High score dash mode for endless replay value!
• Airplay Mirroring
• Fun for all ages
• Universal for iPhone, iPod, and iPad

Giveaway

We’re a big fan of cute platformer games, here at iMore, so we’re giving away Paper Monsters to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! Must have a US iTunes account to win. Apple’s rule, not ours!

Paper Monsters is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Cocktail Flow is a gorgeous bartending app filled with delicious recipes. This isn’t your basic recipe list, however; Cocktail Flow keeps a list of what ingredients you have in your bar and populates a list of drinks you can make with your current stock. If you’re only a few ingredients away from some drinks, CockTail flow will also show you those and provide a nice shopping list of the items you need and estimate their total cost for you.

Throwing a party for this weekend’s big game? Cocktail Flow has just been updated with a Super Bowl package available as an in-app purchase.

The application features beautifully presented recipes and identifies cocktails that can be made from ingredients in your bar. It also gives suggestions on what ingredients to buy next to make additional delicious cocktails.

• Amazing photography
• Select what drinks you have at hand, and it will automatically show you which cocktails you can make
• Shopping suggestions to maximize the amount of cocktails you can make
• Special themed packages like New Years, Christmas, Valentine’s day and St Patrick’s day
• Detailed guides to help you through the process of making amazing cocktails

Cocktail Flow is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

If you’re heading to the Super Bowl this weekend, SB XLVI Guide will be your companion in your pocket. It’s your guide to official Super Bowl events, a map of Indianapolis, a 3D map and seating chart to the Lucas Oil Stadium, and a reference for local restaurants and nightlife.

Whether you’ll be in Indy or not, the Super Bowl XLVI Guide is your must-have companion to Super Bowl Week!

• A detailed guide to local restaurants, nightlife, and official Super Bowl events
• A 3D map of Indianapolis and an interactive 3D map of Lucas Oil Stadium for gameday
• You can follow all of the social media buzz with NFL Huddle
• Pin your parking spot and find your seating section in the stadium
• And much more!

SB XLVI Guide is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

FavorIt is the place where favorite friends and favorite apps meet. This new twist to app discovery lets you share your five favorite apps with your Facebook friends and view theirs. You can also see which apps are popular among all your friends.

This is one of those types of apps that needs participation from your friends in order to be useful, but the good news is that it only takes a few moments to login and do your part, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get your friends on board!

We took a closer look while at Macworld 2012.

• Free – App Store link

When you know the apps that your friends call their FavorIts, the possibilities are endless!

Rediscover those awesome iPhone classics or join in the latest App Store craze. Find out who’s also addicted to that zombie-words-tower game, or learn about the latest time-saving productivity tool. Has the latest bird-themed release kept you up until 2am? Don’t just love it, FavorIt!

FavorIt – Where Favorite Friends and Favorite Apps Meet is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

If Tetris were to wed a matching game, their resulting child may be something similar Revertis. The goal of this casual puzzle game is to draw 4 dots at a time in such a way that matches identical colors. The objective is simple, but execution may not always be.

I’m enjoying playing Revertis. It’s relaxing, has nice music, but isn’t mindless.

Are you on your way home from the work? May be in a subway or in a bus? Do you have 5 minutes? Would you like to shut down those thoughts in your head? Just for 5 minutes? Try Revertis! It is like meditation! It helps you to relax and trains your brain at the same time.

• 10 different game modes
• Competitive modes with limited time per turn
• Post your results on Facebook
• Game Center integrated
• Unique animation
• local leaderboards
• option for color-blind people
• soundtracks
• achievements
• German & Russian localizations

Giveaway

The makers of Revertis have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

Revertis is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

A turn-based strategy/role-playing game based on Call of Cthulhu RPG. Set in the midst of World War One, the game pits your team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient enemy, one older than humanity itself… Can your team of investigators keep their grip on sanity long enough to stop these diabolical plans? The fate of humanity is in your hands…

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Meeting Mapper

Documents all the important information in meetings and display a graphical depiction of your meetings. The information can be exported as a PDF and emailed and uploaded into your CRM application, SharePoint or just save it on your computer.

• $9.99 for iPad – App Store link

Tiny Review

Review stuff with just one photo and three lines of texts. Seriously, if they read how much we just wrote about them, they’d be pissed. (But now you can login with Twitter or email!)

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Ringtones & Alert Tones Maker

Personalize your iPhone by creating your own ringtones, text tones and other alert tones with Ringtones & Alert Tones Maker. Choose the song you want to use as your ringtone, specify the type of your alert, then choose the required segment from the audio track.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

The Very Cranky Bear

The award winning and much loved children’s book, The Very Cranky Bear* is now an animated, interactive app! Join Moose, Zebra, Lion and Sheep as they try to hide from the rain in a cave, but accidentally disturb a very cranky bear…

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad -App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

MacPhun, the makers of FX Photo Studio, are working on a selective-coloring photography for iPhone called Color Splash Studio. Unlike similar apps already available in the App Store, FX Photo Studio comes with a slew of tools that allows you to further customize your photos including contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue. You can focus these edits to just the background or just the colored portion of your photo. You can also apply various filters (like sepia) to your background, making it more interesting than the traditional black and white backgrounds.

FX Photo Studio is already available in the Mac App Store [$2.99 - Mac App Store link] and will be available on the iPhone in mid-February.

We got a sneak peak of Color Splash Studio for iPhone while at Macworld 2012.

Sprint has released an iPhone app for their customers called Sprint Mobile Zone. With this app, users can access their Sprint accounts, check out promotions, and read Sprint news. Non-account holders may also use the app to check your power consumption and running resources and find Apple and Sprint stores.

Sprint Zone offers Sprint customers immediate access to their account online, Sprint News and promotions and in addition, it offers the following for both Sprint and non-Sprint customers:

• Simple device management (power controls, resources etc.)
• Apple and Sprint store Locator*
• Help functions, including access to a care representative

Sprint Mobile Zone is available on the iPhone for free.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Voice Calendar: Create calendar items on your iPhone with your voice.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

flickr hd: Displays a new photo from your public flickr photostream, your flickr.com favourites, or a custom flickr search every minute. Currently on sale!

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Girlfriend 411: Store all the information you will ever need to know about your girlfriend in a time of need. Thinking about sending her flowers, but can’t remember her address? Forgot what her favorite type of flowers are? These are the types of issues that a lot of men run into quite often.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

TextVite: The hottest new way to invite your guests and friends to anything! Choose a background, plug in your details, add a few cool design elements, and in seconds your TextVitation is buzzing on all your guests’ phones.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

World Tree With Dragons: The first tree world simulation type game. You can build a fantastic world where you control almost everything! By combining 3 types of branches and 12 different patterns of leafs (more to come in future updates), you can grow your tree totally unique from any other one in this world! It’s the best game to show your creativity and art sense.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

iCookbook is an iPhone and iPad app that will help you plan, prepare, and cook your meals. One of its unique features is the support for voice commands. While cooking, it is not uncommon to have your hands covered in matter that you do not want transferred to you iPad’s screen, so instead of using you hands to navigate around the app, you can use your voice. It also includes features that you would expect to find in any good cooking app such as detailed, customizable recipes, shopping lists, social sharing, and the ability to add your own recipes.

We interviewed the folks at Publications International and took a closer look at Macworld 2012

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

• Voice Commands. Completely unique to iCookbook is hands free voice command. Cooks can proceed through the preparation steps without touching the iPad or iPhone screen. Just speak the simple commands to move to the next step, manage timers, view notes [iPad only], and more.
• Prepare Mode: Unique to iCookbook, the Prepare feature provides an enhanced display of a recipe a cook can read at a distance from the iPad and iPhone.
• Stir it Up! Feeling adventurous? Press Stir and iCookbook offers a selection of randomly chosen recipes based on a particular search or filter criteria [Shake to stir on iPhone].
• My Recipe Box. Enables a cook to create a set of iCookbook favorite recipes for easy retrieval, and add recipes from a personal recipe collection.
• Network with Friends and Family. Share on Facebook, or email any recipe to all your friends to let them know what you are cooking.
• Printing. Now print recipes to any AirPrint™ compatible printer.
• Personalize the Recipes. Everyone likes to put their own personal touch to a recipe. Our Notes feature allows you to record your ideas and comments about iCookbook recipes.
• Kitchen Tools. Multiple timers, substitution lists, and measurement conversion charts.
• Shopping List. Tag ingredients directly from a recipe to your shopping list, then print or email your list.
• Add your own recipe – You can easily add your own recipes so you never lose your Grandma’s favorite chocolate cookies or your world-famous pasta sauce. Once the recipe is added, you can also easily add your own photos, search for your recipe or even share your personal favorite through E-mail.

iCookbook is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Garmin now owns Navigon and while you think twice as many turn-by-turn navigation apps from one company would be doubly confusing, they’re doing a good job at differentiating their products, but what’s more — Garmin themselves are going way beyond turn-by-turn apps and harnessing location-based GPS services including apps for pilots, and for fitness.

Garmin Fit uses location to measure and track you walking, running, or cycling activity, and lets you easily refer back to them or even share them via Garmin’s Connect service. It also ties into your music, trying to match a soundtrack to your activity level. Garmin Fit measures: current speed, distance traveled, your route, and your calories burned.

You can also get an optional dongle that uses ultra low-power Garmin Ant+ to wirelessly send data from your iPhone and Garmin Fit to external sensors including heart rate monitors, foot measures, and cycling meters.

Garmin On-Demand takes the traditional turn-by-turn navigation app and lowers almost every barrier of entry imaginable. It’s not expensive — you subscribe to what you need, when you need it, in small chunks for small periods, not massive bills forever. That also speeds up downloads and updates, since only the areas you’re traveling need to be transferred to your iPhone. Not driving? Not a problem — Garmin On-Demand has walkers covered too.

Both apps, as well as Garmin’s full suite of apps — which includes Navigon — are available now on the iTunes app store.

• $0.99 – Garmin Fit for iPhone – App Store link
• $0.99 – Garmin On-Demand for iPhone – App Store link

Taglists is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you create and share playlists made up of music, videos, and photos that can be streamed for free by you and your friends. Just tag all the media with the same hashtag label and Taglists will generate the playlists for you. Want to enjoy these playlists via a different medium? No problem; Taglists lets you use Airplay or DLNA to play them on connected TV, A/V receivers, iPod docks, stereos, Apple TV and more.

We took a closer look at Taglists at Macworld 2012.

• Free – App Store link

Taglists lets you create and share playlists that mix free music, videos, and photos from multiple places, including Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, and SoundCloud.

• Create a Taglist by tagging songs, videos, and photos with the same hash-tag, like #inthedark (See #inthedark here: http://eye-c.tv/twv)
• Share Taglists on Twitter and Facebook automatically, and let friends add to your playlist to build your own shared channel that others can watch on any computer
• Play Taglists on your iPhone or iPod touch or iPad or use Airplay or DLNA to play them on connected TV, A/V receivers, iPod docks, stereos, Apple TV and more.

Taglists is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The Omni Group is famous for their high quality, thoughtfully designed, and enormously useful productivity apps for iPhone, iPad, and Macs, including OmniFocus, OmniGraphSketcher, OmniGraffle, and OmniOutliner. They were one of the earliest high profile developers to go all-in on the iPad, bringing several of their premium apps to platform on launch day. Not believing the “consumption not creation” mantra of the usual suspects, they took cues from Apple on model controls and full screen workflows and re-imagined their apps until they became a way to almost finger-paint with productivity.

In addition to their user interface and user experience work, they’ve also been early adopters of new iOS features, such as adding location to task management and implementing iCloud sync.

Live from [Macworld 2012], Ken Case talks about all of the above and more, and where The Omni Group might be going next.

Check out the video above, and find all of the Omni Group’s finely crafted apps on the App Store via the links below.

• OmniFocus for iPhone – $19.99 – App Store link
• OmniFocus for iPad – $39.99 – App Store link
• OmniGraphSketcher for iPad – $14.99 – App Store link
• OmniGraffle – $49.99 – App Store link
• OmniOutliner – $19.99 – App Store link

Garmin may be best known for their driving navigation apps and devices, but they also have Pilot My-Cast, an iPhone and iPad app for pilots to plan their flights by not only mapping out their route, but checking the weather by overlaying real-time data and maps including radar, clouds, and lightning. The UI is designed very nicely and is meant to be a quick and simple reference for general, corporate, and commercial pilots.

We got a closer look at Macworld 2012.

Garmin Pilot My-Cast is an aviation-centric weather and flight planning application designed specifically for general aviation, corporate and commercial pilots. Pilot My-Cast allows subscribers to view comprehensive weather information for your route or airport of interest. With Pilot My-Cast, you can quickly see how the weather will impact your flight by overlaying numerous real-time data including: Radar, visible and infrared clouds, AIRMETs, SIGMETs and lightning on a map with your flight displayed. Pilot My-Cast also features the AOPA Airport Directory along with the ability to file a flight plan and much more. Features:

• Designed by pilots specifically for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
• Maps include: Animated radar, AIRMETs/SIGMETs, Lightning, PiREPs, METARs/TAFs, Winds Aloft, TFRs, Infrared and Visible Satellite and Prog Charts
• Extensive text products include: METARs, TAFs, Winds Aloft, PiREPs, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, Area Forecasts and NOTAMs
• Dynamic weather overlays with your route displayed on map
• AOPA Airport Directory
• Flight plan filing via DUAT(s)
• Comprehensive weather data direct from the National Weather Service and Environment Canada

Once the 30 day free trial expires, Garmin Pilot My-Cast Aviation Weather and Flight Planning requires a $9.99 monthly subscription.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

While checking out the showroom floor at Macworld 2012, we encountered this cute little game called Bag It! The goal is to efficiently bag your groceries while optimizing space and not crushing items by, say, putting a watermelon on top of the bread.

These aren’t normal groceries, either. Each item is actually a character that has a personality. Bagging characters next to each other that get along well will help you achieve higher scores. For example, Sunshine the OJ and Spilt the Milk are sweethearts and bagging them next to each other awards an additional 300 points.

If organization isn’t your style or you need to blow off some steam, Bag It! also has a Rampage mode where your goal is to actually destroy as much groceries as possible.

Heavy, sturdy items on the bottom, light and fragile items on the top – seems simple, right? Think again!

• 50+ unique levels!
• Standard, Rampage, and Puzzle modes!
• Try to get 3 stars and both medals for each level! Master them all!
• 3 unique Endless Modes!
• Unique grocery combos – try to find them all!
• Custom tailored translations in 7 languages
• Game Center with Leaderboards

Bag It! is available on the iPhone and iPad for $2.99 or just the iPhone for $0.99.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Launch Center, a new shortcuts app for iPhone, aims to make everything from sending messages and mail to posting on Facebook and Twitter, to turning on your LED flashlight, faster and easier via an extremely clever, borderline audacious use of URL schemes and iOS 5′s Notification Center.

