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

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!

Amazon Mobile – @sethclifford

I love Amazon. I visit the site multiple times a day, whether to order things for my home or the office, or just to browse and do some product research. I’m also an Amazon Prime member, which only fuels my compulsion even more, allowing for free 2-day shipping of almost anything. As a fully-grown child with instant gratification issues when it comes to purchases, Prime can’t be beat. But mostly, I like being able to buy most of what I need easily, from the same place, and I also enjoy having a detailed history and actions for my purchases after they’ve arrived.

It’s far from new, but an app I can’t live without is Amazon Mobile. It’s a universal app, and as a customer, it’s got everything you need. You can browse the massive Amazon library of products from any of your devices, adding items to your cart quickly, and completing the order exactly when you think of something during the day, and not have to remember to do so when you get back to your computer. Once you’ve placed an order, you can track it and see your historical purchases, as well as check out the daily deals and manage your wish lists.

One of the great things about it is that you can snap pictures of items and scan barcodes while you’re at a physical store to compare prices. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a store with my wife, killing time, when I come across something I’d like to pick up, quickly do a barcode scan and put it right back on the shelf, because I can save a ton of money and have it shipped for free – fast!

Amazon actually has a few different apps in the App Store, including a more visually oriented shopping app called Windowshop which is pretty cool too, but I always find I preferred the original. It’s always worked exceptionally well for me, and I find myself using it – constantly.

[Free - App Store link]

Calorific – @andrewwray

If you’ve recently set a goal to drop a few pounds and need an effective calorie-counting companion app to help you along the way then look no further than Calorific for iPhone. This calorie-counting app is very simple and straightforward in design and does away with complicated food categories and menus in order to help you quickly add meals to your daily calorie intake.

Instead of presenting you with a myriad of options for different foods, meals and snacks, Calorific breaks down your intake into ‘Great’, ‘OK’ and ‘Bad’ food types with different serving sizes. This makes keeping up with your calorie log a fast and streamlined experience with very little effort! Just jump into the app and tap on which meal you’re having for the day, then select the food score and the approximate amount of calories you think the meal contains. That’s it! You can even mix and match food types and serving sizes if you’re having a mixed meal, or drill down into specific foods and meals within the app itself if you aren’t sure how many calories your meal contains.

Calorific will also keep a running history of the calories you’ve taken in on a daily basis and spits out a general score of how healthy you’ve been eating, along with a nice profile feature that will help tackle your weight loss goals. This app has made it easier than ever for me to keep track of my food and calorie intake on-the-fly without any hassle thanks to its unique approach to counting calories — go ahead and give it a try!

[Free - App Store link]

Wikipanion – @JorjLim

Wikipanion is a free wikipedia app for both the iPhone and iPad. It acts as a fairly standard wikipedia app that displays articles, pretty much identical to the website.

It splits the different titles and subtitles into a really easy to navigate contents panel, to save you time, from having to scroll up and down to find a specific piece of information.

If there is word you don’t understand, you can also look it up in wiktionary (with pronunciations) from the options menu, which will also let you change the font size, or even change the font to “serif” to make it easier to read.

It has a location based search option, so you can search for articles that are relevant to things around you, which is perfect for holidays when you want to know more about your surroundings.

One of my favourite features in Wikipanion, is the ability to add custom ‘topic-specific’ wikis (Wikiquote, Apple Wiki etc.) and view them in the exact same format as regular wikipedia. If a custom wiki that you use, isn’t in their database, you can request it to be added.

There is a pro version for £2.99, which lets you save articles for offline reading, and have article queues, to load multiple articles in the background, however most casual wikipedia readers will be perfectly happy with the free version.

[Free for iPhone - App Store link] [Free for iPad - App Store link]

Magic Painter – @Alli_Flowers

I paid $2.99 for Magic Painter last week, and now it’s free. I don’t know if it’s going to stay free, but go grab it while you can. This app is awesome! I used to have something similar on Palm that I loved, so when I saw this, I knew I had to have it.

Unlike apps like Brushes or Art Rage, Magic Painter is for those of us with no artistic talent whatsoever. I’ve already made wallpaper for both my iPhone and my Mac that really pop. You start with a blank canvas, and you can not only choose any colour you want, but you can also choose from a variety of textures, or a photo from your photo album. From here, you simply choose a brush that paints a design on your background, like stars, vines, or swirls. Of course, you get a fairly wide variety of colours from which to choose as well.

I’ve had a ton of fun with it, and I think you will, too.

[Free - iTunes link]

Hanging with Friends – @skeetobite

My pick of the week this week is Hanging with Friends. This game is by the developers of Words with Friends, but is a Hangman style game between two players. There are many aspects that are carried over from Words with Friends – points for using letters, having a tile region that gives you limited letters to spell words, and many elements of the game visually look like Words with Friends. But this is hangman, where you challenge each other to guess words, and whomever loses enough times has their avatar fall into a pit of lava! Throw in lifelines (along with a method of earning coins to use more lifelines), random triple word/double word/triple letter/double letter bonus tiles, and you have a great guessing game! I found this to be more addicting than Words with Friends. If you are Words with Friends fan, you should give this game a shot – and go ahead an challenge me, I am not too hard to beat.

[$1.99 - App Store link]

Sherlock – @reneritchie

I had to spend last weekend coding and wanted to have something on the TV to generate some noise. I fired up Netflix, checkout out the new arrivals section, and after flirting with some childhood glee in the form of War Games, Starman, and Blue Thunder, I quickly settled on the new British series, Sherlock.

