With all the news from the event, one thing was clear: RIM desperately wants developers to build for Blackberry and is now actively enticing them with a slew of new offerings designed to win them over.

One of the biggest announcements made yesterday involved the launch of new APIs (application programming interfaces) for third-party developers. The APIs offered include a new advertising service, a payments service, location services, and the general availability of Blackberry's own Push service, which had never before been made available to outside developers. What this means is that developers now have the tools to build applications that rival those already available on many other smartphones today, most notably, the iPhone. In some cases, the Blackberry APIs even offer something the iPhone doesn't such as is the case with the payments service which allows you to pay for apps on your next mobile phone bill.

The location services include a geo-location API that will use cell tower triangulation as a backup for when GPS fails, making location-based applications more reliable. There are also services for determining your phone's location on a map and another that helps estimate travel time for driving directions. It's obvious to see how these types of services could help build new and useful mobile applications for the Blackberry.

Also revealed was the new Blackberry Advertising Service, an offering designed to help developers generate revenue from their mobile applications. Through partnerships with ad networks, developers can easily integrate mobile advertising within their apps and track the ad's effectiveness with an included analytics package. It's even possible for these ads to access the phone's core features. For example, you'll be able to initiate a phone call from an ad or add a calendar entry from an ad. That's an innovation that many other mobile handhelds are not yet offering. These types of interactions should have a clear appeal to the many business-minded corporate Blackberry users who are often more interested in getting things done than they are with playing mindless games.

That being said, the game-playing crowd isn't being ignored either. Also announced was support for OpenGL ES, a graphics API for 3D games. While this doesn't quite put the Blackberry on par with what's available for iPhone, it's a move that's designed to keep Blackberry at least somewhat competitive in the field of mobile gaming.

Other announcements included new support for mobile developers looking to build applications with the languages and tools they already know and use. Java developers will get a new GUI builder that lets them create mobile interfaces using a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with drag-and-drop capabilities. Adobe developers will be able to use the company's Flash Platform technology and Adobe Creative Suite tools to build rich, mobile apps as well. This is another area where Apple falls short - Flash still doesn't work on the iPhone. Instead Flash developers have to use special Adobe software to convert apps written in Flash to a format that's iPhone-compatible. Also, designers can now use Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver to build both themes and widgets using the new Blackberry Theme Studio 5.0.

Apps, Apps, Apps!

In addition to the RIM-specific announcements, a number of companies also used the Developer Conference as the launching pad for new Blackberry applications and related announcements.

Ebay, for example, unveiled a brand-new mobile app that lets you search for items, view descriptions and photos, bid, watch items, and more. It will also tap into Blackberry's now open Push services API to deliver real-time alerts as to when you're outbid on an auction. Considering that the company has already generated $400 million this year using eBay's iPhone application, this new Blackberry app should be a big hit among mobile users when it launches next month.

The popular location-based social networking service called Loopt also revealed a major update for Blackberry which includes something the iPhone can't offer due to the nature of the device: it runs in the background to continually update your location in real-time. This is one of the iPhone's biggest flaws according to critics, since so many mobile applications take advantage of always-on connectivity to track your location for the benefit of specific mobile apps. In Loopt's case, the app knows where you are in order to show you nearby friends and local businesses which you can rate. It even offers mobile coupons for the retailers and restaurants in your vicinity.

Finally, Xobni, the Outlook email search plugin that discovers social connections in your inbox, revealed their new Blackberry application, too. As with the desktop software, Xobni for Blackberry will let you find contacts in your address book quickly using Xobni Rank technology which returns results ranked based on frequency and freshness of your communication. The application will be made available sometime early next year.

The Blackberry Developer Conference continues until Thursday, so stay tuned for even more news over the coming days.

Flickr has organized these third-party apps into a "garden," complete with user favorites, tags, descriptions and screenshots. The App Garden represents a significant evolution from the former "services" section on the user side, and the revamp includes new features for developers, who can now use the Garden as a tool to help users discover their products. Read on for details and a few spotlighted Flickr apps we thought were fun.

"When you click on one of your apps," Pachenko continued, "you will be taken to the owner view of your app page. This page is where you tell the world about your app - provide a description, link to a website, set screenshots, and add tags. When you're ready, change the privacy setting to public. That will make your app visible to other users and allow it to show up in searches."