Produced by David Barnard of App Cubby fame, it boasts an absolutely gorgeous user interface that lets you easily set up which actions you want to appear in your Notification Center from a robust set of shortcut that include Phone, SMS/iMessage, Email, Twitter, Facebook, Flashlight, Google search, and Custom URL schemes. (That last one, for more advanced users especially, should make Launch Center an instant buy.)

Live from Macworld|iWorld 2012, David showed off some of the new features in the recent Launch Center 1.1 update, including scheduled launch actions — for example if you know you need to SMS your wife every morning or email your boss the report every friday at noon.

David’s keeping Launch Center in his dock now, since using Launch Center to quickly call a favorite or send a message is faster than tapping and pecking through screens of apps and layers of menus.

Hopefully Apple finds a way to balance security and accessibility in the next version of iOS so apps like Launch Center can start to do even more fantastic, time saving things.

• $0.99 – App Store link

Smash Cops is an iPhone and iPad game where you get to be the police in wild car chases. You may be weaving through traffic going after runaway felons or even fleeing from a felon attack until backup arrives. The city you work is huge with just as huge graphics and includes over 20 missions and 5 vehicles.

Smash Cops is this week’s Games of the Week in the App Store.

PURSUE

• Take down runaway felons whilst avoiding civilian traffic and buddy police as you chase and weave through traffic.

ESCAPE

• Escape under time pressure from felon attack and get to a call out location as quickly as possible.

CHALLENGE

• 4 different mini games: smash a load of cars illegally parked in a car park, weave through a course laid out by cones, dodge traffic on a highway and collect evidence throughout the city.

GROUND BREAKING CONTROLS

• By placing your finger behind the car you can steer, weave, defend and attack runaway felons with full control of your vehicle, never before used in touch racing games.

LARGE DRIVABLE CITY

• Huge city with high quality visuals creates a fun and rich environment for different attack and escape routes spread over 20 missions and 5 vehicles.

CHAOS AND MAYHEM

-Smash, crush and flip felon vehicles. Obliterate the street scenery.

Smash Cops is available on the iPhone and iPad for $2.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Zombie : The Rescue: Get hooked by the dozens of challenging stages, each offering you the chance to be a hero! You’re not just here to blast these baddies into oblivion—you’ve got helpless civilians to rescue. Don’t worry, though, you’ll have plenty of chances to reduce the shambling hordes to quivering sludge, too.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

The Adventures of Robin Hood: Dive into the story of Robin Hood, Maid Marion and the Sheriff of Nottingham with full screen cartoons, karaoke-style reading, sound effects and mini-games that stimulate the imagination.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $3.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

PicYou: With a simple photo you can connect with others from around the world and explore new things to do or see. See a sweet shot? Snap it with your iPhone and let PicYou do the rest with its awesome filters and frames.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

NewsFlash: One tap is all it takes to see what just happened… NewsFlash brings you all the latest news, as it breaks, from the major news sources in your country.

• Free for iPhone and iPad App Store link

Spirit of Wandering – The Legend: Sail the seas with a pirate captain in search of her missing love in this adventurous, hidden-object quest! After an attack by the Flying Dutchman, the crew of the Spirit of Wandering and captain’s companion, Jack, were imprisoned in the spirit world. Use powerful tools such as the Crystal Orb, a trusty compass and the help of fellow prisoners to find hidden objects that are drifting between the two worlds. Remove the lingering curse and save those stuck in the spirit world!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link
• Free for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Prezo is an iPhone photography app that lets you and your friends contribute to shared photo albums. This is perfect for groups of people that are at the same party, event or vacation.

If I wasn’t already married, I’d totally encourage my guests to use this app during my wedding reception and have the photos displayed in real time on a projector.

Prezo, urban slang for “Presentation”, is a social photo sharing app that allows multiple people to contribute to the same shared photo albums. Users create photo albums, called Prezos, and share them via Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS. Other users can view and/or edit Prezos based on permissions set by the Prezo owner. Prezo owners and contributors are notified via push notifications when Prezos are changed. Prezos can also be viewed as slide presentations at www.myprezo.com.

Imagine…

• Being at a social or corporate event where users can contribute to a shared Prezo for the event while the Prezo is being shown in real time on a large projection screen.
• Being on a vacation where all photos taken by anyone in your party are automatically shared with everyone else in your party. At the same time, people not on the trip can see your pictures in real time as they are taken by viewing the shared Prezo at www.myprezo.com.
• Creating a mobile portfolio or mobile sales presentation that can be viewed by customers and prospects.

…Prezo makes this all simple!

Prezo is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

“Classic arcade fighting game SoulCalibur has hacked and slashed its way onto the iPhone, with all of the vibrant characters and flashy moves you remember, but there are still a few gaps to fill.”

SoulCalibur recently launched for both iPhone and iPad, calling upon many nostalgic gamers to dive back into the classic 3D fighting title. The screenshots show many of the characters players will readily recognize, like the gruff samurai, Mitsurugi, the eccentric and mysterious Voldo, and the enlightened Kilik. There are 10 characters available from the get-go, with another 9 available through unlocks. All of ‘em have alternative costumes too, for those that are sensitive to combat fashion.

There are a ton of game modes, like the classic arcade style, where you plow through challengers one-by-one until reaching the final boss, a time trial where you try to get through them all as quickly as possible, and survival mode, to see how long you can play before being defeated. Practice mode is an essential and welcome addition for those that want to learn every little nuance of their favourite characters. Namco Bandai promises that even more game modes are on the way.

Unfortunately, SoulCalibur’s asking price at launch was a little on the high end: $12, and that’s with a 20%-off launch discount. That’s a hard pill to swallow when the game doesn’t offer multiplayer support, and sound quality is a little on the sketchy side…

SoulCalibur for iPhone has the traditional look, but with multitouch controls superimposed on top of the screen.

For the most part, the gameplay is fantastic and classic. You have an overlay of a joystick, and the four standard buttons – vertical attack, horizontal attack, kick, and guard. Control options let you customize button placement and opacity, as well as add a multi-button of your choice. This is particularly important, since a lot of SoulCalibur moves require you to hit two buttons at once, which is only really possible otherwise if you lay your device flat on a surface, so you’re playing with your fingers instead of thumbs. The extra button is helpful in that regard, but since you can only add one, a character’s full arsenal won’t be available to you when thumbing it out.

SoulCalibur's animations have been faithfully, beautifully reproduced

The animation is altogether great, and having played SoulCalibur plenty on the Xbox 360, I can say that all of the moves and animations have been faithfully recreated. The models themselves can be a little jagged at times, but given the speed and complexity of many of the animations, I’m happy enough that everything runs smoothly. Although the menus are laid out clearly, I occasionally had issues getting presses to register. Bigger buttons for each option would be really helpful.

Menu options are clearly laid out, though tap targets are small and can be hard to hit.

The one downer for SoulCalibur on the iPhone was the audio. The music was tinny and MIDI-style, the announcer’s audio files seemed low-quality compared to everything else, and the character taunts before and after each round are still in Japanese (even though the announcer and UI is in English). These are all things that could be fixed in a future patch, though, so I’m holding out for Namco Bandai to update the game sooner rather than later.

The lack of multiplayer is a a bit of a kick in the teeth, seeing as my favourite part of SoulCalibur, and really any fighting game, is beating the snot out of your buddies. There is Game Center support though, so at least your high scores are posted where your friends can see them and feel inadequate.

SoulCalibur supports Game Center leaderboards, but NOT multiplayer.

While SoulCalibur has buckets of nostalgia going for it, $11.99 is a lot to ask. While you won’t have as easy of a time playing on your iPhone or iPad as you would with a real console controller, you learn quickly and before long you’ll find your ass-kicking stride. There are some significant feature gaps, namely multiplayer support, but if Namco Bandai follows up with significant patches, SoulCalibur may very well merit this hefty pricetag.

SoulCalibur
$11.99 Buy now		The Good Combat animations recreated faithfully Gameplay and controls familiar and responsive Plenty of characters to unlock Universal app, works on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad The Bad Currently too expensive No multiplayer Voiceovers need improved quality and translation The Conclusion While SoulCalibur has buckets of nostalgia going for it, $11.99 is a lot to ask (and that’s the 20%-off release sale price). While you won’t have as easy of a time playing on your iPhone or iPad as you would with a real console controller, you learn quickly and before long you’ll find your ass-kicking stride. There are some significant feature gaps, namely multiplayer support, but if Namco Bandai follows up with significant patches, SoulCalibur may very well merit this hefty pricetag.

The gorgeous twitter client, Twittelator Neue for iPhone, now offers notifications as an in-app purchase. For $1.99/year, you get native push alerts for mentions, direct messages, new followers, retweets, and being added to a list (or any so desired combination). This update also introduces Timeline Galleries so that you can quickly browse through photos that have been tweeted.

I have always been a fan of Twittelator Neue’s gorgeous timeline, design, and photo integration, but have always strayed from using it as my primary Twitter client due to lack of native push. Now, Twittelator Neue will likely become my Twitter client of choice. I will admit, however, that I’m not a big fan of the little icon included in each popup notification.

In the excitement of push notifications, I almost forgot about the Timeline Galleries! This is such a fantastic new feature and is just another example of what sets Twittelator Neue apart from other Twitter clients, making it truly unique.

In celebration of this update, Twittelator is on sale for $0.99 for today only.

• App Store link

Here’s the update notes:

• Neue Notifications Available as In-App Purchase
• Timeline Galleries
• Recent User Photos
• Tweet Replies & Conversations

Anyone else picking up Twittelator Neue? What are you thoughts on the subscription model for push notifications?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Breakout Boost: This arcade classic is now enhanced with improved graphics and deeper gameplay features such as power ups, unique brick types, and Boost Control! The faster your ball goes, the more points you’ll get!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Worldictionary – Instant Translation & Search: Point your iPhone’s camera at any word and Worldictionary will instantly define and translate it. No need to manually type words or take pictures. This app will be your indispensable travel tool primed to give you translation on-the-go.

• $7.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Jump Out!: From now on, when you earn an achievement, you do not just get a medal and points – you also unlock a new game level with unique game mechanics that correspond to the achievement you received. Each bonus level lets you sacrifice everything to get a trophy. Therefore, from that point on, unlocking each new achievement becomes a key to getting even more fun from the game.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Peak Meetings HD: A powerful tool for capturing and organizing your thinking, and making meetings more efficient and effective. Update includes even more productivity enhancements including agenda view, copy, and actions.

• $12.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

The Wiggles’ Alphabet Adventure:

• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Appigo’s Notebook app for iPhone and iPad has gone 2.0 and is now a universal app for iPhone and iPad with Dropbox support to keep your notes synced across all your devices, including your Mac or PC.

Notebook focuses on simple functionality for creating, sharing, and editing your notes. Notebook 2 now gives you an easy and convenient way to share your notes from anywhere with Dropbox sync — collaborate with friends, keep your notes on all your iOS devices, and even add, edit, and modify them on your Mac and PC.

KEY FEATURES

• Access your notes quickly
• Organize with multiple notebooks (folders)
• Share notes with all your iOS devices, your Mac, your PC, and your friends in standard text files (.TXT) with Dropbox
• Search and quickly find your notes in any notebook
• Protect your notes from others by setting an app-wide passcode

EXTRAS

• Bulleted Lists: Create simple lists using a dash, bullet, number, or letter
• Data Detection: Automatic links for phone numbers, websites, email addresses, and calendar events
• Fonts: Display notes using a wide variety of fonts and sizes
• Todo Support: Export notes as tasks into Appigo Todo (http://www.appigo.com/todo)
• TextExpander® Support (SmileOnMyMac, LLC): Set up keyboard shortcuts for rapid entry of common phrases
• Toodledo.com notes synchronization

Notebook is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

WorldCard Mobile and WorldCard HD are iPhone and iPad apps that allows you to automatically add information on business cards to your Contacts by simply taking a photo. It has recently been updated with iCloud storage and syncing support.

Now excuse me, I have a pile of business cards from CES 2012 to start going scanning.

WorldCard Mobile, the leading business card scanning application for iPhone, uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to instantly transfer information from business cards to the user’s native contacts. With a simple click of the camera, you no longer have to manually input contact info from business cards or email signatures.

• Superior text recognition
• High-speed scanning & update
• Card Holder function to view & manage contact info
• Create groups of contacts with Card Holder for easier navigation & organization (school, work, etc.)
• Cover flow and List style view for contacts
• Automatic camera shake reduction
• Email signature capture
• Automatic sorting of contact data
• Merge new data into existing contacts
• Auto-image rotation when scanned sideways
• Manual cropping by finger when recognition happens partially
• Ability to differentiate business cards from saved images
• Add Social Network Function.
• Image Distortion and Enhance.
• Export card information to Excel/CSV/Gmail file.
• Batch scan and recognize.
• Support camera flash(iphone 4).
• Support data exchange with WorldCard desktop software(Open In/ import /Export / iTunes File Sharing)
• Recognition of 7 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. You can switch from one language to another just like that!
• Integrated w/ WorldCard Contacts (sold separately) to make a call, text, email or browse the company website directly from business card images

WorldCard Mobile is available on the iPhone for $6.99 and WorldCard HD on the iPad for $14.99.

• iPhone – App Store link
• iPad – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Defense zone: Hold your defence with your turrets against the massive hordes of enemies. It is up to you, commander, how to spend the resources: restore and upgrade your veteran units or to purchase some new ones.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Rewards – A reward tracker for parents: Add a reward when your child is helpful, does the dishes, helps put the trash out and many more! At-a-glance, you and your child can see how many rewards they have totalled up for the week.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

PDF Forms: A powerful software tool for work with PDF documents and forms which allows commenting on ready PDF documents, filling forms, signing legal documents such as contracts or notices and sharing processed PDF documents via email or Dropbox.

• $8.99 for iPad – App Store link

Favomatic: Provides you with an easy to use interface to create and manage launch-buttons for your favorites. Think of it as a to-do list that helps you in that daily routine. It not only reminds you to check out something you were about to forget but it also makes sure not to check it too often.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Operation Math: Dr. Odd is on a global quest to eliminate the world’s even numbers. And it’s your job to stop him, by seeking out his secret bases, destroying his menacing mainframes and making the world a safer place for math. Complete each mission by solving the equations that lock the doors along your escape route in 60 seconds or less and earn all the uniforms and watches of a seasoned Base10 spy.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

There’s a new virtual personal assistant in town and her name Evi. Created by True Knowledge and running Nuance’s voice recognition technology, Evi is going to give Siri a run for her money – once the servers aren’t slammed, that is.

I’ve been trying to use Evi all day, but keep getting server errors, but I’m not giving up hope. Apple’s servers for Siri were also having issues when the iPhone 4S was released due to heavy traffic, but now works like a charm. Once the servers aren’t so busy, we’ll be sure to put Siri and Evi up against each other and share the results!

Phil over at Android Central gave Evi for Android a try as well, so check that out by way of comparison.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Unlike a search engine, which simply looks for matching words and shows you a list of websites, Evi understands what you want to know and gives back exactly what you’re after.

Need to know where the nearest bank is? Not a problem. Going out for dinner but can’t decide where? She can help with that too. The more you ask, the more she will learn, and thus she is improving all the time.

