Like Rene, my most-used apps of 2011 are probably the built in iPhone and iPad Safari browser, Mail app, and Reminders, Calendars, etc. via Siri. That's just the nature of the job. But since I'm TiPb's resident app editor, I also get to spend time with an incredible amount and array of App Store apps. Here are the ones I spent the most of my time with this year.

Starbucks

I love Starbucks and spend way too much money on $3 to $4 drinks. The Starbucks app further inhibits my addiction and has been one of my favorite apps since its release. Being able to reload my card with a touch of a button and pay for my drinks with a scan of my iPhone is almost too much awesomeness for me to handle.

• Free - App Store link

Tweetbot

There are many great Twitter applications out there, but Tweetbot always comes out on top as my favorite. I'm a huge fan the smart gestures like triple click to reply and swiping to the right to view conversations. I also thoroughly enjoy the sounds & animations that hold true to Tapbots' style.

• $2.99 - App Store link

iMovie

I have a 16 months daughter whom I get gigabytes worth of video footage of every couple months. iMovie is such a great app for creating nicely edited movies to share on YouTube and ultimately on my blog. iMovie is by no means a fancy editor, but it's a breeze to get quick, simple edits completed and runs fantastically on an iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

• $4.99 - App Store link

Instagram

Instagram is by far my favorite way to share photos. The filters are great, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite feature of Instagram - the social integration is. Instead of editing a photo and sharing it to the networks of my choice, Instagram has it's own platform where I can share my photos and view other people's photos and leave comments and 'likes'. And because I still want to share my photos to Facebook and Twitter, it's nice that I can do that at the same time with no extra effort.

• Free - App Store link

WordPress

I use WordPress for my blog and the WordPress app is perfect for blogging on the go. Often times I just want to throw up a quick photo of my daughter, and the WordPress app makes this super fast and easy. This year, WordPress finally added the functionality to choose pixel width/height of uploaded photos, and it was this feature that turned the WordPress app into one of my most-used apps.

• Free - 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!

Brodit car mount - @chrisoldroyd

This week I decided to source a car mount for my iPhone 4S. Having previously used Brodit mounts, I was happy to look at them again and boy was I not disappointed.

Brodit mounts are quite simply the best car mounts you can get for any device, they make them for all the popular phones but who cares about that, only the iPhone matters anyway! There are two parts to the mounting system. The first part is called a Proclip and this part is car specific. The clips are all designed to fix in some way to your car’s interior without the need for any fixings and there is never any damage when they are removed.

Once you have your Proclip chosen, you then select your iPhone holder; they come in loads of different configurations, some with chargers and some with simple pass through connectors and others without anything. These holders then screw into the Proclip and that's it done!

The iPhone slots in perfectly and they are solid as a rock, a perfect way to mount your iPhone in your car, I cannot praise these mounts highly enough, they are simply the best!

[Brodit]

CatPaint - @sethclifford

"CatPaint is the premier cat-based image editor for the iPhone and iPod Touch."

And with that, my life was forever changed. Cats... and LASERS. That's all you need to know.

I'm having a busy, stressful week and this app makes me smile every time I look at it. Also, the icon is so epic, I want to weep at its awesomeness.

[CatPaint - $0.99 - iTunes link]

AssistiveTouch - @JorjLim

My iPhone 4's Sleep/Wake Button decided to stop working. It doesn't click in and doesn't turn the screen off.

After the Apple Store told me I'd have to pay £120 for an out of warranty repair, I sought other options.

I came across 'AssistiveTouch' in the Accessibility settings. When you turn it on, a little 'floating' dot appears on the screen which opens a new menu. This menu allows you to perform hardware actions, without having the press any physical buttons.

Some of the options include, rotating the device, simulating a shake, pressing the home button and of course, pressing the sleep button.

While pressing the on-screen sleep button isn't as easy as just pressing the physical sleep button, its definitely better than spending £120 on the repair.

Weather Alert USA - @azeis

This past week in the Northeast we had a bit of an unexpected snow storm blow through. It's the first time in all my years I've ever seen such a huge snow storm come through New Jersey in October, and I tried my best to be prepared. I knew I would be out of the house running errands since it was the weekend and wanted to keep up with the latest conditions as best I could, for which I'd obviously turn to my phone. While the stock weather app on iOS is decent for the most part, I knew I'd need something that went above and beyond to keep me updated on the go -- for that I discovered Weather Alert USA.

Weather Alert USA is a great app for weather geeks. Not only does it provide current temperatures and conditions, but it also has amazing depth when it comes to severe weather alerts which is just what I needed. It allows you to easily setup alerts by location and will notify you (with a rather annoying alert tone) of any weather alerts in your area. Push alerts are available for nearly everything you can think of, from hurricanes to winter storm warnings to dust advisories and more.