Now, for end users, here are a few apps we picked from the Garden that we think you might like.

Bubblr Makes Comics

Make comic strips from your or others' Flickr photos with this fun, simple application from Barcelona-based shop Pimpampum. The app allows users to search for photos by user or by tag, string the pics into strips, and add captions, thought bubbles and speech bubbles. Creations can be shared via a user's blog, Delicious or email.

Flickr For Busy People Speeds Up Skimming

This delightful time-saver shows a compact grid of photos uploaded from a user's contacts during given time periods between 30 minutes and 8 hours prior to the current time. Below each user's avatar is the number of photos uploaded, and the avatars can be clicked to display (or hide) an array of thumbnails to quick digestion of the day's pics.

Suggestify Geotags Photos

This app lets users geotag other users' Flickr photos by suggesting a location to the photo's owner. That geotag information is stored with Suggestify until the photo owner approves or rejects the suggestion. If approved, the photo is geotagged and the user who suggested the geotag is credited with a special tag on the photo.

Flogr Turns Flickr Pics Into Photo Blogs

Flogr is a PHP/MySQL-powered photoblog interface that displays a main photo page with EXIF data and Flickr comments, a customizable thumbnails page of a user's recent pictures, a slideshow component, a tag cloud and an about page showing the Flickr user's profile. Users can also determine which photos are displayed by telling Flogr to only include images with certain tags.

Flickriver Surfaces Interesting Photos

This app is focused on delivering a seamless, quick viewing experience with minimal visual distraction. Users can choose to check out interesting photos filtered by user or by group. They can search for photos or simply browse to discover the most interesting photos on a given day. Flickriver also includes a keyboard-operated slideshow mode. Better still, Flickriver offers a dynamic badge for bloggers to showcase their images.

Real-Time View of App Creation

With the next generation of the product, Sweb Apps 2.0, some of the original concerns about the - well, let's say it - rather boring user interface of the Sweb-built apps have begun to be addressed. Whereas before you could only customize the background color and upload your own buttons, today you can customize the background to be an image instead. And if you don't have one of your own, Sweb Apps provides an online library of images to choose from. That's a step in the right direction, even if some of the backgrounds are reminiscent of early GeoCities Web pages or Windows 98 wallpapers... after all, you have to crawl before you can run.

As you build your app's landing page, you're provided with a real-time view of your app in progress, which makes it much easier to tell whether your images, buttons and colors look good together or not. That's a handy feature for SMB owners, who may be creating their app on their own without the aid of a professional designer. The app builder also uses drag-and-drop functionality to make the process even more painless for the inexperienced end user.

Mobile Storefronts

However, one of the most interesting developments in the 2.0 version of Sweb Apps' online service is the new "store" functionality. Now, as easy as it is to build an app, you can essentially build a mobile storefront for your business. This feature, still in beta, allows you to categorize, sub-categorize, itemize and write descriptions for your products. You can manage and maintain your inventory through Sweb's CMS, and your mobile customers can "check out" via the included PayPal integration.

Sweb Apps tells us that they envision this sort of feature being used by restaurants, boutiques and small retailers. That's easy to imagine. For example: wish you had picked up a t-shirt from that seafood place where you dined on vacation? In theory, you could now, even if you were halfway home, thanks to these new mobile storefronts. In a way, the mobile stores are even better than having the same functionality via an online store on the "real" Web, mainly because not everyone brings their laptop around with them 24/7. But their iPhones? People don't leave home without them.

And More...

Other features being introduced today include podcasts, audio streams and YouTube integration, all of which streams audio or video within the app itself, as opposed to launching an external program such as the iPhone's own built-in YouTube app. Also new is the ability for users to manage multiple applications from one account.

Sweb Apps says they've seen good results since their August 2009 launch, with a 400% increase in sales, but won't share actual numbers. That doesn't really tell us much about the service's adoption by the SMB market. Since the company isn't touting any high-profile clients or case studies in their PR though, we have to imagine that they're flying a bit under the radar on the business front at this point. Still, it's very early in the game, and services like this can take a while to catch on and gain popularity.

The pricing for Sweb Apps remains the same despite the new features. The company offers four-, six- and eight-button packages, which all include a one-time set-up fee of $50 per button. Then there is a $25 monthly hosting fee applied to every application going forward.