• Voice or text input – Chat to Evi in plain English and she will understand
• Local information for UK and USA – Shopping, news, dining and more. Evi knows where you are and gives answers based on your location
• One tap words – Allowing you to build your question super-fast
• Built in browser – No need to swap to a different browser, view web links within Evi’s app
• A learning and adapting intelligence – Rate Evi’s answers to help her learn more about the world
• More than a search engine – Evi takes the searching out of search, able to review and compare nearly a billion facts from her database to give you exactly what you need

Evi is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Epson has recently released an app that lets you project images and files from your iPhone or iPad to a compatible Epson projector. If the projector has network availability, then beaming your photos, PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, PDFs, and more, is just a tap of a button.

Epson iProjection is an intuitive mobile projection app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Epson iProjection makes it easy to wirelessly project images and files stored on your iOS devices using an Epson projector with network availability (see applicable projectors). Move about the room and effortlessly display content from your iOS device (see supported formats) on the big screen.

• Display documents loaded in the Epson iProjection app using your Epson projector
• Display images stored in your iOS “Photo” library
• Use the built-in projector remote control feature to control input sources, AV mute, freeze, audio settings, and more
• Send files from your email or cloud storage apps to iProjection app

Epson iProjection is available on the iPhone and iPad for Free.

• App Store link

Source: Epson

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

AntiCrop is an iPhone and iPad app that will extend the background your photos as a method of “uncropping” them. It’s similar to Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5 and works surprisingly well.

When I came across this app I was immediately negative and didn’t believe it would work very well. Well, I’m impressed how it handled the photo above even though it’s not an ideal candidate for this type of manipulation. This app isn’t intended to be used on photos with complex backgrounds, but even though my photo had some buildings in the background, AntiCrop did a pretty good job! Sure, if you look closely, you can see some weird stuff happening with the buildings, but most people won’t be inspecting the photo and not even notice.

Inside this app lies a highly intellectual content filling tool that adds pixels to the expanded area of your photo. It’s highly recommended for all kinds of backgrounds and homogeneous textures. Great results are achievable when working with nature landscapes, backgrounds and much more. If you want to make some unique creations, AntiCrop can help there, too. All you need is imagination and a willingness to experiment.

• World’s first app with anti-cropping algorithm
• Uncrop photos in any direction
• Lossless straighten technique
• Attractive, easy to use interface
• Optimized for multi-core processors
• Brought to you by the developers of TouchRetouch

AntiCrop is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Kick’n Chick’nz: Medieval Karnival: A hilariously funny new game full of exciting carnival arcade style games, unique gameplay dynamics plus beautiful 3D graphics and animations. The story begins with a wee tyke named “Margie”, aye she’s a tuffy…and a spoiled one at that!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

QR Pal – QR Code Scanner and Barcode Reader: The most advanced QR Code Scanner and Barcode Reader available which enables users to scan, store, share and pay. QR Pal is the only QR Code Scanner that rewards its users for scanning and sharing with monthly cash prizes. QR Pal also includes SafeScan giving you peace of mind that your scanning is always secure. You can even compare prices of products using the in-built Barcode Reader!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Phase – Blinky’s Adventure: Built using the Unreal Development Kit from Epic Games, Phase – Blinky’s Adventure follows the voyage of Blinky, a robot sent to explore an unknown planet in search of a new home.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Icon Craft: Create one-touch shortcut icons on your home screen for actions such as making a call or sending a message.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Baby Game: Cutie Frog/Cat/Crab: A simple app that lets your child pull on a fog, cat, or crab’s eyes and lips.

• Frog, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• Cat, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• Crab, $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps for just about everything — so how come the one you need, the one you know just has to be there, is so hard to find? Enter TiPb’s new weekly feature where staff and readers alike sort through the App Store and help you find just the right App for That. This week, our very own Chris Oldroyd asks:

I need an app to produce passport compliant photographs for a new passport. Any ideas?

To see what we found for Chris, follow along after the break!

ID-Photo – Biometric passport/ID photos [$1.99 - App Store link] is an iPhone and iPad app for creating passport and identification photos. It knows the sizing requirements in 14 countries and will set up your photo to be printed at the legally required size.

When taking your photo, ID-Photo overlays guidelines onto the camera so that you can be certain that your photo will meet the requirement. It also lets you make adjustments to contrast, brightness, sharpening, and grayscale. Additionally, the app has a list of tips for taking your photo and examples of both acceptable and unacceptable photos.

Once your photo is prepared, it is very easy to email or print to an Airplay compatible printer. Just tell ID-Photo the paper size and it’ll take care of the rest!

Anyone else have any App for That suggestions for Chris? Let him — and all of us — know.

Having trouble finding what you need in the app store? Head on over to our App for That Forum and let us know what you’re looking for. The iMore community will do our best to find you just the right App for That!

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

TripAdvisor Hotels Flights Restaurants – @chrisoldroyd

I have just booked our family holiday for the summer and decided to have a nose around the App Store to see if I could find any apps that could recommend places to visit and where to eat. Luckily I stumbled upon an app called TripAdvisor Hotels Flights Restaurants. The app covers all sorts or areas and does cover Pollenca Mallorca where we are heading.

You can look at hotels, restaurants and visitor attractions, read reviews and ratings left by other visitors to the area too. It is very comprehensive, has links to Google Maps for guidance and he ability to leave your own reviews too. The app has been recently updated and is now optimized for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and is completely free. If you are planning vacation, check it out, it gives you some local knowledge right in your pocket.

• Free – App Store link

Idea Sketch – @Alli_Flowers

If you like graphic organizers, you’ll love Idea Sketch. We love stuff like this in education, from K-12, but mind mapping is a concept that can be used in any profession.

If you’re unfamiliar with the basic premise, you are literally mapping ideas. Drop your idea into a shape – round, square, oblong, diamond, and link it to other ideas. Expand your thoughts until you have filled in all those loose threads.

Idea Sketch allows you unlimited canvas space, so your ideas can’t be constrained. You can pinch and zoom to see whatever you want, and you can change the colors to suit your whim. You can view in a list format as well as the “idea” format, and you can share it all via email or via Box.

This is a must for students and educators, and a great idea for anyone just trying to organize his thoughts.

• Free – App Store link

Sonic 4 Episode 1 – @jorjLim

Ever since I was younger, I have been a huge fan of the Sonic franchise. I owned the 3 main games, Sonic 1, 2 and 3, on original megadrive cartridge (remember them?). When I learnt that Sonic 4 Episode 1 would be coming to iOS, I got really excited. I got so excited that I bought the game for its full £6.99 price at midnight the day it came out.

The one thing I could never achieve on the older games, was collecting all the Chaos Emeralds. Collecting all 7, would unlock Super Sonic, a invincible, faster, yellow version of Sonic.

So when I downloaded Sonic 4 Episode 1, my one goal was to unlock Super Sonic, for the first time, ever. After months of struggling, having to re-do each level to play the special stages over and over again. I finally collected the last Chaos Emeralds.

My 8 year old self would have been so proud of this moment, finally being able to play as Super Sonic that I unlocked myself, and to achieve this on a updated version of the game, made it ever better. I got to have the thrill of nostalgia, side by side with awesome modern 2.5D graphics, on my phone!

If you are a fan of the Sonic franchise, you should check out Sonic 4 Episode 1. Its packed full of homages, references and levels from the original games and really does bring back the franchise with a modern look.

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Jelly Defense – @skeetobite

My pick of the week is a new tower defense game called Jelly Defense. This is a fun, light hearted casual game to play. This game takes the traditional tower defense game and doesn’t change the formula too much. It does add a bit of an ongoing story, includes towers that are only effective against enemies of the same color (so blue towers can’t shoot against red enemies), and includes various aspects like needing to “learn” how to make new types of towers. Where it shines, however, is with the mix of background sounds/soundtrack, and the really nice, clean graphics. The stark color contrast (red and blue jelly towers and enemies, a grey background) really give the game some character, which is needed to stand out from all the other tower defense games out there. Best of all, this is a universal binary, so you can play it on any device you have!

• $2.99 – App Store link

Birdhouse – @sethclifford

I sometimes like to revisit apps that I haven’t used in a while by browsing my purchased apps on my iPhone. One that I recently rediscovered is Birdhouse. Now the thing about Birdhouse is that it hasn’t been updated in a long time. Like since the summer of 2010. But it runs fine on iOS 5 and does exactly what it’s supposed to. Which is to act as a notepad for your tweets. You can log in with multiple accounts, save drafts of your potential tweets, publish directly from the app, and back everything up via email. It’s not a Twitter client per se, as there’s no timeline to view, but it’s more of a partner to your favorite Twitter app. And yeah, lots of apps save drafts now, but the nice thing about Birdhouse is that sometimes you have an idea you want to capture quickly and don’t feel like opening up your main app and loading it, and then getting sidetracked and eating up time. It’s a single purpose app for a simpler time.

• $1.99 – App Store link

Delivery Status – @Bla1ze

Keeping track of packages for me is a big issue, not because I get a lot of them but because I live an apartment. For some reason, if I’m not watching my package delivery dates — I tend to miss a lot of packages that are scheduled to be delivered. To help keep my eye on things and ensure I get my deliveries I make use of Delivery Status Touch by JuneCloud. It supports a wide array of services such as Amazon, USPS, UPS and more importantly for me — Canada Post plus it includes Google Map integration. JuneCloud also offers a desktop solution for tracking so your iOS device is always in sync with your desktop and the cloud.

• $4.99 – App Store link

Kinotopic – @phishgirl3

I’m always looking for new ways to make pictures and videos into something more than they are, and this week stumbled on an app called Kinotopic. This simple to use app turns 3-4 second videos into a kino, or cinemagraph. If you haven’t heard of cinemagraph, it’s a photo with a small repeated movement usually confined to one detail in the image.

All you need to do to make your own kino is shoot a quick video or pick one from your library, choose your anchor frame, then highlight the portion of the image you want to show movement. The app processes it and sends your created kino to you via email. You can share on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr as well as publish your finished creation to the public stream or mark it as private. All in all it’s a fun app to use, and in my opinion worth the $1.99 price tag.

• $1.99 – App Store link

Big Lens – @reneritchie

Sometimes you just need to fake it to get it done. For all the multiple layers of glass, remarkable aperture, and overall image quality of the otherwise I-can’t-believe-it’s-a-phone camera on the iPhone 4S, it just can’t give you the depth of field — or bokeh if you’re fancy — of a fast 50 on a DSLR. Enter Big Lens, which attempts to do in post what Apple can’t — yet — do in camera. Like most post-process depth of field utilities, it’s a trick and there’s no getting around it. Just look for the tell-tale halo around the non-blurred portions — for example, around a webOS editor and his brief flirtation with a BlackBerry Playbook on a big-ass gold chain at CES 2012. But with automatic and manual modes, aperture, filter, lens, focus, and blur controls, Big Lens fakes it well. If you’re ever in one of those awkward moments where you just have to fake it to get it done, give Big Lens a go. It might just get you to good enough.

• $0.99 – App Store link

iBooks Author – @llofte

iBooks Author is the iBooks creation tool that was announced at Apple’s education event. I’ve done a little playing around with it and am really excited to start seriously using it. I’d be impressed if a simple book was easy to create, but so are books filled with animations and interactive material. I’m a college math instructor and hope to use iBooks Author to write short, supplementary books to offer to my students for free.

• Free – Mac App Store link

The Recipe Box – Jackie Wyan (Reader’s Choice Winner)

The Recipe Box is one of my favorite “hidden gem” finds. I had been looking for an app that I could easily transfer all of my old, greasy, hand-written index card recipes to, that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg, require me to ‘create an account’ online, or force me to show my admiration for an unknown cook and their favorite recipes. The Recipe Box is it. And they have a great app developer, as the thing just keeps on getting better and better. You can easil search through all your entries by all sorts of means – a search field, a ‘type’ field, an ingredient field, etc. Plus, with the use of Dropbox, I quickly copy and pasted all of my Text file recipes over to the app.

It does come with a couple of recipes to begin with, but not so many that cleaning them out is a task, and a few worth keeping to try out. Plus, as you cook your own recipes, you can easily add photos of the results to the app, resulting in a fully customized experience!

I could continue to gush on about this app, but it is definitely worth your time and the small expense. And if you have other kitchen-savvy friends, the app gives you an easy way to share with them as well!

• $3.99 – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 13 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Slacker Radio is one of the most popular internet radio services available in the US and Canada. It is available for free, but has limitations such as ads and a limited number song skips. Users can subscribe to Slacker Plus Radio or Slacker Premium Radio and receive the following additional features (bolded features are exclusive to Slacker Premium):

• No ads
• Unlimited song skips
• Mobile station caching
• ABC news
• ESPN radio
• Complete song lyrics
• Play songs on demand
• Play albums on demand
• Play single artist stations
• Cache albums and playlists
• Create playlists

Giveaway

The good folks at Slacker, Inc have have given us some subscription codes for Slacker Premium to give away! We’ve got three 1-year subscriptions and two 3-month subscriptions. For a chance to win, just let us know your favorite song in the comments below!

Slacker Radio is available on the iPhone and iPad for free. Slacker Plus is available for $3.99/month and Slacker Premium is $9.99/month.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

VicMan Visage Lab: A professional beauty laboratory for your facial photos. Remove pimples and wrinkles, outline the eyes and whiten the teeth in seconds, with all operations made automatically!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Super Grouper for Contacts App Groups and List Management: Create groups of Contacts and send group SMS, emails or photos in a couple taps.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Charadium II: A fast & furious draw-and-guess multiplayer game that guarantees you’ll be drawn in. Your goal is to draw a given word, and other players have to guess that word.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $2.99 for iPad – App Store link

DoReMi 1-2-3: Fun, musical ear training games challenge your children’s minds as they laugh, create, and play with moo-sical cows, boat-rowing pandas, and twinkling stars! Music lessons have never been this fun—brain-building never this effortless!

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Last Night…?: Ever woke up from a long night out without remembering what happened, or went to the coolest burger place and can’t remember where it was? Or just want to be able to monitor your daily movements if you’re a jogger or if you’re learning to drive? Then this app is made for you!

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Doozy: Doozy is to task management what a chalkboard or whiteboard is to brainstorming. By transforming tasks and events into interactive icons, Doozy literally shows you what you need to do. Big update includes Dropbox support.

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link

HUDY Pro: Revolutionize your driving experience! Harness your device’s technology to transform your windshield into a cutting-edge head’s up display. This streamlined utility puts your device’s LED backlit screen and GPS capability to use brilliantly, displaying your speed and direction of travel conveniently on your vehicle’s windshield.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Time of Heros: A game with great graphics, roleplaying elements, a groundbreaking combat system and easy accessibility. Players will find themselves immersed for hours in the fantasy world of “Altland“.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

HipGeo: Lets you record what you do where ever you go – a travel blog – and share that with anyone you want.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Puggy the Monster – the Fun Bite: Come test your reacting skills with Puggy the Monster ! Puggy, a little naughty monster with magic power, loves to bite everything put in its mouth. Stick your finger in Puggy’s wide-opened mouth and pull it off before he bites it hard.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

One of the big announcements at Apple’s Education event was iTunes U for the iPhone and iPad. I’ve done some poking around the iPad version and have been very impressed.

