It will be a big day tomorrow with Apple's "Let's Rock" event, and TiPb should be rockin' as well. But for today, in the calm before the storm, it's time to shake it up with App Avalanche 8!

New

Kanji Flip, from Andre Khromov, is a flash-card type app for learning Japanese Kanji. It incorporates an intelligent progress tracking system for faster learning by "remembering" which kanji you have the most difficulty with and flashing those cards more frequently. It includes 2,230 kanji from the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. If you want a study aid for learning Japanese Kanji, get it here for $2.99. 

Alli's Jigsaw Puzzle, from Rogobete Christian, is a puzzle game for your iPhone that provides 30 high-quality puzzle pictures for you to solve or use your own pictures from your photo library. Just tilt your iPhone for either portrait or landscape mode. There is also sound, music and animation, with three different themes to choose from. Get it here for only $.99 cents.

AccelaStudy Vocabulary Builder, by Charles Sieg of Renkara Media Group, Inc., is a flash-card approach to increasing your English vocabulary for anything from graduate school exams, university entrance exams, professional advancement, or just the satisfaction of building your own personal vocabulary and language proficiency. More than 500 words are available with synonyms, definitions, and use in a sentence. Many more features are included. Get it here for $14.99.

What's Hot

MLB.com At Bat, from Major League Baseball Advanced Media, lets you follow every Major League Baseball game on your iPhone. While you're taking a 7th-inning stretch at work, see how your favorite team is doing. It includes real-time box scores, play-by-play, and video highlights. The app also detects your network to provide the most efficient video encoding. Get it here for $4.99. 

Dynolicious, by BunsenTech, LLC, is an app that uses the iPhone's built-in accelerometer to measure your auto's 0-60 acceleration, quarter-mile elapsed time, horsepower, lateral G's, and several other performance metrics. A history is saved so you can compare different performances and track developing trends. Use this app to track and compare performance after making modifications to your car. Please use on a closed course for your safety and safety of others. Get it here for $12.99.

NetNewsWire, from NewsGator Technologies, Inc., is an RSS reader for your iPhone for reading millions of sites and weblogs that publish RSS feeds. When you read a feed on this app, it is marked as being read everywhere so you won't see it pop up again on your Mac or other computer. Save items for reading later via the Clippings feature. Get it here for free.

Top Paid Apps

Seismometer, by Johan Nordberg, is an app that measures everything that vibrates, shakes, moves, or jostles. Next time you're in an earthquake, just whip out your iPhone and pretend you're a real seismologist! This app uses the iPhone's accelerometer to take measurements on two axes, then calculates the resulting energy and produces the results on a rolling logarithmic scale. Get it here for $.99 cents.

PocketGuitar, from Shinya Kasatani, turns your iPhone into a virtual guitar. Press and strum strings to create sounds from six different instruments: acoustic-electric guitar, electric guitar, classical guitar, muted guitar, electric bass, and ukulele. Choose effects like distortion, chorus and delay and edit parameters. Get it here for $.99 cents.

Election '08, from Aaron Brethorst, is an iPhone app that keeps you current on up-to-the-minute polling data for all 50 States and the District of Columbia for the 2008 Presidential Election. Will it be Obama or McCain? View graphical representations of this election and see how your candidate is faring in the battleground states and view the sources of the many different polls. Don't forget to vote! Get it here for $.99 cents.

Top Free Apps

Sportacular, from Jeff Hamilton and StreamingScores.com, is an app that provides fast, up-to-the-minute scores, standings, stats and news for several major college and professional sports. Get the skinny on MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and NCAA football and basketball games. League and conference standings and the NCAA Top 25 are updated daily. Get it here for free.

WhitePages Mobile, by WhitePages.com, is the iPhone equivalent of accessing more than 180 million people in the U.S. for finding contact info anytime, anywhere. Use the Reverse Phone Lookup feature to identify callers you don't recognize.  Use the Auto-Detect Current Location feature to get maps and directions. Check it out for many more features, and get it here for free.

Puzzloop Free, from Hudson Entertainment, is the lite version of the original Puzzloop game first introduced in 1998. Eliminate balls that roll along a rail and connect three or more balls of the same kind to eliminate them. Get the lite version here for free.

Thanks for stopping by this week for App Avalanche 8.  Be sure to stop by next week for another Avalanche of Apps. While you're here, what are YOUR favorite apps, and why?