Day to day weather reports are a breeze as well as Weather Alert USA gives you easy access to weekly and hourly conditions, radars and warnings, detailed weather maps, sunrise/sunset times and much more. Truly one of the best weather apps I had found and more than adequate to keep even the biggest weather buff in the know. Of all the weather apps available to iPhone users, Weather Alert USA definitely gets my pick as number one.

[$3.99 - App Store Link]

Sonos - @jdipane

Music is a huge part of my daily routine, and recently I picked up a Sonos system for my house, and the Sonos controller for iOS makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable. If you have not heard of Sonos it is a wireless speaker system for your house or office which you can use your favorite music channels like Pandora, MOG, Spotify and many others. Being able to control the two different zones in my house, what is playing, and how loud it is all from the comfort of any place I can take my iPhone with me. If you have a Sonos system be sure to check the controller out, and if you don't have a Sonos system yet, check out our reviews.

[Free - App Store link]

Instapaper 4 - @reneritchie

Seth picked Instapaper a couple of weeks ago. Good for him. He got first crack at explaining why he likes it so much, and his reasons are probably much more lucid and reasoned than mine. But I'm taking my shot anyway:

Instapaper lets me read stuff. That's it.

And that's much more than I'd otherwise manage to do. The sad truth is the more I write the less I have time to read. When I come across a fascinating, insightful, provocative, or otherwise interesting article on the web, I almost never have time to read it then and there. And that means, without a way to triage and save them for later, like Kaizer Soze's devil, with a puff -- or in this case a tap -- they'd be gone.

Instapaper is that way to triage and save. If an article grabs me, I knock it over to Instapaper and then later, when I'm waiting for something, when I'm between states, when I finally get to take a break, they're waiting for me.

Everything I want to read, all in my pocket.

That's Instapaper.

[$4.99 - App Store link]

Siegecraft - @GeorgiaTiPb

I love Tower Defense games. It's my passion. Siegecraft is my current Tower Defense of choice. It has gorgeous graphics and cool weapons, and it's a lot of fun. It's a little more interactive than most, and you have to aim so that adds to the challenge. Plus, can I say trebuchets and catapults? It's universal, It's adorable, it's enjoyable, and best of all -- right now it's only a buck!

[$0.99 - App Store Link]

Newsstand - @Alli_Flowers

I admit I was one of those laughing loudest when iOS 5 was first introduced with Newsstand. It seemed especially silly on the iPhone. So I never gave it a second look - until yesterday when I got my iPad 2.

I started looking through it to see if they offered anything of any interest whatsoever, and lo-and-behold, there was Wired magazine. I love Wired and already subscribe. Sometimes I don't read it because I'll throw it down with a pile of other mail and just never get back to it. Or it's one more thing I don't want to stuff in my purse. I have a ton of excuses. But I love e-reading, so I linked my account and was up and running in no time.

Newsstand actually makes reading a magazine a pleasant experience, and it's definitely easier to carry around a bunch of magazines on your iPad than in your purse, briefcase, or hands. Side to side scrolling goes page to page, with up/down to read an entire article. I got a kick out of some of the ads and some of the headlines being animated. It's more than just an e-magazine. It should be like this!

The selection is still minimal - there aren't any other magazines that I either already subscribe to, or have any interest in, but that should come with time. If you haven't already done so, take a look and see some of the samples they give you just so you can get a feel for the product. Then just wait for your favorite publication!

WordPress - @llofte

I used to hate blogging from my iPhone or iPad, but the WordPress app for iOS has come a long way since then. Now, I can make a lot of formatting edits and insert pics at the exact size I want - this was a biggie for me.

Combined with Photo Stream, blogging photos of my daughter with my iPad is quick, painless, and can be done while relaxing on the couch. WordPress on my iPhone is great for blogging on the go or for correcting a typo that I notice on a TiPb post.

I used to strictly blog from my laptop or desktop, but about 80% of my personal blogging is now done mobile thanks to the WordPress app for iOS. I'll admit that most of TiPb writing is still done on the desktop, but that's because it involves much more and it's just faster and more productive to do it on my iMac or MacBook.

[Free - App Store link]

W.E.L.D.E.R. - @iMuggle

I haven't been playing too many games these days but this one has me hooked. It's currently featured in the App Store and on sale for 50% off regular price. I am definitely glad I stumbled upon it while simply browsing.

If you enjoy games like Words With Friends or Scrabble this is definitely a game you'll want to pick up. It's somewhat of a fusion between Scrabble, Tetris, and the old school slider puzzles. You know, the ones you'd have to slide the pieces around to make a picture with only one free space. You simply swap letters either left, right, up, down, or diagonal to make words. You only get so many swaps though and for every 250 points you score you'll earn an additional 5 swaps. When you run out of swaps the game ends.