The Catalogue is laid out exactly like the App Store and iBookstore, so everyone is already familiar with how to browse it and subscribe to courses. The iTunes U library is where you’ll find all the courses you are subscribed to and it looks similar to the bookshelf in iBooks.

Inside a course, you’ll find all the info an instructor chooses to share about the class, including catalogue information and the course outline, structure, and syllabus. Instructors can also make posts to the course with more information about lectures as well as documents and videos. Additionally, students can take notes in a designated area of the course page and quickly access all course materials.

As a college instructor, I look forward to using iTunes U as a way to supplement content and materials for my classes.

“With LiveScore for iPhone you will know about every goal, yellow card, red card, substitution, you name it, seconds after they happen.”

LiveScore is a fantastic, free app for iPhone or iPod touch that provides real time scores from many sporting events around the world including tennis, hockey, and cricket; with a particular emphasis on soccer scores (or, more properly, football scores to those of us outside the U.S.). If you’re deeply invested in a certain league or a specific game but can’t be there to watch it unfold, LiveScore is the best way to follow along, right on your iPhone, from where ever you may be.

Real-time scores are delivered swiftly and reliably

The LiveScore app for iPhone (and iPad, it’s universal) comes directly from LiveScore Ltd., the inventors of real-time sports data delivery, and owners of the no.1 ranked football / soccer web site globally. That means they know what they’re doing, and you can trust them to do it well.

Scores for all the day's games are also readily available

There are no push notifications, which is a shame. LiveScore does auto-refresh when open, however, and it’s fast. Very fast. You get the scores you want, as they happen, with nothing to get in your way or unnecessarily complicate the experience.

Automatic refresh, and the interval for the refresh, can be easily configured in settings.

There are country restrictions and, as I mentioned at the beginning, LiveScore is free and the developer says it will stay that way. (Although they do promise additional features in the future will be available via in-app purchase.

Simply choose the league you wish to follow and get ready to receive your scores!

The good

• Every soccer (football) match in the UK league is covered along with most other countries.
• Also includes scores for other sports if you follow more than soccer.

The bad

• No push notifications.

The conclusion

With LiveScore you will know about goals, yellow cards, red cards, substitutions, you name it, seconds after they happen.

Free – Download

The popular arcade fighting game, SOULCALIBUR, has just hit the App Store! It is a universal app for iPhone and iPad and includes all 19 characters with all the original moves recreated as well as six games modes: arcade battle, time attack, survival, extra survival, museum, and practice.

• $11.99 – App Store link

“SOULCALIBUR” series is available on theiOS. Enjoythe memorable characters and non-stop action SOULCALIBUR is famed for with complete arcade fidelity in the comfort of your own home!

Relive the eternal tale of swords and souls transcending time and space.

• 19 characters in total!
• All character moves faithfully recreated!

Game Modes

• ARCADE BATTLE – The original battle mode from the arcade version of “Soul Calibur.” Defeat all enemies to make it to the end of the game.
• TIME ATTACK – How fast can you beat the game?
• SURVIVAL – With only a limited amount of life, how many opponents can you defeat?
• EXTRA SURVIVAL – How many opponents can you can defeat with single-hit kills?
• MUSEUM – Enjoy viewing a variety of artwork.
• PRACTICE – Learn the game’s basic system and techniques.

Giveaway

The folks here at iMore are just as excited about SOULCALIBUR as you, so in celebration of its release, we’re gifting the game to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below! (Must have US iTunes account to win. Apple’s rule, not ours!)

SOULCALIBUR is available on the iPhone and iPad and is launching on sale for $11.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The popular Reddit client, Alien Blue, has been updated with new features and improvements including Secure SSL authentication, revised posts and comments screens, and an updated launch image.

Alien Blue is a feature packed client for browsing Reddit. It has been developed from the ground-up for an intuitive touch-screen experience.

Features:

• Retina Thumbnails (currently Pro + Retina Device required)
• Comment Link previews (currently Pro + Retina Device required)
• Secure SSL authentication to Reddit
• Revised Posts screen design
• Revised Comments screen design
• Revised Pull to Refresh

Improvements:

• Updated launch image
• Ability to jump to subreddit directly from a post
• Ability to jump to submitter’s details directly from a post
• Tapping anywhere on an inbox message now marks it as read
• Graceful degradation of graphics for older devices
• Auto-link shortening when sharing with Twitter
• Voting status now reflects in the colour of the score
• Minor visual improvements to Inbox screen
• Threaded message support for Moderator inbox
• Prioritised Oranged indicator over Mod-mail indicator

Alien Blue – Reddit Client is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Weightless: Helps you reach your desired weight by providing the simplest possible solution to track your daily weight and view your progress.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Genius Scan – PDF Scanner: Turns your iPhone into a pocket scanner. It enables you to quickly scan documents on the go and email the scans as JPEG or PDF.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Facebook Cover Designer: Give your Facebook Timeline cover the unique and professional design it deserves.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Roads of Rome: Follow the romantic love story, take up challenging tasks set by the wise and cunning Caesar, explore barbarian lands, win recognition and achieve success in Roads of Rome, the fascinating blend of casual strategy, SIM and time management features!

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Draw War: Save Your Booty: Them filthy and dirty Vikings are trying to rob Captain Goodthrow’s booty, and it is your job to prevent those nasty sons of Odin from succeeding! You must fight the Vikings at all cost, and by using your trusty battle axe, kill them all by using your finger to draw a path on the screen to release the axe to bring’ em’ down!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

College T.A is an app to help college students balance classes, clubs, work, and social life. Manage your coursework, events, to-do lists, professors’ info, and more and keep your calendars synced in College T.A and your iPhone’s built-in Calendar app. The recent update also brings a new UI and other optimizations.

For many college students, the Spring semester is right around the corner (or has just begun), so now is a perfect time to picks up College T.A before you’re helplessly disorganized!

The life of a college student can be a confusing whirlwind that involves balancing your academic and social lives. However, College TA, the next generation of college planners is here. College TA assists users with managing their personal, social, and academic lifestyles, all on a beautiful and simplistic design.

College T.A is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Updraft Jack: Get ready to run, jump and GLIDE through the jungle with Updraft Jack! You are a sugar glider fleeing from an owl in hot pursuit in this action-packed dash game.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

SoundHound: Unlimited music recognition! Featuring the world’s fastest, most accurate music identification, exclusive singing search, and now: free unlimited LiveLyrics* for over 1 million of your iTunes tracks in SoundHound Player.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

PayBook: Allows you to easily track your worked hours, & see how much you’ve earned. You can choose to add multiple workplaces, & even use preset shifts

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

CheckIn+ HD: An all-in-one check-in app and local deal locator with augmented reality for iPad, supports Foursquare and Facebook Places. Discover the world around you and share your highlights at local bars, parks, venues, and more.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

The Little Plane – First Journey: Guide the little plane and avoid crashing into buildings. Also be wary of the mean birds – they are out to get you.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Numberlys is an interactive story about the origins of the alphabet from Moonbot Studios. In a world where everything and everyoone are named after numbers, five friends embark on a mission to create something different – the alphabet.

I just finished watching, reading, and interacting with Numberlys and it’s a fantastic little story! The graphics are great and the narrator is just as awesome. Moonbot Studios did a great job of making this a hybrid between a book, movie, and game. It’s no question that any child would enjoy Numberlys, but most adults will too!

Numberlys presents a fanciful depiction of the origins of the alphabet and is the newest interactive epic from Moonbot Studios, the creators of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Numberlys is a story App celebration of the early fantasy epics King Kong, Metropolis and Flash Gordon with a dollop of the Marx Brothers, a splash of the Fleischer Studios technicolor Superman and a little bit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Numberlys is huge in scope. It’s an adventure! A mystery! A game! And a story!

Numberlys is available on the iPhone and iPad for $5.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

ITGO CALORIE: The world’s first iOS Interval Trainer to feature dual music playlists and calorie information based on your exercise, in addition to the standard ITGO features of visual, beep, vibration interval change alerts and automatic fast and slow iPod music playlists switching.

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Calculator Pro.: Combines the original and scientific calculator with a large collection of beautiful themes you can choose from.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Risk: Pursue world domination with the original game of strategic conquest. Now 60% off!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

MAGapp Pro: An interactive e-magazine reader that incorporates video, social media and exciting web features into its varied publications. Don’t just read content, experience it!

• Free for iPad – App Store link

The Moon’s Lullaby: Experience the story of how fairies protect us from bad dreams. Blow into the microphone to illuminate the night’s sky and learn how the bright sun is always there to protect us, even in the middle of the night. The story ends with a beautiful lullaby and will help your child sleep safe and sound.

• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Airplay – @iMuggle

I never found TOO much of a need for AirPlay at home (unless I was bored and wanted to play Angry Birds on a 50″ TV). I’ve recently started doing iOS and other various types of workshops for PXLFIX and AirPlay has been great. Instead of just showing people slides (which we all know is beat your head into a desk boring) they can actually see “how” to do things. I have an AppleTV set up and I just mirror whatever I want to explain right to the TV from my iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. The best part is that they can follow along on their own devices.

I’ve gotten great feedback by doing this and plan on continuing to teach workshops this way as I find it a much more interactive way to teach. Before AirPlay, teaching certain topics took a lot of extra prep work if it was possible at all.

AppShopper – @sethclifford

I think I can safely say that one of the most excellent things about iOS as a platform is the enormous availability of interesting software to try. I’m a self-avowed app nut, always trying a million things, studying different interface choices and observing design decisions, but keeping the best of the best on my phone. The AppShopper app is a great way to stay apprised of both new releases and sales on apps every day in the App Store.

Using data from the excellent AppShopper site, the app is a universal binary that has a nice clean interface and some cool ways to customize it for a more personal experience. The app is free, and for a buck you can remove ads. I’d recommend it heartily, both because it cleans up the screen and gives you a little more room to browse, and also because Arn is a great guy and you should totally support his efforts. In addition to that, a while back the site released a tool with which you can upload your app list from your computer directly to AppShopper, and then the site will keep track of updates to your own apps without you having to open up the App Store app a million times a day to check yourself. This is also really helpful if you have a notable update to an app that’s not on your phone right now, so you can possibly give it another look and see what’s changed.

Granted, you’ll have to occasionally update the list on the site by re-running the app and re-uploading the app list to keep it current (as there’s no way for the app to track your purchases in iTunes otherwise), but the whole process takes about 30 seconds in total, so it’s not exactly a hardship. You can set up push notifications to alert you to sales or changes, create a wish list, and manage everything from a standard browser at home, syncing everything down to the app. If you’re into apps as much as I think you might be, it’s a nice addition to your devices that can snag you some great deals and keep you up on what’s going on in the App Store.

• Free – App Store link

Meme Design – @Bla1ze

Yup! I’m a sucker for meme apps but that’s ok because they allow me to create such glorious images like the the one above of our fearless leader of Mobile Nations, Kevin Michaluk. For them, I use Meme Design. It’s available free in the iTunes App Store and just in case you’re not into making your own meme’s directly, it also offers all your favorite ones as templates as well. Now you too, can share your memes across email, facebook and Twitter.

Uhh.. no one tell Kevin I posted this here.

• Free – App Store link

Foursquare — @reneritchie

I use location check-in apps for one thing and one thing only — keeping a record of trips I’ve made. I don’t care for the idea of people in general knowing where I am because privacy really does matter and anyone I want to meet knows where I’ll be or knows how to find out. On a trip, however, whether it’s a trade show like CES or conference like WWDC, I’m visiting a lot of places and need a quick and easy way to record them in case I’m ever there again and want to go back, or just want to quickly remember where I visited while I was away.

I used to use Gowalla for this, preferring their general look and take on the genre, but since Facebook will most likely suck their data dry and then dump them in a swamp, I’ve switched to Foursquare and it did the job well.

It’s more utility for me than location-based check in gaming, and while that might make it less exciting it makes it far more useful.

• Free – App Store link

FastCustomer — @andrewwray

Need to call customer service for something, but don’t want to be put on hold for 10 minutes before actually speaking with a live person? I’ve been in that situation many of times, but not anymore. With FastCustomer, you can skip the wait and have the app call you when its reached a live representative.

They have over 2,000 companies in their database, it hasn’t failed me yet when I’ve needed to call up customer service for whatever reason. Most customer service IVRs are long, annoying and not very fun. Never wait on hold or go through a lengthy customer service tree again — just have FastCustomer give you a call once it has a live rep waiting for you!

• Free – App Store Link

Mugtuk Monsters – @llofte

By itself, this app of cute little interactive monster faces is just too adorable and make my daughter smile from ear to ear when they respond to her touch. But while at CES 2012, I had the chance to meet with Mugtuk and pick up one of their accessory cases that turn these monsters into actual stuffed animals! It’s seriously one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen and I love how excited my daughter gets at every opportunity to play with it.

• Free – App Store link

Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal – Kristy_Lyn (Reader’s Choice winner)

My pick of the week is MyFitnessPal. As a new years resolution to myself I decided to get healthy. A friend recommended myfitnesspal.com, and so I searched the app store and – badda bing badda boom!

This app has all the essentials for starting out your new work out regime. I entered in my age, sex, height, weight, activity level, and goal of weight loss and it gave me a net calorie target range. Then you can add in your workouts and activity and easily customize the duration and calories burned.

For food intake, you can manually search food items that seem to be organized by users inputting their own food items which as resulted in a large data base. Upon further testing, I found the bar code scanner which makes adding eaten food as easy as a scan of a bar code.

The app graphs your workouts and food intake and shows you how much work you need to do to reach your goals. The best part is that it shows you on your daily totals exactly how much of everything you have consumed, for example, your daily total of calories, carbs, proteins, fats, sodium vitamins and so on. It shows you what you have over consumed or what you have left to consume.

Overall – a great app for my New Year’s resolution!

• Free – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 20 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

Sketch Up is a fun little game where you must guide and combine shapes to match up similar shapes in the designated areas. The complexity of a shape is determined by its number of sides and you must combine shapes in specific ways to change its level of complexity. The goal is to put the correct number of specific shapes in the designated areas.

I’ve been playing Sketch Up periodically throughout the day and have been having a lot of fun. Only a few levels were used to teach you about the game before adding more complexity and difficulty to the levels. The goal is easy to understand, but executing a plan can be quite challenging.

Sharpen those pencils and grab a piece of paper, it’s time for a drawing duel! It’s a battle to be center stage on the page, and these shapes just need a skilled artist’s hand. Match different shapes together to complete each equation, but make sure you have the right formula. Simple shape-shading can be difficult! So dust off that protractor and grab your sketch pad! If you can use these flying shapes to your advantage, you can be master of the geometric world!