"Addiction" is a word that's often tossed around in fun somewhat haphazardly, with people claiming they're "addicted" to everything from chocolate to TV to shoes. But real addiction is no joking matter. An addict is someone with a psychological or physical dependence to something and are unable to put an end to their behavior despite its negative consequences - behavior which, especially in the case of drug or alcohol addiction, can even lead to death. In more recent years, compulsive behaviors like gambling and online gaming have also fallen under the banner of "addiction" in cases where the behaviors become uncontrollable by the affected person.

Given the psychological component of addiction, it's not entirely off-base to question whether becoming addicted to mobile apps is the next big thing in technology-related addictions, as USA Today is obviously doing. But with no reported cases, no research, and no scholarly articles, it seems a little bit like jumping the gun to claim that app addiction is becoming a health issue.

Still, that didn't stop some experts from weighing in on the matter. Marina Picciotto, professor of psychiatry, neurobiology and pharmacology at Yale University told the paper, "there are a few parallels we can make from other addictions, like compulsive shopping. The consequences can be bad -- credit debt, time lost." And Hilarie Cash, a psychotherapist and co-founder of reStart, a Fall City, Washington-based Internet-addiction recovery center, warned that users should keep tabs on whether apps are taking over their real lives.

So how do you know if it's taking over your life? Cash says that if you spend more than 2 hours per day engaged with your digital equipment for non-work related or homework-related reasons, "then you've got cause for alarm."

Wow, if those are the guidelines for addiction then just about every American has television addiction given the 2 hours they sit in front of their TV sets from 8 PM to 10 PM watching primetime programming.

Could this Become a Real Problem?

That's not to say that people won't get addicted to mobile applications at some point, but let's not start a panic before all the data is in. Most of the self-proclaimed "app addicts" these days are still maintaining a healthy balance between work, life and play and are able to put their phones away when the time is right. Even those who use their mobile phones and related apps regularly aren't necessarily addicts in the true sense of the word.

What do you think? Is "app addiction" a real thing? Or will it become a serious problem in the future?

Created by gaming site Nimblebit's Ian Marsh, App Classics analyzes iTunes rating and sales information to determine which applications have remained popular over time. The apps that make the cut are then awarded either a gold, silver or bronze medal based on their status.

The interface to the site is similar to that of the social network for bookworms, Shelfari or the iPhone app Classics (iTunes link) which displays classic novels as books on a bookshelf. Like those, App Classics features a wooden bookshelf where the icons for the applications are displayed and labeled by name. A drop-down menu at the top lets you filter the shelves by category (games, business, social networking, etc.). The "Games" category is even sub-divided into further sections (strategy, board, card, etc.).

Video Reviews Rock, but Missing Apps Don't

Click on any of the apps and you'll be taken to the app's page where you're provided with information similar to that which the App Store provides - screenshots and descriptions.

However, the best part about the app subpages is the video reviews. Using videos pulled from YouTube, you can actually see the app in action. Watching YouTube videos is something many users often do before buying a new application - this just makes it easier. 

And, as it's rapidly becoming par for the course these days, you can also share your findings via Twitter and Facebook. 

So how does App Classics stand up in terms of selection? For the most part, OK. The apps featured on the site do seem to reflect those that are deserving of "classic" status, but there are some glaring omissions as well. For example, under social networking, Facebook isn't listed. Under news, there's no Wall Street Journal. Under weather, there's no Weather Bug. We find it hard to believe that these apps weren't worthy of inclusion - were the reviews really so bad?

We're Watching this One

It could be just a case of new launch bugs - after all, App Classics was only unveiled yesterday. Given time, they may work out these kinks so true "classics" don't get overlooked.

Again, this is another site that hasn't mastered the perfect formula, unfortunately, but definitely one whose concept and implementation is to be admired. We'll say it's worth watching for now, but it's not there just yet.

StationStops is an iPhone application that allows Metro-North Railroad riders to check their train departures and arrivals from Grand Central Station even when they do not have a wireless connection. The application remembers a user's home station and offers both train track numbers and departures. While these are simple functions, the MTA does not have this data readily accessible. Rather than having to wait at Grand Central's departure screens, riders with the iPhone app are free to relax until their train arrives. Essentially StationStops is a 3rd party application that does a better job of information outreach than the official public entity.