It's definitely a great time killer if you need something that isn't fact paced and you can pick up and leave off at your leisure. It also features GameCenter integration where you can unlock achievements as well.

$1.99 - App Store Link

The Great Jitters: Pudding Panic - @mgmiller8693 (Reader's Choice)

Playing this game reminds me of the great funhouse rides at the amusement park when I was growing up, where creepy and sometimes scary characters jump out at you from out of nowhere. I've only played the first few levels so far, but I love the game's music, the fun and challenging gameplay, its sharp graphics, and the amazing sound/visual effects.

As per the game's description in the App Store, your goal in the game is to lead a fearful blob of pudding through a spooky haunted house and scary monsters with freakish weapons and get to the exit as fast as you can.

It's of course a very fitting game for the Halloween season that just passed, but it's so likeable and addictive that I can definitely see myself playing it all year long. It has Game Center built-in, which is nice. I found the first 3 or 4 levels to be fairly easy, but beyond that, it definitely gets more challenging.

[$1.99 - 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!

WordPress has updated their iOS app to version 2.9. The app now comes with a row above the keyboard with a number of rich-text and formatting options, including the ability to insert links and a new fullscreen editing mode.

It's easy to manage your WordPress blog or site from your iOS device. With WordPress for iOS, you can moderate comments, create or edit posts and pages, and add images or videos with ease. All you need is a WordPress.com blog or a self-hosted WordPress.org site running 2.9.2 or higher.

• A Feature-Rich Content Editor. Now you can easily format text, make bulleted lists, create links, and do all kinds of other fancy stuff. (It’s about time, right?)
• Full Screen Editing. No more teeny-weeny content editor — now you can view more text at a time while you post on the go.
• Reading Made Easy. Keeping track of your favorite blogs has never been easier. Browse all the latest posts on blogs you follow in one place, right from your iPhone.
• Quick Photo will now use the post format for images (if your theme supports it).
• You can now post pictures that you’ve already taken with Quick Photo.
• Your stats referrer links and comment links can now be opened right from this app.

I won't be using the new features too much, as I like to use Markdown for Mail on my iPad for the right formatting whenever I blog on-the-go, but I'm sure many bloggers using WordPress will welcome this update with open arms. WordPress has lacked many of the features most bloggers see as a necessity in their iOS app until this update, so go grab it and start playing around!

WordPress for iOS is available for free on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Free - 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.

Fomola has updated their iPad blogging app, Blogsy, with the ability to edit WordPress pages.

Blogsy is a tool designed specifically to take full advantage of the iPad’s unique touch functionality. Adding your photos and videos is as easy as dragging them from the media sidebar and dropping them into your blog post. This makes writing blog posts as easy as it should be, saving you from the hassle of manually copy/pasting embed codes or links. Simply put, we think that Blogsy makes writing so easy that you will use it instead of your computer.

• Easily drag and drop images from Flickr, Picasa and Google Image Search, or using the built-in Web browser (yes, easily drag and drop images from any website!) Drag and drop videos from YouTube. (Either using the new iFrame or the old flash embed method with colors, borders and related videos.)
• Found a good article? Drag and drop it’s URL to instantly create a hyperlink in your blog post.. No coding required!
• Style your blog posts with the tap of a button - bold, italics, text alignment and more.
• Full support for multiple accounts/blogs for all supported services.
• Easily change image and video properties and alignment through menus.
• Write and edit HTML. Though using Blogsy’s 'Rich Side', you’ll probably never want to; everything from bolding text to creating links to image alignment can be done with the tap of a finger.
• Set or create lables/tags and categories, toggle comments on and off, and set visibility.
• Create scheduled posts, online drafts, and pending-review posts.
• Support for local drafts.
• Edit or delete online posts.
• Upload images from your iPad photo library to WordPress, Picasa, or Flickr.

I've never been one to blog from my iPad because of the limitations that most apps (and Safari) have on photo management. Blogsy has the potential to change that.

Blogsy is available on the iPad for $4.99. Screenshots after the break.

[iTunes 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.

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!