• Use your Preview Hub to see what shapes will be created
• Watch out for sticky puddles that stop shapes in their tracks!
• Smash shapes together to make new ones
• Use Shape Changers and Stops to help you create the perfect sketch!

Sketch Up is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Document Manager: An all-in-one document management solution for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You can download documents from anywhere, store all your documents at one place and share or print documents easily and hassle-free.

• $2.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Boy Loves Girl: Unhappy with the myth that a woman is never happy, Boy embarks on an epic adventure across vast lands in search for the ultimate gift to express his love for the girl his heart desires.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iQuick Tweet Free: A free (trial) version of the popular iQuick Tweeet!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Crazy Survival: So imagine that the world has gone mad and crazy balls are falling from heaven. What should a poor Man caught in this insane weather do? Of course run and scream!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

ComiXcape: This is the story of a little boy who loves comics and has no rivals in sling shooting. He is so keen on comics that every minute, when he is not getting into mischief, he drinks in each story of drawings. He is punished for being mischievous once, gets obsessed with a comics and turns into its character.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

When Chevy finally launched the Volt plug-in hybrid electric car, they also kicked out an app with in-car communications and monitoring subsidiary OnStar to integrate owners’ mobile phones with the vehicle. Similar to the MyFord Mobile app that Ford put out to integrate with their own Focus Electric, OnStar RemoteLink being shown off at CES 2012 hooks into the OnStar system onboard the vehicle, allowing the owner to remotely monitor the fuel levels, and in the case of the Volt, also check in on how the battery is charging, plus set off-peak charging schedule. RemoteLink also can plan routing on the phone and send it remotely to the car, saving you time the time of generally tedious address inputting when in the car.

The OnStar App is available for iPhone and Android phones and is compatible with most 2010-and-newer GM vehicles with OnStar.

• Free – App Store link

New Year Diet Month is an iPhone app that inspires and motivates you to meet your weight loss goals of 2012. Each day has a new idea, tip, insight, or direction to help you on your quest to become thinner and healthier.

This year KEEP your new year’s resolution to lose weight with the help of New Year Diet Month – a month of advice and motivation to help you on your quest for a slimmer, healthier body.

New Year Diet Month starts from when you first use the app – not from Jan 1st! – so it’s not too late to start your New Year Diet Month today! You can also unlock all days early if you’re feeling really eager – though to get the benefit of small continuous changes leading to large improvement (which is what New Year Diet Month is designed to do), try to resist that temptation and really get the best from each day!

New Year Diet Month is a collection of ideas to inspire you, insights into where you’ve gone wrong in the past, and directions to take. It presents one clear point every day to get you thinking, which, over the course of the month, will all come together to help make a new you.

Giveaway

The good folks at Breaking Art have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, let us know how much weight you hope to lose is 2012 in the comments below!

New Year Diet Month is available on the iPhone and on sale for $3.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Frequencies is an iPhone app that let’s you look up and store the frequencies to your favorite radio stations.

There have been plenty of times where I left the dome light in my car turned-on overnight and killed the battery. The most annoying part of this wasn’t jump or push-starting my car, rather it was finding all my favorite radio stations to save in my stereo. I wish I had this app. Next time, I’ll be prepared!

Frequencies is a simple app to find out your favourite radio station’s frequency where-ever you are. Frequencies saves you having to search for your station and lets you get back to listening.

Frequencies employs a simplistic interface so you’re never more than a tap away from finding the station you need.

• Quick and easy listing of all available stations
• Locally stored database
• Image preview of available stations
• Fast searching – don’t spend ages finding the station you’re looking for!


Giveaway

The good folks at Yoshimi Robotics have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers. For a chance to win, let us know where your from and the frequency of your favorite radio station in the comments below!

Frequencies is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The highly reputable medical source WebMD Health Corp. has released an iPhone app for parents of infants and toddlers called WebMD Baby. It includes health and wellness information, tracks your baby’s routine and records, and also includes a baby book feature.

Check out the promo video below!

The new WebMD Baby app has quick access to trusted and physician-approved baby health and wellness information anytime, anywhere. Personalized for a baby’s specific age, the WebMD Baby app delivers timely physician-approved guidance, helping parents stay informed and one step ahead of their baby’s growth and development.

• Personalized and pediatrician-approved health and wellness information for baby and toddler to keep new parents one step ahead of their baby’s growth and development, anywhere and anytime and enables more informed pediatrician visits. For babies 0-1, a new health and wellness tip is sent to the app every day, as well as more in-depth content every week. For babies and toddlers ages 1-2, information relevant to their age is sent to the app monthly. WebMD’s tips and information on the app can be easily shared through email, Facebook or Twitter.
• Streamlined search capabilities that help parents find immediate, trusted answers to their baby health and wellness questions with physician-reviewed answers. Information is organized by easy-to -understand topics (feeding and nutrition, growth and development, vaccines) and by the baby’s age, simplifying a parent’s search for trusted answers to immediate baby health and wellness questions.
• Baby routine and record keeper that gives parents and caregivers a snapshot of baby’s health and wellness by allowing them to easily record and share baby’s routine (feeds, diaper changes, sleep). A personal growth chart for baby/toddler is also integrated into the app allowing information to be easily added right from the pediatrician’s office.
• Baby book feature that allows parents to capture baby’s memorable moments including baby’s “firsts” with videos or photos taken on the spot or pulled from their iPhone library. Baby book memories can be shared with family and friends through email or Facebook as they happen.

WebMD Baby is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Snowboard Hero: An unrivalled snowboard experience with wicked tricks, insane air time and super fast downhill speed to your iPhone and iPad. Experience console-quality graphics, intuitive controls and top-notch sound in a stunning alpine setting and show the world that you are the undisputed Snowboard Hero.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Calendars – Google Calendar client: Lets you manage events both online and offline. Thanks to the unique interface you can move events simply with Drag & Drop, navigate quickly between dates, change event time, repeat schedule and reminders rapidly with custom keyboards.

• $6.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iBookcreator: Innovative application to make books with iPhone/iPad! Produce various kinds of books, such as photo books, art books, fairy tales, cook books, PR books or manuals on your own.


• $3.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Star Marine: Infinite Ammo: The definitive Run n’ Gun experience! You play as Arc, a battle hardened drifter who is captured by an alien race in the depths of space. Arc’s capturers plan to enslave him and put his strength to work. But, Arc has other plans. He is a trained and elite Star Marine and in a fury of bullets he is going to take them all down!

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Cash Logistics: Cash Logistics is a currency calculator for estimating the physical dimensions of a given dollar amount if that amount was paid out in legal tender. It reports the number of bills required, the optimal strap division, the total weight, and the estimated space it will require. All you need to supply is a dollar amount and the specific denomination to use. It can also perform the reverse calculation if the only information known is the weight of a currency bundle, or the total number of straps.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Ford’s Sync system has been leading the way as far as in-car mobile technology is concerned. With the upcoming launch of the Focus Electric, Ford is leaping into the mobile space with a new app that allows owners to manage their vehicle remotely. While it won’t let you drive (sorry James Bond wannabes), the MyFord Mobile app they’re showing off at CES 2012 enables Focus Electric owners to manage how and when their cars charge at home, allowing you to set it so the car charges at night off peak hours with lower electric rates or override it to get your car charged up for an impending trip. MyFord Mobile users will also be able to find charging stations out and about and even plan trips around those charging stations (useful, given the 100 mile range of the all-electric vehicle).

The app, which will be available for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones is launching with the Focus Electric, which itself is ramping up production right now.

Mugtuck Monsters is an adorable iPhone app filled with 3 adorable little monsters that your children can interact with by touching their face and tickling them, poking them, and even rocking them to sleep. The app is cute in itself, but Mugtuck also offers a cuddly little iPhone case turning the monster into a stuffed animal.

We got our hands on them at CES 2012.

There was a time when Mugtuks were common. Alert children spotted them in hollow logs or beneath rocks. But their kind soon became scarce. Sightings decreased. Interaction dwindled. But no longer. Today there are so many we can’t manage them all! That’s why we’re presenting these monsters—Maggie, Bubba, Tim, and Charlie Belle—to you for adoption.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

PolygonFlux: PolygonFlux lets you experience the flow of energy inside a polygon. In simplest terms, it traces the path of a point bouncing around inside a polygon of your choice, generating a pretty pattern.

• $0.99 for iPad – App Store link

The Tooth That’s on the Loose!: Set in the Old West, “The Tooth that’s on the Loose!” tells the story of the character T.B.Wiggly, who is a slippery, shifty little varmint. The legend is told in narrative fashion by an old coot named Sheriff Tex. It is a tall tale…just tall in a small way! So pull up your bootstraps, saddle up, and mosey on over partner and enjoy!

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

No More Diets: Dr. Jenn Berman’s Guide to Overcoming Overeating and Losing Weight: Let psychotherapist, author, television and radio host Dr. Jenn Berman guide you through the No More Diets program so you can develop a healthy relationship with food and lose weight once and for all.

• $3.99 for and iPad – App Store link

Ripple HD: Who would have thought that swiping your finger through digital water could be so therapeutic?? Perfect for anyone wanting to relax, unwind or think more clearly.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Countdown: Tells you exactly how many days are remaining for that big day!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Dailymotion Video Stream is an iPhone and iPad app that provides a new, immersive experience to discovering videos. It features your own personal dashboard where you can access your favorite HD videos and follow users, playlists, and channels.

We got the full demo live at CES

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Discover a new way to experience millions of videos in an immersive interface. Follow your favorite users, playlists, channels by adding them to your own personalized dashboard.

Watch millions of videos in HD Personalize your video dashboard Enjoy an immersive video experience Follow users, playlists and channels Share videos on Facebook and Twitter Use AirPlay to watch videos on your TV

Dailymotion Video Stream is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

They’re also currently in the midst of an iPhone film festival, so head on over to the link below and vote for your favorite!

Source: Daily Motion Film Festival

Adobe Carousel uses their powerful Camera Raw engine, the same one found in desktop apps like Lightroom, to handle non-destructive editing on iPhone and iPad. Moreover, you can keep in sync with the companion app on your Mac so any changes in one are instantly replicated in the other, and you can easily share with friends, family, or co-workers.

We got the full demo live at CES

Free – App Store link

• Don’t sweat storage limits or suffer syncing—just enjoy the freedom to browse your entire photo library or show off any shot on any device you have handy. Simply add photos to your Adobe Carousel photo library on your iPad, iPhone, or Mac, and you’ll instantly have access to them in Adobe Carousel on your other iPad, iPhone, and Mac devices.
• Easily crop, rotate, adjust exposure, and make other corrections, or lend your photos serious style with unique Looks. Experiment with wild abandon knowing Adobe Carousel always preserves your original photo.
• Create a family photo library without the hassle of sending emails, handing off drives, and trying to figure out which photos to touch up or use in special projects.
• Use familiar multitouch gestures to easily explore tens of thousands of photos or quickly find and fill the screen with one great shot.
• Simplify your life. A subscription lets you use Adobe Carousel on all iPad, iPhone, and Mac, and you can accomplish the same tasks in virtually the same ways on every iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
• Share those moments that matter by sending your photos straight from Adobe Carousel to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
• Snap new photos right from Adobe Carousel on your iPhone or iPad, and they’ll instantly appear in your photo library on all your devices. No manual importing required!
• Import, edit, and share all your JPEGs

Adobe Carousel is available on the iPhone and iPad for free. A complimentary 30 day subscription is included.

Vodio: Take video consumption on the go to the next level, by creating your very own personalized video streams from dozens of content services. Free up your time by watching the most talked about videos, instead of searching through hours of videos you might like.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

King Camera: Now with Instagram support!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Cat-a-minute!: Cats, cats, and more cats! Seriously, if you love cats, this app is for you.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Siegebreaker: The Brookelands are under siege! A mysterious evil has arrived, turning all the happy knights and peasants into vile monsters! Only the kings remain, but the undead armies are marching – who can save the kings?

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Puzzles ‘N Coloring – Sea Life: Jump into the water and explore the world of Puzzles N’ Coloring – Sea Life . A smiling crab, a wandering fish, a jumping dolphin and more await your child in this puzzle that doubles as a coloring book.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Trufflehead is a healthy cooking and recipe app for the iPhone and iPad. It features over 260 recipes including vegetarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, low-cal, and low-fat dishes as well as hyperlinks to find more information about ingredients.

Trufflehead is a cooking app that works for you. Whether you’re a good cook already or about to become one, you decide when and how much input you need to prepare healthy food that looks and tastes great. It’s all at your fingertips—from ingredient IDs and reference guides, to smart shopping lists, and how-to demos packed into 260+ recipes. But Trufflehead is more than just an app! Beyond all of its premium features, www.trufflehead.com is your ticket to share this unique adventure in food.

• Over 260 full-flavored recipes – 160 vegetarian, 150 dairy-free, 110 gluten-free, and more than 200 low-cal and low-fat dishes; over half the recipes can be prepared in 30 minutes or less, and 95% are budget-friendly. All carry nutrition data.
• Recipe-embedded hyperlinks to comprehensive info on over 200 ingredients and more than 150 equipment photo IDs. 

• 170 step-specific multi-media demos accessible directly from recipes.
• “Smart” shopping lists that integrate ingredients from multiple recipes and group identical items together for easy shopping.
• Priority Organics labeling of ingredients that are best purchased in organic form.
• Doppelgänger recipes in “Simple” and “Not-so-Simple” versions so that new cooks can start slow and grow as they master techniques and become familiar with ingredients.
• Interactive usability allows you to upload photos of your Trufflehead creations to trufflehead.com, the online community for celebrating and sharing your experiences with the Trufflehead Universe.

Trufflehead is available on the iPhone and iPad for $3.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Rather than banning iPhones from the car, the way the National Transportation Safety Board recommended, iOnRoad by Picitup aims to use mobile technology to keep you safe and sound behind the wheel. It uses the live camera stream and image detection to monitor for tailgating, cars slowing ahead of you, or lane drift, and sends visual and audio alerts to get you back to the proper distance, speed, and lane where you belong.

With a big, easy-to-tap interface iOnRoad has a bevy of features to help you with everything from your daily commute to occasional road trip. Check out the video above for our live interview from CES 2012 with Pictitup CEO, Alon Atsmon.

Already available for Android, iOnRoad is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Source: iOnRoad.com

System Monitor with Battery Max is an iPhone app that aims to speed up your iPhone on free memory, CPU and battery life. It’s your one-stop health check for your iPhone.

The System Monitor with Battery Max, is the most comprehensive all in one health check app on the App store that frees memory, boosts battery performance, and monitors your system memory, CPU utilization and disk utilization.

• Double Tap Memory speedometer view to rotate to a 3D bar chart view.
• Double tap battery or open it to see the battery capacity for your favorite apps.
• Double tap the CPU speedometer view, to view a 3D CPU utilization.
• Shows the used and free space.
• Shows the IP address acquired, and hardware address of your device.

Giveaway

The good folks at Tekton Technologies have given us promo codes to give away to 10 lucky readers! For a chance to win, let us know how many times a day you need to charge your iPhone in the comments below!

