The iPhone app environment is absurdly overcrowded and hard to navigate - AppsFire is one of my favorite solutions to that problem. The service lets you email links to apps you want to share on your phone. It's simple but so useful! A contest to start the hype for apps before they get buried in the app store is smart.

We'll get to learn about great apps and the app makers will get a small amount of cash and a large amount of publicity. You can register to participate at the page for the AppStar Contest.

While Apple uses games from Electronic Arts and the I Am T-Pain app as examples of highly popular applications, these apps also profited from instant name recognition and a built-in fan base. For other apps, getting discovered in the Apps Store is getting increasingly hard as the competition heats up. Besides bringing a rather lackluster version of the genius feature to the App Store, Apple also hasn't made any significant improvements to the app discovery experience in iTunes and the mobile store.

CEO Bill Stone stated that:

"Handango is now offering developers the opportunity to sell the paid apps they create for the Android platform as well as offer any free apps when the first Android device launches. Customers can purchase apps via the Web and then download them to their device."

Handango will provide this golden opportunity to developers looking to profit from their apps on October 22, the anticipated launch date of the G1. Developers will be given several options for selling their app:

• Sell an app for a one-time purchase fee
• Sell an app for a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription fee

The plus side for Google and Handango is that App Store developers don't receive this many options to sell their apps. It could tempt a nice portion of developers to port their apps over to Android if the G1's launch is successful enough.

How Long Will it Last?

A small selection of apps have already been announced for Handango's catalog including Monopoly, The Weather Channel, Voice on the Go, EzQuote, and FitSync. Unfortunately, Google already has plans to allow developers to charge users to download an app. What will happen to Handango? If developers are smart, they'll offer their apps in both marketplaces if possible. Unless Google takes too long to implement the same payment options, Handango may have a little trouble in the future catering to developers trying to sell their apps.

AdMob will allocate ad impressions based on the quantity and quality of the inventory that each member contributes.

Given that developers have relatively few outlets to promote their applications outside of Apple's App Store, this looks like a good way for developers to get the word about their applications out to users. Given that the ads appear in other apps, the targeted users are obviously already interested in downloading iPhone apps.

Many thanks to Infacta for the use of their upcoming product (currently in private beta) Poll Daddy. I'm basically testing it out here for the first time publicly!

While other social networks have obviously provided their users with access to these kinds of apps and widgets for a long time already, this is a major step forward for Ning. Ning, according to its own stats, currently hosts over 1.5 million different social networks (how many of these are active is a different question, however) and has about 33 million registered users. If Ning wants to continue to compete with Facebook and other social networks, it simply needs this kind of open development environment to provide its users with the right set of features, though it also looks like Ning actually has an Apple-like approval process for new apps in place.

About Freshapps

On Freshapps, you don't "digg" an iPhone app, you "make fresh" instead. The homepage features the "freshest" apps - that is, the ones with the most votes. Underneath each app listed is a download link, a link to the comments about the app, and a link to the details where you can read the full description of the app. That description is just like what you would see in the iTunes App Store. You can also search Freshapps for keywords or browse through the pages of apps.

The site tracks the apps in a number of different ways. You can view a list of the newest apps, the ones with the most recent discussions, the most talked about apps of all time, and, of course, the freshest. For those, you can see both the freshest of all time as well as the freshest of the week.

"Fresh" Or Just "Popular"?

After playing around with the site for a little while, the only complaint we have is that the most popular apps aren't exactly what we would call "fresh." For this site, the word "fresh" doesn't necessarily mean what you would think - that is, new or recent. Instead, "fresh" means popular, which is why the "freshest" apps include what we now consider old standbys like Facebook, Pandora, and Wikipanion. That's not to say that you can't discover apps that are new to you here, but at this time, this doesn't look like the place to discover the absolute latest releases.

That problem stems from the fact that, like any crowdsourced Web 2.0 site, the site is only as good as the community that participates. If there aren't enough people around to submit the latest apps to the site, the data will get old fast. That's especially true for iPhone apps - the iPhone is a hot platform where new apps arrive every day, so there needs to be a good crowd of users on the site keeping up with that flow of information. Considering that the "freshest" apps only have some 20-odd votes, we're guessing there isn't a huge community that has discovered this site just yet. However, if that were to change, Freshapps has already laid the groundwork to provide us with a fun, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing site. Digg probably didn't have that many users from Day 1 either, so we're willing to give this site some time to pick up steam. If it does, we would love to use it.

Appsfire is a handy little service that makes it easy to share collections of your favorite apps with other people. There are a variety of ways to use it, but using it on the iPhone is the most pleasing, straightforward and clearly useful. This app indexes all your other apps, makes it easy to share with anyone and shows off the most popular apps shared by all users and users in your geographic region. It's far from perfect, but it's so useful anyway that we recommend you get it.

That said, there are some things about the app that could use some improvement. Days after I first synced my phone up with Appsfire, it has still only indexed 37 of the 43 apps I have on my phone. It's a little embarrassing to show off your collection of apps if some of the coolest ones don't show up. ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez tested it as well and says that, "It only saw 79 of my 107 apps (and one was wrong). Bummer. Still way cool though."

Since there's no App Store API that can be used, Appsfire has to learn about the apps its users have by brute force pinging the Store's directory. The company told me my apps would be found within hours but it doesn't look like they are going to show up. That's a real shame because several of the missing ones are among my favorites. Some that it's missing are obscure, but others like the NYT app are not.