• iCookbook: A full-featured cookbook with voice control - just speak simple commands to move to the next step, manage timers, view notes, and more. [$3.99 - iTunes link]

• Due: Set up reminder with alerts in seconds—up to 3x faster than Calendar app! New update brings native iPad support and lots more. [$4.99 - iTunes linke]

• WordPress: Blog from your iPhone or iPad! Update to version 2.7 brings performance improvements as well as a cleaned-up UI. [Free- iTunes link]

• WebCamera: Turn your iPhone into a high quality wireless webcam with microphone. [$1.99 - iTunes link]

• JumpShip Thrust Control: As captain of a proton class fighter, you've just escaped death by evading rouge fighters. Now inside the tunnels of a large asteroid, with your auto levelling gyro broken, you've got to use your thrusters manually. An addictive and challenging side-scrolling game for iPhone and iPad. [Free - iTunes link]

Any other big apps or game releases or updates today? If you pick any of these up, let us know what you think!

We let you know a couple days ago there were a few apps that had already been updated via the App Store to support iOS4. Since then we’ve seen a few more roll out.  Some developers have really taken advantage of the new APIs in iOS4.  Others seem to just be adding compatibility at this point.  Let’s hope a lot of them are working on substantial updates.  Hit the jump for some more iOS4 compatible apps!

Evernote

Evernote (version 3.3.5) is one of the first I’ve seen to implement quite a few 4.0 APIs.  Not only does it come complete with fast app switching integration, but your notes will also be able to sync in the background.  This will be extremely useful for users who like to upload pictures.  I’m always doing this when I’m comparing prices.  I’ll take pictures of SKUs from different stores and tag them accordingly which allows me to flip through later and compare which ones are cheaper and which ones have rebates attached, etc.  Much easier than writing a note with all that information.  The down side to that has always been pictures take a bit to sync with the Evernote servers at times and keeping the app open the entire time was somewhat of a pain. Thanks Evernote! (Read more about Evernote and iOS4 here.) [iTunes link]

LinkedIn

For now, it looks like LinkedIn has added support for fast app switching, but I don’t see much more than that at this point.  I’d love to see the LinkedIn app get a lot more intuitive than it is.  Hopefully they’ll be adding more support in future updates.  If you caught anything I didn’t on this one, let us know in the comments! [iTunes link]

Windows Messenger

Not only is this one new to the App Store, it came out of the gate with iOS4 integration built-in.  It also supports alerts for Hotmail as well, so you’ll get notifications in-app when you receive new e-mails via your Hotmail account.  And again, if you see anything worth noting, let us know! [iTunes link]

Pandora

I know a lot of you have been waiting for this one. This update just hit the app store a few short hours ago. Pandora background streaming was demonstrated at WWDC 2010 and lots of users were excited to be able to allow Pandora to finally run in the background. This feature has been available for other mobile platforms for quite a while. [iTunes link]

Loopt

Loopt is another company that's taken advantage of additional APIs available behind iOS4. Fast app switching, PNS alerts, and grid based navigation are a few of the features the new version of Loopt offers. [iTunes link]

WordPress

One of the most popular blogging engines on the planet comes out on release iOS release day claiming Retina Display support? Even if they're just scaling text and UI elements, good on them. [iTunes link]

Know of any other iOS 4 compatible, feature-empowered apps that we may have missed? Drop them in comments and we'll include them in the next round up.

Tweetie 2 and Twitterrific 2 aren't just two of the best Twitter clients for the iPhone, they're two of the best mobile micro-blogging interfaces on the planet and now both WordPress and Tumblr are taking advantage of them -- which is ridiculously awesome for iPhone users.

WordPress now lets you "Post and Read via Twitter API", and they have a complete walkthrough posted on how to set it up.

We’ve enabled posting to and reading of WordPress.com blogs via the Twitter API. Any app that allows you to set a custom API URL will work. This project came out of our Quebec meetup and was developed by Team 55 (Andy, Terry, and Raphael).

Inspired by WordPress, Tumblr has also jumped on board:

The really cool thing - because our following models follow a lot of the same principles, we’ve been able to take advantage of a ton of native features:

• Retweeting = Reblogging
• Replying = Reblogging w/ commentary
• Favoriting = Liking
• “@david” = ”http://david.tumblr.com/”
• Conversations = Reblogs

So if you use Tweetie or Twitterrific, and WordPress or Tumblr, the API elves have given you an early present. Let us know how well it works for you.

[via @roustem]

For those of you waiting for another blog editor other than TypePad, WordPress users rejoice! WordPress for iPhone is now available from the iTunes store for free! Word came this morning from TUAW that the native app would be available today. You can read more about the application here. 

This app allows you to manage several blogs, create and edit posts and even upload photos to your blog directly from your iPhone. This is a strong competitor to TypePad's offering, especially since WordPress is free, though they do appear very similar. The one function WordPress for iPhone does this is unique is the ability to preview a post. Check out the gallery below!

Sadly, it's not all wine and roses blog posts and galleries here at TiPb, something about our server isn't sitting right with the app, it crashes on configure. Ah, full size computers: we wish we could quit you.