System Monitor with Battery Max is available on the iPhone for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Google+ has been updated with the ability to start video Hangouts from Messenger as well as a new UI for photos and mysterious bug fixes.

• Start a video Hangout from Messenger
• New photos UI
• Bug fixes

I’m not a big Google+ user, but to those of you who are – let us know what you think of this update!

Google+ is available on the iPhone for free.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

vlock: Use any video you have on your iPad or iPhone as a clock background. Play movies, music videos, podcasts, and album videos on your clock.

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Mortgage-Calculator: Quickly calculate the relevant numbers needed when figuring mortgage payments.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

TUI Stopper: Don’t you always hate when there is that one person (or multiple ones) you tell yourself you aren’t going to text or call when you go out and end up doing it anyway? This app allows you to hide some of your phonebook contacts for a given amount of time.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

iMusic — The Perfect Music Player: Want to tweet your currently playing song, have infinite control over your music, or simply stare at a gorgeous interface? Then iMusic is for you!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Fit: Want to get Fit for the New Year? Want the benefits of a personal trainer in the gym? Someone to create your workout routines, vary your exercises, and find the right weight for you to lift? Fit is all of this and more.

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Safety Photo+Video is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you protect your photos and videos from prying eyes. It’s equipped with a dot pattern lock system for extra security, and in addition to being able to lock the entire app, you can lock individual albums.

You can now keep your most private photos and videos away form unauthorized access. Introducing the Safety Photo+Video. Used the most advanced security system to protect your photos and videos. You can then browse, organize, share, and manage your photos and videos right on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

• Dot pattern lock style for higher security. (New)
• Universality : This app is developed for both iPhone and iPad, you need to purchase only once. (New)
• Photo Geotag and EXIF data viewing. (New)
• Support Video. (New)
• Passcode lock for individual album. (New)
• Passcode locking style. (combination, keypad lock)
• Selectable stylish theme, yet easy to use interface
.
• Take private photos and videos from within the app.
• Extremely simple to import photos and videos from photo library
.
• Export photos to your iPhone/iPod Touch.
• Create albums for your photos.
• Passcode protect individual album.
• Supports move, copy & paste.
• Full Retina display support.
• Upload/download from PC to iPhone via web browser/iTunes file sharing.
• Share photos and videos within 2 iOS devices with Safety Photo+Video installed via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi.


Giveaway

The good folks at Eightythree Technology have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky winners! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below!

Safety Photo+Video is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Every week a few of us from team iMore will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Talkatone – @Alli_Flowers

I was so excited this week – I was going to pick CloudOn. But it was pulled from the App Store within hours of my installing it. Big bummer!

So my number two choice this week is Talkatone, a free app that works with your GoogleVoice account. Talkatone leverages some of the most useful features from GV and brings them to your iPad.

Yes, with Talkatone, you can make and receive calls directly on Your iPad. If you were hesitant to start using GV, this is a good reason to start, and if you were using it before, this will help you take advantage of all the features and get even more use from it.

You can text and talk using your WiFi connection (or data if you have a 3G iPad). So your iPad finally really becomes a big iPhone! You do, of course, have to use the speakerphone when using Talkatone on your iPad. And in case I neglected to mention this before, you can use Talkatone on your iPhone too. (It’s just cooler on the iPad!)

While Talkatone is free, there are several tiers of in-app purchases that will allow you to do things like add multiple Google accounts. This is something that I particularly like since you can’t use the same phone number for multiple GV accounts, so only one of my accounts ever rings/texts through – the others always go to voicemail/email.

This is a great, GREAT utility for any GV user.

• Free – App Store link

Emit – @sethclifford

Rene and I are both huge fans of Air Video [$2.99 - App Store link] for streaming all manner of differently formatted (read: non-iTunes) visual content around our homes. It’s a fantastic app, and can handle almost anything you can throw at it. Except using it with non-iOS devices. Since I also have a few other things I like to toy around with (most recently the Kindle Fire), I was looking for a similar solution that would work across multiple devices. I found it in Emit.

Emit is very similar to Air Video in that it relies on a streaming component loaded onto a Mac/PC and then outputs video to your mobile device. The big difference here is that it also works with Android devices, and soon Windows Phone 7 devices too. The server software can run on Mac OS X, Windows or Linux, so it’s as equal-opportunity as you’re going to get right now. I downloaded the free server app and the Amazon Appstore version of the mobile app as well as the universal iOS app to test out.

Interface-wise, it’s pretty barebones. Not exactly the kind of eye candy we’re often accustomed to on iOS. But when it comes to watching videos, quite frankly, I’ll put up with a lot less in terms of app design if it does the one thing I want it to do (stream my videos however and wherever I choose) successfully. Emit got that part right. Videos over my home wi-fi network on both iOS and the Kindle Fire were streamed very smoothly and I didn’t run into any connection issues. I’ve yet to set up the internet access (to watch videos away from home), and I’m hoping that it’s a similarly good experience.

Whoa, hold up… just realized something else. One additional really cool feature is that there is also a built-in web app at the app’s site that allows you to watch videos right in the browser! That’s pretty awesome. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have to go and try this out. If you’ve got a lot of different content to watch, and more than just iOS devices on which to do it, give it a look. There’s a free version available on Android too if you’re not sure about ponying up right away.

• $1.99 – App Store link
• $3.54 – Android Market link
• $3.50 – Amazon Appstore link

iCloud Backup – @chrisoldroyd

Not going for an app this week but the backup feature of iCloud. I try and backup my iPhone 4S every night when I plug it in to charge so my backup file is always reasonably up to date. Today, I went to the Apple Store to try and get a replacement iPhone 4S as mine was behaving a little strangely.

Everything went well as usual at the Apple Store and I got my new iPhone. This time instead of taking it home to sync with iTunes I just input my iCloud information and used the Apple Store WiFi connection. Half an hour later I was all set up with a new iPhone that had everything that the old one did. All of my apps installed and all in the correct folders. All of my text messages, emails, contacts, you name it. It just worked!

The only negative was my music, I have iTunes Match and all my music is stored on iTunes in the Cloud. To get that back I had to download everything again manually. That is not the Apple way and I expect that to be automated very soon too.

Zombieville USA 2 – @skeetobite

My pick of the week is the sequel to one of my favorite causal games of all times – Zombieville USA 2. Zombieville USA 2 brings back the same basic game play (side scrolling action, killing zombies) but adds a few unique twists from the first game to make it an entirely new experience. Zombieville USA 2 allows you to have three weapons at a time (with different buttons controlling each one), and there are plenty of weapons to choose from. You can also upgrade weapons, as well as upgrading skills with the money you earn. The side scrolling action has been expanded somewhat, so allow a 3-d movement. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, you can now have multiplayer action! Two people can team up to shoot, stab, blow up, and obliterate zombies before they have a chance to eat your brains!

• $0.99 – App Store link

2012 International CES App – @iMuggle

With CES upon us, I’ve been looking for a good way to browse through all the different exhibits and events at CES to figure out which ones I want to check out. Then comes the organizing them part. While I have most of my stuff in iCal, the official app allows me to add tracks easily and share them with other friends that are attending.

Besides just adding tracks you can view maps, photos, videos, and even see who is tweeting about CES. It’s a great way to actively stay up to date with what’s going on around you. I plan to really test it out this week while in Vegas.

• Free – App Store Link

AccuWeather for iPhone – @bla1ze

Yeah, it’s a weather app. There is a lot of weather apps in the iTunes App Store, many are free and many are paid. AccuWeather for iPhone is a free, ad supported app with a lot of features and a few, you’d not really expect from a simple weather app but are included in this one:

• iCloud Support – Settings and saved locations sync to AccuWeather apps through iCloud.
• Notification Center Support – View today’s forecast in the Notification Center drop-down.
• Calendar Integration – View 15-day forecasts in your calendar.
• Social Sharing – Share weather information with friends and family through Facebook, Twitter and email messages.
• View Contacts on weather maps – Place contacts of your choice on the radar weather display and “pin” them on the map to see current conditions for that contact.

Normally, I tend to not bother with Weather apps because well, I find it easier to look out the window but with the added features of AccuWeather for iPhone, I’ve learned to enjoy both — looking out the window and checking in the app to see a longer forecast.

• Free – App Store link

Google Translate – @andrewwray

Want to know how to say something in another language on-the-fly? Well, Google Translate won’t do exactly that, but it comes pretty darn close. Just speak what you need translated and tap ‘GO’ and, well, it’ll translate your input into whatever language you desire! You can even have it speak the phrase aloud to you to help make sure you’re saying it correctly.

Google Translate has some other really great options as well. For starters, you can star specific phrases for quick reference, change the language input selection (Chinese, English and Spanish are all supported with regional variations included) or type out your phrase instead of using voice input if you’re so inclined.

If you’ve been trying to learn a new language, or even if you’re heading on a trip to another country, then it’s almost guaranteed that Google Translate will come in quite handy! Google Translate is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch as a universal binary app.

• Free – App Store Link

Triple Entendre – @llofte

Triple Entendre is a very difficult riddle game and I am so addicted! I’ve literally lost sleep over it. It’s hard to really say much about it in terms of a description, except that each level contains clues and photos for either the answer or question to the riddle. You cannot progress until you get the answer right.

Most of these levels are extremely difficult and will likely drive you mad. However, we’ve got a thread in the forums dedicated to offering hints to fellow players. So go pick up the app and join in! If you think you can handle it – that is.

• $0.99 for full version – App Store link
• Free for lite version – App Store link

Tripit – @reneritchie

So begins a the annual cycle of trade shows, with CES 2012, pretty much the biggest, baddest one of them all, starting the year off with a bang. Since it’s far from home and I’m far from organized, I need every little app and accessory I can to get me through it.

If you haven’t already, go watch or listen to Georgia and Phil Nickinson’s fantastic ZENandTECH episode this week for a ton of useful tips and picks for frequent travelers, because I’m only going to echo one of them here — Tripit.

Tripit is a web service with a universal app for iPhone and iPad that helps take the tedium and trepidation out of travel. You make a reservation for a flight or a hotel, Tripit takes it in, breaks it down, and gives you back a humanized agenda that clean on the surface but jam packed with details just a tap away. You can either manually forward confirmation emails to Tripit or set it up to monitor your Gmail address for instant updates (enter security vs. convenience argument here).

There are social networking features, so I can see where, for example, where friends and co-workers are going, and if you pay for a pro membership, which I do, you can create an inner circle for those closest to you so they automatically have all your travel info at hand. Tripit Pro will also email and/or SMS you any changes to flight schedules, gates, etc. which pretty much makes it worth it’s weight in gold. (If binary bits had weight, that is.)

If you or those around you travel frequently or even occasionally, get Tripit.

• $3.99 – App Store link

Tell us your pick, enter to win a $10 iTunes gift certificate!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. We’ll pick one of you and send you a shiny $10 iTunes gift certificate so you can start stocking up for future picks! Contest starts now and ends next Friday, January 13 at 12pm PT.

So what are you waiting for? Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

GoodReader is a family of iPhone and iPad apps for editing an managing PDF files. You can add annotations, including freehand drawings, and manage, transfer, and sync your files.

GoodReader® is the super-robust highly-rated PDF reader with advanced reading and annotating capabilities.

ANNOTATE! Annotation is a feature long sought after by users who want to add their own mark-ups to PDFs, especially those collaborating as a team on shared documents. The types of annotations that can be created and edited in GoodReader include typewriter text boxes, popup comments (“sticky notes”), text highlights, freehand drawings, lines, arrows, rectangles, ovals, cloudy shapes, text underlines, strikeouts, text insertion marks.

REFLOW PDF TEXT! With the PDF Reflow feature, reading your documents is a pleasure because it extracts pure text from PDF files and automatically wraps words. This amazing feature fits all of the text to your screen perfectly. That means you never have to scroll left and right to read the text. For a better idea of how on-the-fly reflow works, sneak a peek at the Reflow screenshot down below.

MANAGE FILES! GoodReader lets you create folders, move, copy and rename your files; zip, email and unzip them; plus send your files to other apps.

TRANSFER FILES! Within moments of downloading GoodReader, you’ll be transferring files in a number of ways: directly from your computer over a USB cable or WiFi connection, from the Internet or from email attachments. It also easily integrates with iDisk, Google Docs, Dropbox, SugarSync, box.net and other WebDAV, AFP, FTP and SFTP servers.

SYNC YOUR FILES AND FOLDERS! The amazing Auto Sync feature will work with MobileMe iDisk, Dropbox, SugarSync, box.net, and any other WebDAV, AFP, FTP or SFTP server.

Giveaway

The good folks at Good.iWare Ltd. have given us promo codes to give away to 10 lucky winners. For a chance to win, just leave a comment below letting us know which device you would like to use GoodReader on – iPhone or iPad (or both!). We have 5 codes for each!

• $4.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Zepi:Classic HD: Do you want to prove that your fingers are the fastest in the world and your reflexes are the quickest in the universe? Welcome to try out Zepi – a fun exciting brain game for players of any age.

• $0.99 for iPad – App Store link

Diet Cakes Weight Loss: Rather than a boring book that you might flick through and never look at again, Diet Cakes gives you the pleasure of clearing an entire tray of cakes or donuts or ice-cream cones and getting benefit from it. Inside each cake, donut, and ice-cream cone is a Diet Cake Motivational Cookie – these 36 fortune-style type cookies contain ideas and questions designed to inspire your weight loss.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

AppStart: A fun, interactive magazine about your iPhone & apps! And it’s oh so pretty!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Onibi: A kinetic puzzler where the player is a forest spirit who must wind paths that awaken the other voices of the forest. Keep your flow and other spirits will follow you. The result is a symphony of motion and sound that is different every time.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Super Crate Box:

• $0.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Race Against Time: Collect colour CHROMOs, defeat ever-changing enemies and get really, really good at jumping between platforms as you speed through twelve unique, gorgeous and challenging levels.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Movies HD: Movies HD is a movie and TV series catalog application with stunning graphics. It allows you to quickly add, find and view movies in your library (with the ability to add new movies by seeking by title using lots of data sources – so all movie details are filled in for you!). It also allows to lend movies to friends, so you can easily keep track of who you gave that copy of “Quantum of Solace” to.

• $3.99 for iPad – App Store link

Prizma: This time around our little spherical friends need to send colored light beams across obstacle filled paths to reach their buddies. But the poor things aren’t very clever. They don’t know where to stand, which direction to face or even whom to send the light to! It’s up to you to lend them a hand and save the day!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

MAGapp Pro: An interactive e-magazine reader that incorporates video, social media and web features into its varied publications. MAGapp’s range of e-magazines and e-books are exclusively published using this e-reader to make the most of its entertaining, interactive features. MAGapp takes mobile reading to a new level, don’t just read content, experience it!

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Pigeonholes: Unlike other content management and syncing apps, Pigeonholes is licensed with real-person help desk and email support and is supplied with a training session so you are assured that your administrator will understand how to use and maximize the app.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

You can now purchase and watch the Harry Potter movies on your iPhone and iPad with The Harry Potter Film Collection: App Edition. When connected to Wi-Fi, you can stream the movies instantly, or if you download the movies to your device, you can watch them locally without a connection – perfect for long car and plane rides!