Several of us tested the service and found that it only captures about 70% of the apps on our phones. That's pretty disappointing, but hopefully it will be fixed in time. For now, being able to share from that 70% is much better than not being able to share at all. Here are my favorites, here are Frederick Lardinois' and here's Sarah Perez's massive collection of apps she loves.

When looking at the app leader boards by region and "VIP Selections" (disclosure: my favorite apps are highlighted on the service) it would be really nice if you could learn more about the apps from inside the Appsfire interface. Instead the app store launches and Appsfire closes. This transition can be quite slow, too.

Those problems notwithstanding, it's pretty awesome to be able to share links to your favorite apps with other people via email in just a few clicks. You'd be silly not to grab this app; you're likely to regret it later in conversations about your favorite other apps if you don't.

We'd love to see links to the Appsfire pages of readers! Please leave yours in the comments below so we can discover what apps you like.

Below is a list of such apps - and it is a fairly wide-ranging list, and open to contention about what exactly is an "online collaboration platform". I've included the main Web Office suite players, as well as project mgmt apps and some wiki platforms. And I'm bound to have missed a couple of obvious apps (do me a favor and yell out which obvious apps I forgot to include, asap, in the comments!).

The poll is also multiple-choice, as I know a lot of people will use more than one of these apps (I know I do). So please participate in the poll and let's see which online collaboration platforms are the most popular.

I think a lot of users are going to appreciate this. I'm not so sure about app developers.

Rodney Rumford writes at FB app review blog FaceReviews that this will make the app developers' world a whole lot more competitive, since many apps spread largely through discovery by one friend on the profile page of another. It was via Rodney that I found this news.

So app developers are unlikely to be happy about this. Perhaps demotion of your app is better than having it be deleted?

Time to Throw a Party?

I don't think Rodney's concern will be at the top of users' minds, though. How will they (we) feel? As we read in our recent interview with an early Facebook user, which we think is pretty typical - there's a real backlash against app-overload, at least among long-time users. For some it's a backlash against Facebook apps at all!

On the other hand, many new users may appreciate the apps on the Facebook platform. Apps being hidden will presumably hinder our ability to stumble onto cool new ones. (Like this new near-Dodgeball integration into Facebook, for example.) If you, dear reader, weren't interested in finding cool new apps on the web - you probably wouldn't be reading this blog.

Maybe that's beside the point when it comes to Facebook apps though. They can be pretty annoying. I wonder how many people will move apps but still keep them and how many people will take this opportunity to delete them. I also wonder if few people will take advantage of the new "profile cleaner" and if in fact all of us just pile up detritus on these sites until we can't stand the load, we freak-out and leave.

Either way, I thought you'd appreciate reading about a way to hide Facebook apps - if only on principle!

So in this week's poll we're asking if you think Google Apps Premier is a tipping point, where a web-based Office Suite has became a viable competitor to Microsoft Office - for small and large businesses alike. Or do you think otherwise? Let us know...

The Google Apps Premier Edition includes Google's Gmail, Docs, Sites, and Video for Business services, as well as numerous tools for migrating from other email services and enhanced security features.

With this, Google is clearly pushing for a wider adoption of Google Apps in the enterprise. Google could probably support these customers itself, but having a network of local sales forces and support staff would be costly and probably not something that Google would want to undertake in this volatile economic climate.

Resellers will get recurring revenue for as long as the customer uses Google Apps and will be getting the service from Google with a 20% discount, which is about $40 a year per seat.

Interestingly, CapGemini's strategy is to "mix and match" Microsoft and Google office products - so it seems Google Apps will be a complement, moreso than a replacement, for Microsoft Office. Google too seems to be pushing the complement line. Robert Whiteside, Google enterprise manager for UK and Ireland, is quoted as saying: "If you look at the traditional desktop it is very focused on personal productivity. What Google Apps brings is team productivity."

"First, it allows the many thousands of workers who don't have their own PCs or their own copies of Office - from factory hands to call-center agents - to gain access to email, calendars, and other personal-productivity applications. Up to now, says Jones, licensing and data-storage costs have prohibited these "disenfranchised employees" from being given access to Office-style apps. Because Google charges only $50 a year per user for Apps and stores all email messages and other data in its own systems, it lowers the cost barrier substantially.

Second, says Jones, Google Apps simplifies collaboration, particularly between employees working at different companies [...]"

This is an interesting move by Google - not so much the outsourcing to CapGemini, because that is a common and almost necessary way to crack the enterprise market. Of more interest to me is how Google is positioning Google Apps as a complement to Microsoft Office. It's almost admitting that Google Apps isn't good enough to be a standalone office suite yet. And to be frank, they are right - it isn't. So for now, riding into the enterprise on the coattails of the big kahunas (MS Office and to a lesser extent IBM) is a pretty cunning strategy.

From apps developed natively for the Etelos marketplace to enterprise installs of Google Apps, MediaWiki and WordPress - the company expects a wide range of apps to make use of the offline functionality.

The Etelos offering is just the latest from a company that offers primarily enterprise app developers a wide range of services. The idea behind Etelos is that the company takes care of everything from billing to customer management, allowing developers to make and sell great apps. Now those apps will be able to live offline, one more good reason to offer apps through the platform.

App account administrators (on the customer side) will be able to set varying permission levels to determine which users can access what information for syncing offline.

For the immediate future, at least, when in-flight wifi still seems a ways off and connectivity in general isn't what it ought to be - this sounds like a good idea. Offline access and later syncing is something that sounds uninspiring in theory but is very exciting when you're using it. Google Gears offers another level of emotional experience when you get to feel disappointment over the shaky quality of syncing once back online. There's certainly room for competition in the world of offline access to web apps.