A modern re-imagining of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, it has all the traditional elements smashed to bits and brilliantly cobbled back together into a smart, taught series of 3 90 minute episode. The first one is great. The second one is okay. The third one is fantastic. (Though there’s this final misdirect in the third episode that I really wish they’d had the courage to just go with — would have made for a fantastic second series.)

And, of course, an iPhone plays a pivotal part in the series. So grab some popcorn and spicy drink and queue this gorgeous show up on your iPad or Apple TV. The game is most certainly afoot.

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!

Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

• Yodel-Oh!: He wants to climb the mountain. They want to shove him off. And your challenge is simply to score as many points as possible before Hans takes a header off the cliff. [$0.99 for iPhone - App Store link] [$0.99 for iPad - App Store link]

• Smarter Shopping: Loaded with unique recipes, nutrition analysis, reviews of new products, and many other resources to help you understand your food, health, lifestyle, and shopping options. [Free for iPhone - App Store link]

• Verbs: Now with Facebook chat! [$0.99 for iPhone - App Store link]

• GENESIA: A turn based strategic game. Several crafts are at your disposal to build this New World : farmers, lumberjacks, blacksmiths, carpenters, soldiers… But all of this won’t be done easily for other Governors are striving just as you, on other territories. It’s your economy’s development, your military force and technological advancement that will lead you to the term of your engagement. [$6.99 for iPad - App Store link]

• Wikipanion: Now you can browse and find supported third party mediawiki-powered wikis! [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 TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most 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 (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Chris’ Pick: GPA+

While still lacking some features (as of our review) this app offers a wide variety of options and settings for tracking courses, assignments, and GPA over the school year. You can add courses and individual assignments, you can track your semester or cumulative GPA, and it provides tools to determine how well you need to do to improve or maintain your GPA. While a little buggy at times, and limited in some cases to the type of data you can enter, it provides an all-in-one solution for any student who wants to track their semester in one iPhone application. Some of our concerns in the review were addressed with various updates that have been provided. [$1.99 - iTunes link]

EleMints – A full featured periodic table of elements, with enough data and versatility for most students. A little more expensive, but the features should wow any potential chemistry student (plus with the updates I have read about, it should address some of the issues I had in the review). [$4.99 - iTunes link]

Wikipanion – While Wikipedia should never, NEVER be used as a reference in a paper, it can be used to get some general information about a topic. Wikipanion is a great iPhone app that interfaces with Wikipedia. Students can use it as a source of general information to look up a variety of topics for just about any class they may take. [Free - iTunes link]

James’ Pick: Appigo’s Todo

Back in May, I selected Appigo’s Todo as my pick of the week.  While I use it more as a business app, this does not exclude its ability to be a robust app for students as well (students have things to do as well, no?).  Todo offers students the ability to create projects with different sub-tasks and prioritize them accordingly.  Don’t take my word for it…TiPB’s Matt Sawyers (aka msbaylor on the forums) reviewed Todo in his Round Robin. [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Justin’s Pick: Cocktails+

I guess I’ve been out of school too long and haven’t used any apps I think are “Back to Schoolish”. Unless it’s back to party school college! then I guess I would say Cocktails+ [$2.99 - iTunes link] and a very good free one called 5800+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes Free [Free - iTunes link]

Leanna’s Pick: ACT MATH Foundation

f you’re in high school and thinking about college, then the ACT exam is likely in your future. Since studying is high on your priority list, you could go to your local bookstore and purchase a heavy review book, or pick up ACT MATH Foundation from the App Store. This app reviews 361 topics that are covered by the ACT Math exam and has practice tests with instant detailed score results. Indriam Inc. also offers similar apps for the GED, GRE, SAT, and GMAT. Studying has never been so fun! [$1.99 on sale - iTunes link]

Matt’s Pick: iHomework

After coming from a palm pilot, I used DueYesterday and missed it very much. Having said that, there are several options out there, but iHomework seems to be the best assignment & grade tracker (and the closest to what I used to use). The application can easily track multiple classes and multiple assignments in each class. One of the really neat things about the app is its grade tracking. It has the ability to do simple grade tracking and more advanced tracking (weighted assignments). With these two types of systems, this makes it a perfect solution for both high school and college students. [$0.99 - iTunes link]

GRE Connect – Recently I have been preparing for the GRE and I scouted out a number of different apps. So far GRE Connect seems to be the best. It not only has a wealth of information – explanations, questions & answers, but it also has some very nifty progress tracking, diagnostic test and quizzes to prepare you for the GRE. Further more if you buy their Desktop application, you can sync with it and keep everything up to date. This, however, will set you back an additional $20, but you are still able to backup for free. [$9.99 - iTunes Link]

iStudiez Pro – iStudiez Pro has the best graphical interface for tracking assignments, but lacks any type of grade tracking. If all you want to do it track assignments, then this has a very nice calendar-view feature. [$1.99 - iTunes Link]

Rene’s Pick: QuickOffice

Though higher education and I agreed to cease hostilities and go our separate ways many moons ago, based on my dim and distant memories there was some need to write and perhaps calculate… stuff. Kidding aside, if you need any type of document editing capability, QuickOffice will help you get your learn on. [$12.99 on sale - iTunes link]

reQall – reQall for iPhone is a client for reQall’s web service (free or pro for $30 a year). David Pogue shows it off with typical… Poguiness on YouTube but the quick version is reQuall lets you capture and organize ideas and tasks in a variety of easy and efficient ways. [Free - iTunes link]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!