Relive the magic and download The Harry Potter Film Collection: App Edition to stream the first five minutes of Years 1-6 and Year 7- Part 2, and gain access to a sample of extras. For the complete experience, buy the Full Version and unlock the movie with all the extras or purchase Years 1-6 together as a bundle and save! Experience the films in the language of your choice PLUS gain access to over 100 extra videos with exclusive behind-the-scenes, special features, deleted scenes and more. Immerse yourself in the wonder of Harry Potter with more than 200 photos including movie scenes, production stills, wallpapers, and posters from Years 1-6 and Year 7- Part 2, that can all be saved as wallpapers and shared with friends. You can download the movies to your device for offline playback or stream whenever you want! Available exclusively for iPhone®, iPod touch®, and iPad™.

• Offline playback: Download a movie directly to your device to playback at anytime
• Streaming playback: Stream a movie instantly over WiFi*
• Extras: Enjoy bonus video features that take you behind the scenes with filmmakers and cast
• Art gallery: Explore posters from Years 1-6 and Year 7- Part 2, wallpapers, movie stills, and production stills
• Multiple languages: Watch the film in your language of choice**
• Real-time news: Live Twitter and Facebook updates
• Explore the magic: Go further into the world of Harry Potter with related content available to download on iTunes

The Harry Potter Film Collection: App Edition is available on the iPhone and iPad for free. Each movie is available for $9.99 (except for Deathly Hallows – Part 2 which is $16.99) or you can download the entire collection for $47.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Triple Entendre is a riddle and puzzle game for iPhone and iPad. Each level is a combination of text, photos, and other clues that provide hints to the answer or even the question. Most questions are intended to require some research, so there’s a built-in browser that makes it easy to switch between the web and the game.

I’m a total sucker for riddles and totally addicted to Triple Entendre. It’s extremely challenging and half the time I’m cursing my iPad for my wrong answers, but boy does it feel good to pass a level.

If you’re looking for hints on the levels, we’ve got a thread in our forums dedicated to asking and giving hints for Triple Entendre.

If you’ve ever played an online riddle like notpr0n, godtower or qwyzzle, you’ll love this game. The first riddle game of its kind for your ios devices. Triple Entendre is a riddle, a puzzle, a quiz, and a trivia game all rolled into one. Each level includes a combination of clues and photos where you need to figure out not just what the answer is… but what the question is. Unlike traditional trivia games where a simple internet search will give you a correct answer, your problem solving skills will be needed to even start a web search. Web searching is encouraged in Triple Entendre and we have even taken advantage of your 3g or WiFi connection by building in an internal web search. We hope that your brain power and useless trivia knowledge will be truly tested.

Currently 50 puzzles long, but we have frequent updates planned with more puzzles. Triple Entendre supports Game Center with achievements and a leaderboard. Who will be the first to finish Triple Entendre?

Giveaway

The good folks at The Van Buren Boys have given us some promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just solve the following riddle and leave your answer in the comments below: Which two days in a week starts with “T” other than tuesday and thursday? Go!

Triple Entendre is available on the iPhone and iPad for $0.99. There is also a lite version available for free.

• Full version – App Store link
• Lite version – App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on iMore? Email us at iosapps@imore.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Google Translate, an app that translates your spoken phrases into other languages for you to hear, has been updated as a universal app for iPhone and iPad.

Translate words and phrases between more than 60 languages using Google Translate for iOS. For most languages, you can speak your phrases and hear the corresponding translations.

• Translate text between 63 languages
• Translate by speaking the text instead of typing it (17 languages)
• Listen to your translations spoken aloud (24 languages)
• Display translations in full screen mode to make it easier for others nearby to read
• Star your favorite translations for quick access even when you’re offline
• Access your translation history even when you’re offline
• Spell out the translation of non-Latin script languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, etc..) in Latin characters to read it phonetically (e.g. Pinyin, Romaji)

Google Translate is available on the iPhone and iPad for free.

• App Store link

Thanks @daveizzle for the tip!

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Apple is sending out refund notices to iPhone users who purchased GameStore, the bizarre Apple app that briefly appeared in the App Store over the weekend.

You recently purchase the GameStore app. The app was made available for sale prematurely. We apologize for the problem and have refunded the purchase amount back to your account. These funds will be applied to your original payment method within 5 business days.

While GameStore showed a release date of Dec. 31, 2011 in iTunes deskstop, the on-device App Store showed a date of June 9, 2009, which suggested it might have been a beta app used to test the iOS 3 in-app purchases feature.

The refund language, however, clearly says “premature”, which would suggest it will be properly released at a later date.

Whether or not that’s accurate, whether or not a new app with the same name but more current functionality, or whether there’s a different explanation remains unknown.

MyGuardianAngel: Allows you to, with the push of ONE button, seek help from your most trusted friends and family, capture video evidence, be tracked by GPS and through streaming audio from your phone update ALL of your emergency contacts (most trusted friends and family) as to exactly what your situation is and what type of help you need.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

PredictNews: Predict the news, and they’ll tell you which stocks stand to gain from your prediction!

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Pho.to Lab: More than 450 awesome effects for your photos. You can easily create fun photo montages, cool contact icons, virtual postcards and phone wallpapers.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Pinterest: A Virtual Pinboard. It lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find in your life. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Update addressed multiple bugs.

• Free for iPhone App Store link

Fleetly Fitness: The best app to reach your fitness goals. Earn points for logging your workouts, connect with friends and join challenges at all levels, from beginner to pro.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

The hard part about New Year’s resolutions is following through and we often need a little (or a lot) of help to stay motivated in the pursuit of our goals. New Year Motivation 2012 is here to help with inspirational quotes from some of the most admired individuals.

Begin 2012 inspired and motivated with New Year Motivation!

Every day for a month New Year Motivation will bring you specially selected motivational and inspirational wisdom from some of the most admired individuals on earth – Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, Norman Vincent Peale, and more. Their words will forms seeds of ideas in your mind, help focus your direction and thoughts for 2012, and ultimately empower and support you to make this new year your best yet.

Your month starts from when you first open New Year Motivation – so you’re not limited to starting on Jan 1st – and you can review your past days at any time. New Year Motivation runs on all your iOS devices at no extra charge- iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch – without requiring a data connection, making it easy for you to fit New Year Motivation into your busy life.

This year, start the year in the right frame of mind – with the power and inspiration to make 2012 your best year ever!

Giveaway

The good folks at Breaking Art have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just let us know one of your goals for 2012 in the comments below!

New Year Motivation 2012 is available on the iPhone and iPad and on sale for $0.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

You’ve made a New Year resolution to lose weight and intelli-Diet App | Weight Loss App is here to help! Just tell intelli-Diet what food you have at home, and it’ll build a healthy well-balanced diet for you. Leave the meal planning up to intelli-Diet!

The app takes the foods you have, and then creates a well-balanced diet of whole, natural foods. And… your diet’s customized by your gender, weight, activity level, and more. It’s like having a Dietician in your pocket!

HOW IT WORKS:

1. Select your weight loss goals and food preferences.
2. Determine which foods you have in your kitchen.
3. Let the system automatically create you a well-balanced diet.
4. Watch the pounds come off. It thinks, you eat!™

FEATURES:

• Receive an automatically generated shopping list.
• Customize any meal with easy food swaps.
• Track your weight loss progress in charts and tables.
• Use it anywhere, anytime! No internet connection required.
• Meal reminders, water trackers, and much more.

Giveaway

The folks at Barracuda Partners have given us promo codes to give away to 5 lucky readers! For a chance to win, just let us know how much weight you hope to lose this year.

intelli-Diet App | Weight Loss App is available on the iPhone and on sale for $3.99.

• App Store link

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Silvester Adventure: A platformer puzzle game which gameplay is centered on shadow manipulation. Character’s Shadow must be ensured safe for all the time as not to leave the Shadow Range. And throughout the game you will gain new shadow manipulation abilities(Shadow Skills) which you must use to progress through the game.

• $1.99 for iPad – App Store link

4th Grade Math: Splash Math Worksheets: With 140+ adaptive worksheets with virtually infinite problems spanning across 10 chapters, Splash Math Grade 4 covers the entire 4th grade curriculum.

• $9.99 for iPad – App Store link

Tailgate Cornhole: The first cornhole game for iOS that is made with Sports Fans in mind! The toss system has been designed from the ground up to make it the most fun and easy to control cornhole game on iOS.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iLineup HD: Designed for all baseball and softball players, coaches, managers, and lovers of the game. It enables you to quickly create a player lineup, letting you enter position, batting order, player numbers, and substitutions.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Grid Lens: You can take photos in each frame split by grid lines to create your own story. It allows you to capture every single moment you don’t want to miss.

• $0.99 for iPhone (sale) – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Commit: To really get good at something you need to do it everyday. Commit helps you form these habits in order to become fit, learn to draw, or learn a language.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Calendarium: A new, easy to use calendar which gives you a new way to discover many interesting things about this day including historical events, times of sunrise/sunset, number of week, day, day length, moon phase and more.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Affogato: Lets you browse through over 30 different types of coffee and get to grips with the daunting world of coffee-shop lingo as well as master the major brewing methods.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Budget with Back in Black: Will help you understand and take control of your personal finances, one month at a time. It boils your finances down to the essentials: how much money you earn and spend every month, and where your money is going, to get you Back in the Black!

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link

FabuList: Free your mind from the endless mental notes and reminders of all the things you need to do. Clear your mind of those to-do things, and get them onto your device with ease.

• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

A very strange iPhone app called GameStore, which appears to be by Apple, is showing up internationally in the iTunes App Store. Its icon is a shopping cart crammed in the lower left corner and it’s functionality seems curious to say the least:

This application allows you to buy different things from within the app.

iTunes desktop shows the release date as Dec. 31, 2011. App Store on iPhone shows the post date as June 9, 2009. Make of that what you will.

Whether this is an internal Apple test app that was never meant to go public, or if there’s a different explanation, we’re not certain. In the meantime, you probably don’t want to spend $0.99 on it.

• $0.99 – App Store link

Via: schimanke.com

TiPb takes a look at the top 5 best iPhone and iPad apps to help you succeed with your New Year’s resolutions in fitness, finances, organization, dieting, and kicking a bad habit.

2012 is the year you’re going lose weight, get in shape, get your finances in order, quit smoking, and organize your life – and your iPhone and iPad apps are going to help you with your success! There are a plethora of apps out there to choose from, however, so we’ve gathered up a few of our favorites to help you with your New Year’s resolutions.

Weightbot

This Tapbots gem is an oldie, but a goodie. With Weightbot, you can set your weight goal, record your weight, view your BMI, and see your progress on a beautiful graph. The UI is gorgeous and true to Tapbots style and makes use of nice sounds and clicks as you navigate through the app. Tracking your weight is always a chore, but Weightbot will at least turn the actual act of entering your weight a pleasure. Whether you’re happy with with the numbers you’re entering or not – well, that’s up to you.

• $1.99 – App Store link

See also:

• P90X: $4.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• Nike Training Club: Free for iPhone – App Store link

SilverWiz Money

Money – you both love it and hate it. You love getting it; you love spending it, but you hate when it runs dry. This is the year to get your finances in order by setting budgets, tracking your spending, and make smart spending choices. SilverWiz Money is a great app to help in your endeavor.

With SilverWiz, you can see the status of all your accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, cash, etc) and log all of your expenses and credits. Set up reminders to get your bills paid on their due dates, and schedule automatic deposits and transfers. My favorite feature of SilverWiz Money, however, is that it can sync across multiple devices. So, if you share accounts with your spouse, you can both log your spending on your own device, but it updates on all devices. There is also an iPad version, so when it’s time to analyze your reports, you can kick back and use the larger screen.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

See also:

• Bills ~ On your table: $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• iXpenseIt: $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Evernote

Organization – something we all vow to get better at every year. Evernote is here to help. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put it all into Evernote and watch as it instantly synchronizes from your iPhone to your Mac or Windows desktop. You can also mark specific notes as favorites and text within notes is searchable. Available an an in-app purchase, the Premium Features allow you to add, sync, access, and share files (PDF, Word, Excel, PPT, and more). Get organized, today!

• Free – App Store link

See also:

• Day One (Journal/Diary): $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• Todo:
  • $4.99 for iPhone – App Store link
  • $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Weight Watchers Mobile

I’m convinced that the Calendar was intentionally created so that the New Year immediately followed a slew of Holidays that make us eat too much food, drink too much booze, and make us fat. If we didn’t have the New Year to motivate us to loose the 20 pounds we gained in less than 2 months, we’d have an even bigger obesity problem. We’ve already taken a look at an app to track our weight loss, but we’re not going to be happy with those numbers without some action – the most effective being a diet change.

Weight Watchers Mobile will provide you with the latest recipes, health news, exercise info, and more. It’s also compatible with Weight Watcher’s PointsPlus program so that you can keep track while on the go. A subscription to Weight Watchers Online will give you over 31,000 food options, meals and recipes and let you see your daily remaining PointsPlus values with notifications.

• Free – App Store link

See also:

• Lose It! Free for iPhone – App Store link
• Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List: Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr

Smoking is bad – you know this, but every attempt to quit has ended with you giving up. But this year, you’ll have My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr in your pocket to aid you in your success. The quitting process is never exciting, but this app will add a little fun to your journey with 14 innovative games designed to help you remove all illusions created by the nicotine addiction. It’s not all fun an games, though; your personal coach will give you personalized advices and tips to help you kick your bad habit once and for all.

• $2.99 – App Store link

See also:

• Quitter: Free for iPhone – App Store link
• LIVESTRONG MyQuit Coach: Free for iPhone – App Store link

Your favorite New Year’s Resolution apps?

So there you have them, our top 5 best New Year’s resolution apps for iPhone and iPad. Be sure to check out our other Top 5 picks, our Picks of the Week, and iPhone App and Games Forum for more recommendations, and if we missed any of your favorites leave them in the comments below!

Narrowing down the list of my most used apps is a huge undertaking! There are apps that I may use intensively for long periods of time, then not use so much at all. What I tried to do was identify the apps there were used on an almost daily basis, even if they were ones that I didn’t use for a long period of time each day. This is perhaps best exemplified by my first choice…

My-Cast Weather Radar

There are a long of weather apps out there (in fact, working on reviews of a couple more!) but My-Cast seems to have the perfect mix of ease of use, simplicity, and providing enough information. It has an “iPhone-like feel” to it, in it’s layout and presentation. It has intuitive controls to change between (for example) short of verbose forecast. With My-Cast weather, I find I can get a quick, easy to understand forecast, description of severe weather events, and even radar and map displays. I have other apps that I use for more detailed information when needed, but My-Cast is the app that I check on a daily basis to find out what it going on weather wise.

• $3.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Air Sharing

I use a lot of different online storage systems and email accounts. Air Sharing lets me manage them all together. I can see what it in dropbox, and then move it to Box.net. I can check an attachment I have on my exchange email account, and open it up and read it. The versatility of the app is its strongest feature. No, I can edit documents, but I can print them with air print or email them from withing the app. Air Sharing is a great far-reaching document and storage management tool. (This was almost going to be Goodreader, but that requires a separate app for both the iPad and the iPhone, while Air Sharing is a universal binary).

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $3.99 for iPad – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Hanging with Friends

I wanted to choose a game to put in here. I mostly play casual games (think Angry Birds, Where’s my Water, Tower Defense, Temple Run, Doodle God, Fruit Ninja, etc), many of which I may get into a “groove” and play for days on end. I ended up choosing Hanging with Friend, by the makers of Words with Friends. Hanging with Friends is a Hangman style game that you play…well…with friends! While I also play Words with Friends, I have found that Hanging with Friends is probably the casual game I check on a regular basis – seeing if my opponent guessed my word, or trying to guess a word myself. While I enjoy Words with Friends, I find that Hanging with Friends is a little more low key – I don’t spend as much time trying to figure out the perfect word to play. It’s a great and fun way to play a word game that might be a little less stressful (for me at least!)

• $1.99 for iPhone – App Store link

MLB.com At Bat 11

I have both the iPhone and the iPad version on the app, and during the baseball season I was using these on a daily basis. As a huge baseball fan, I loved the local radio broadcast feature, and following the game live with Gameday was almost as good as watching it on TV. Even in the off season, I have found that the app gets checked on a regular basis – for news, transaction updates, and anything that might be going on during the Hot Stove season. Unfortunately you have to purchase the app each season, AND they don’t make a universal binary, but for any baseball fan it is a must have. And the good news is that each year it has been released, it has had new and improved features, so I hope to see even more improvements in 2012!

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $0.99 for iPad – App Store link

Facebook

Yes, I use Twitter (and Tweetbot is my go-to app). Yes, I use Google+, and use the app for that. But Facebook is the “social network” that I probably check, and make updates too, most frequently. As such, the Facebook app for the iPhone is the app that gets the most use. And now with the Facebook app for the iPad available, I will probably start using that one as well. This may change in 2012, I may start using Twitter or Google+ more, but for now, for me, Facebook is still the king (although I do sometime use Quick Status to update both my Twitter and Facebook accounts at the same time!).

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

GTA 3 – @chrisoldroyd

I don’t play many games on my iPad however the release of GTA 3 has got me hooked. I used to play this a few years back on my PS2 and PSP; so hearing it was now available for iOS, I just had to get it.

The game plays amazingly well, the graphics are true to the original PS2 version; which in my opinion is some feat on a 9.7″ handheld device. The key to the success with games like these on the iPad is the controls system. Rockstar appears to have this just right, even I can control things and that’s saying something. All in all this game is streets ahead of anything else that I have played on my iPad, it is utterly brilliant!

• $4.99 – App Store link

Action Movie FX – @Alli_Flowers

JJ Abrams is nothing short of brilliant. I love his movies and tv shows, and now his iPhone app – Action Movie FX. Meant to highlight the explosive effects used in his latest endeavor, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, it gives you the ability to…well…blow things up.

Action Movie FX leverages the camera in your iPhone (or iPad 2), and allows you to take live footage and then apply an explosive effect. The app comes with a missile and a car roll. I’m not crazy about the car effect as it has limited use. The missile, on the other hand, is very practical, and kept me incredibly entertained on Christmas eve as we drove around the neighborhood looking at all the festively decorated yards. “Stop here!” I would shout, and my brother would pull over. “I want to blow up that yard!” I’m sure the neighbors were tickled to death that we were spending so much time admiring and photgraphing their displays. If they only knew….

You can purchase two additional effects packages, one of which I got for $.99 that includes a fire (gun) fight and an air strike. If you ever wanted to direct expensive movies with huge special effects (or just wanted to blow things up), I highly recommend Action Movie FX.

• Free – App Store link

Batman: Arkham City Lockdown – @reneritchie

I’m not a huge fan of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and Dark Knight movies. He simply doesn’t understand the core of the character (nor is he capable of producing good endings.) Bruce Wayne doesn’t dress up as Batman. Batman isn’t his secret identity. He is Batman. It’s Bruce Wayne that he dresses up as; that’s his secret identity. And it’s his job to save everyone, from the citizens of Gotham to the Joker to Ras Al Ghul. It’s his job to make sure no one ever dies the way his parents died, not ever again. It’s those simple, essential truths that Frank Miller nailed so transformative-ly in Dark Knight Returns in the 1980s and Paul Dini and Bruce Timm realized perhaps best of all, detective and all, in Batman: The Animated in the 1990s, that Tim Burton touched on though ultimately stumbled all over in his attempt at the Batman franchise, and that Nolan missed completely, despite the great acting and production values of his soon-to-be completed trilogy.

There’s nothing wrong with Gotham that Batman can’t fix with his brains and his fists. Which brings me, circuitously, to Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, the latest attempt to bring the Batman franchise to video games and the first to hit the iPhone and iPad.

It looks great. It uses the same Epic Unreal 3 engine that powers Infinity Blade, and the designs are modern but true to the spirit of the characters involved. Control is good given the limitations of multitouch, and Batman: Arkham City Lockdown takes pains to walk you through them from the get go. Gameplay is a tad repetitive — you go from area to fairly similar area and box your way from bad guy to fairly similar bad guy. Early hyper-swiping (is that the multitouch equivalent of button mashing?) quickly stops working, however, as badder guys require more precise counters and attacks, and you need to build your skills if you want to make it past anything other than the early stages.

In general the Arkham series is an extreme take on the Batman — ultra-violent, with female characters whose, to quote Bill Watterson, powers seem to primarily consist of keeping their costumes from falling completely off. But it’s well executed (no doubt thanks to having Paul Dini involved with the franchise), with good atmosphere, and has more than enough to please both longtime Batman fans and those who just want some gritty gaming fun over the holidays.

• $5.99 – App Store link

Golden Axe – @skeetobite

It’s retro day as we enter the last day of 2011. My choice for the pick of the week is Golden Axe, by Sega. This is an import of the classic arcade game from the late 1980′s. You are a mighty adventurer, trying to save the King and his daughter from the evil Death Adder. Just like the arcade version, you can play as a Gilus Thunderhead, a dwarf; Tyrus Flare, an amazonian; or Ax Battler, a sword wielding barbarian. Pick up food and potions, ride dragons, and of course fight enemies along the way to the main battle to defeat Death Adder. Just like the arcade version, you can play mutliplayer here as well, using bluetooth. There are sequels (Golden Axe II and III) but this game is the real thing from the arcade. For anyone who played this game in the arcade, you MUST pick this game up asap and give it a try.

• $0.99 – App Store link

Bejeweled – @iMuggle

The new version of Bejeweled adds not only more awesome graphics but new game play modes. I’ve always been hugely addicted to Bejeweled Blitz so I already knew this was a purchase I wasn’t going to regret.

The newer version has a Zen mode as well as a diamond mine mode. While one is timed and you have to attempt to blast away the earth and dig deeper, Zen mode is not timed and is just endless gameplay.

If you’re a Bejeweled fan, make sure you pick up the new version.

• $0.99 – App Store Link

1Password – @sethclifford

I’m not much of a believer in the usefulness of New Year’s Resolutions since many people make grandiose claims they’ll never complete and end up feeling terrible about it, but if you make even one this January, make it to be more secure and efficient in your computing life and know outright that you can do it. 1Password is the key to unlocking success with this resolution. I chose it as one of my most-used apps of 2011 this past week (as did many of the TiPb staff), and I can’t say enough about it.

It is simply put, my single most valued application on both the Mac and iOS. We’ve talked about it at least a zillion times on TiPb, so I won’t go into everything again. But understand this: I couldn’t manage my life, our office, and the feeling of control over the myriad bits of information we all interact with on a daily basis without it. You might look at the prices of the apps and balk, but to me, there’s no price I can put on either security or knowing that all the important data I need to access is always at my fingertips. You can always make more money, but you can’t get more time, and an app this good is worth your time.

Ok, I’ll dial down the hyperbole now. But seriously, if you’re not using it, why not? Don’t you like making your life easier? Isn’t it worth a few bucks to support fantastic software development and simplify things for yourself in the process? I think you know the answer to that. Go forth and learn a new way of living with your tech. Seriously. Go. Now.

• $14.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link
• $14.99 for Mac – Mac App Store link

Navigon — andrewwray

Doing a lot of holiday traveling, and want to make sure you arrive at your destination on time? Or maybe you’re going out of town for the New Year, and want to make sure you don’t get lost along the way?

I’ve been using Navigon as my main GPS app all year, and then some. It’s one of the best GPS navigation apps available for the iPhone and can even run on the iPad 3G. Navigon provides quick access to Google search, subsequently making it a breeze to search for your desired location (restaurant, gym, grocery store, gas station, whatever) and it also offers in-app purchases for things like 3D terrain mapping in a panoramic view, live traffic and even police radar location information. I’m sure some of you have personal prefecences for other GPS apps, or maybe even prefer a standalone device, but for me, Navigon does the job perfectly.

• $38.99 (North America Only) – App Store Link

Your pick?

You’re part of the team as well, so we will be choosing one reader to make a submission each week! Just look for the announcement on twitter or our Facebook page each weekend for a chance to be picked! In the meantime, jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!

iOS and jailbreak developers Steven Troughton-Smith and Nick, who goes by the Twitter handle @TheMudkip, have hacked together a working window manager for Apple TV, paving the way for the possibility of iPhone and iPad app compatibility on the non-touchscreen device.

I rewrote SpringBoard from scratch using only QuartzCore. MobileX isn’t linked against UIKit.

[The control scheme involves] remote events from an iPad. Or a cursor controlled by an apple remote.

It might be a while before we actually see this publicly available but the idea is as exciting now as the original jailbreak apps were back in the early days of iOS, before the introduction of the iOS App Store.

Source: Steve Troughton-Smith, @theMudkip

It has taken me so long to write up my most used apps of 2011 because – how was I supposed to choose just five apps? However, I’ve managed to narrow it down. My first home screen page is dedicated to my most used apps. This list isn’t in any particular, so here we go!

1Password

I live and breathe this app 24/7. I can’t live without it. My entire life is stored within it. It’s way more than a password manager to me. 1Password has the best customer support and it’s a well designed, easy to use app.

• $14.99 for iPhone and iPad – iTunes link
• $9.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $9.99 for iPad – App Store link

Echofon Pro for Twitter

I love Twitter but trying to keep up with my timeline was killing me. It wasn’t bad when I was only using Twitter via my iPhone. Then I added my iMac to the mix and it got a tad bit more complicated. And, well, I was completely done for once I got an iPad. Echofon is my Twitter app of choice. Echofon had tweet syncing long before other apps and Tweet Marker. Tweet syncing is my number one priority when it comes to any Twitter client. But that’s not the only thing I love about Echofon. It’s a universal app and it’s inline photo/video preview is topnotch! It’s not the prettiest Twitter app but it is one of the most function. I’ll take function over pretty any day of the week. The Mac app is full of awesome too.

• $4.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Downcast

Oh how I love this app! This is app is AMAZING! It doesn’t get the credit it deserves either. This app does so much. You can customize it as little or as much as you like because it has a TON of features and settings. I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to my podcasts because I’m subscribed to so many. I like to be as efficient as possible so I love how I have control over every feed individually. This app is universal and the iCloud syncing rocks.

• $1.99 for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

iBooks

I still adore this app. The latest update has fixed everything I didn’t like when I made iBooks my Pick of the Week many months ago. ‘Nuff said!

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

Reeder

What can I say about this app that hasn’t already been said by Rene, Ally, Andrew, and Chris? So I’ll just say, “Ditto” but I’ll also say the Mac version rocks too.

• $2.99 for iPhone – App Store link
• $4.99 for iPad – App Store link

Microsoft Lync 2010 for iPad: Extends the power of Lync to your mobile device – including rich presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and calling features from a single, easy-to-use interface.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Particlescape: Create beautiful patterns at your fingertips! Particlescape is an interactive particle and gravity simulator designed to be as beautiful as possible and to create an organic link between fingertips and screen.

• Free for iPhone and iPad – App Store link

PhotoString: An app for people who like put many photos together vertically, just combine multi photos into one like a string.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Ideal Me: Motivates change for the better. It lays out concrete steps to help you become the best version of yourself. By separating out the specific areas of your life that need attention, Ideal Me allows you to tailor the perfect array of habits necessary to attain your goals.

• $0.99 for iPhone – App Store link

Newser Tablet: Want more news in fewer words? Newser is a news aggregator that draws stories from the best sources all over the web and synthesize these articles into sharply written stories of two paragraphs or less, perfect for the mobile format.

• Free for iPad – App Store link

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

My most used apps of 2011 include an endless list of Twitter apps, ‘video streaming apps’, and of course, the default apps like Safari, Mail, Messages and YouTube. When I do download apps from the App Store, I immediately store them into folders: “Games, Utilities, Utilities 2″. However, there are a select few apps that live outside of folders, because I use them so often. Here are the top 5 that I’ve used this year.

Twittelator Neue

I’ve used a few Twitter apps this year. I used Tweetbot, TweetTime, Tweetings, but most of the time I ended up reverting back to the official Twitter app, but when Twitter updated their iPhone app to #dickapp, I went on a search for another Twitter client. That’s when I found Twittelator Neue. Its gorgeous and was made for iOS5. Its got most of the features you’d expect from a Twitter app and is definitely the app that I will be using in the foreseeable future. So what if it doesn’t have push support yet? It’s so pretty!

$1.99 – App Store Link

BBC iPlayer

The iPlayer app is on both the iPhone and the iPad, however I love them both for different reasons. The iPad version is my No.1 source for my BBC content. Its easy to navigate and lets you save a list of favourites, so I never miss a show. Its so convenient for watching my favourite BBC shows in bed before I go to sleep. The iPhone version wins me over because it has 3G support and live channels, so I can watch TV, while I’m out and on the go.

FREE – App Store Link

Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower is an annoyingly addictive game. I’m constantly checking my tower and improving it. It’s almost become part of my everyday routine. ‘Wake Up, Have Breakfast, Play Tiny Tower’. It’s an endless game, as there is no limit to how tall your tower can go, so I’ll be playing this for many more years to come.

FREE – App Store Link

Wikipanion

When I need to look something up on wikipedia, I always use Wikipanion, not just because it’s a full featured, easy to navigate wikipedia app, but because it has multiple wikia support, which is great for viewing topic-specific wikis as well as the standard wikipedia.

FREE – App Store Link

Checkbook HD

I like keeping a close eye on my money, however, My bank doesn’t have an app (yes, I should leave them.). Checkbook HD, allows me to keep a close eye on all my spendings offline, so I can see at a glance how much money I have at any given time. I’ve got multiple accounts, and the app adds up all my money to tell me how much I have altogether. Time to save for next Christmas.

$0.99 – App Store Link