The MTA's cease and desist letter comes at a time when government agencies and semi-public entities are slowly carving out their policies on standardized public data. In late June, even as Mayor Bloomberg launched the first NYC Big Apps contest committing to the publication of machine readable city data, Council's application to expose raw data for web and mobile app development was denied. In an interview with PolitickerNY assistant counselor to the mayor, Sami Naim spoke out against releasing the data saying, "It's not how much paper you can put up on the Internet. It's more, how much can you engage New Yorkers. It starts and ends with the customer."

Judging by StationStop sales and the public outcry for Schoenfeld, customers want a better way to access their transportation information and they don't care whether it's city-run, state-run or citizen-driven. To see more user-generated transportation solutions, visit DIY City or Apps for Democracy.

Here are a few tools we wish we'd had when we were still dorm-dwelling nobodies. Forward these links on to the collegiate folks in your life, and add your own favorites to the list. Together, we can rid the world of dropped classes and "ramen starvation."

BigWords is a site and iPhone app that source a slew of online retailers to get students the cheapest possible textbooks, taking the legwork out of online comparison shopping. BigWords also claims to optimize prices by looking for multi-item specials, shipping discounts, coupons, and other exceptional deals. Students (or textbook-shopping parents and guardians) can also share "bookbags" with others, and the site claims an average $225 savings on multi-item orders.

Study Socially

When students can use Facebook Connect to sign into an app designed to optimize study time, you know the world has changed. StudyBlue takes advantage of your virtual Rolodex to help you share notes, flashcards, and other study tools. Notes can be recorded as text or as multimedia content - that means you can share audio and video with your class-skipping colleagues. If only it counted as attendance, no? Best of all, the StudyBlue team has announced mobile capabilities for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Another app we like in this space is Quizlet, an online flashcard and quizzing resource that also uses Facebook Connect.

Rent and Return Textbooks

BookRenter soothes the eternal frustration of spending a triple-digit amount on a textbook you'll use for four months and then resell to your college's bookstore for a princely ten bucks. Renters register and have access to the company's catalog of millions of titles. Prices are refreshingly reasonable; shipping options and rental periods are flexible; and return shipping is free.

Situate Yourself

DesignYourDorm is a new-this-year app that allows college students to design their dorm room interiors in 3D and purchase their decor selections online. Not only can students often choose their exact room dimensions and layout from the DYD database and collaborate with dormmates to get rooms furnished based on thorough checklists; parents can also send care packages from a gallery that calls to mind an edible version of 1800Flowers.

Mobilize Your Textbooks

Coursesmart, a leader in the e-textbook game, just released an iPhone app, which we reviewed recently. Their catalog so far includes 7,000 ebooks, and their software works for both Macs and PCs. The desktop apps also allow students to take notes while reading, and both desktop and mobile apps have built-in search function.

Research on the Fly

The mobile version of Wikipedia has long been available for on-the-go consumption, but did you know Wikipedia also just released an official iPhone app, which we recently reviewed? You can also try iPhone apps such as Wapedia, Wikiamo, or Wikipanion.

Get Yourself and Your Group On-Task

Remember the Milk is one app we like for individual or group tasks. This full-featured program allows users to keep track of tasks through RSS feeds, share tasks via email, add tasks via email or SMS, and even assign tasks a specific location. There's an iPhone app, and RTM plays nicely with Gmail, Twitter, and Google Calendar, as well.

Hit 'Em With Your Best Shot

Finally, after all your hard work and study, you'll need to create a certain number of papers, presentations, projects, and perhaps even a website or two during your time in school this year. We have a whole list of code-free website creation tools that range from easy to use to ridiculously easy to use, and with a little finessing, they'll definitely impress a professor or two. For creating multimedia presentations, we like Empressr, Drop.io, and SlideShare, all of which have different social sharing/embedding and multimedia capabilities.

Back to Basics

For staying organized, keeping in touch, taking notes, and generally keeping yourself sane, your old friends are more useful now than ever. And by "old friends," we mean those apps you already use so much you don't even realize they're apps anymore. Try seeing Facebook, Google Docs, Google Notebook, Gmail, Twitter, and Skype as study and communication tools rather than just time-wasters, and you'll notice that you can get a lot done on your favorite sites.

So, what apps are you using to get organized, get smart, get together, or just get it right this year? Let us know in the comments!

Israeli and French project AppsFire has submitted a new app that will allow anyone to select from the list of apps they have on their phone and send links to those apps to anyone else by email. Exploring the App Store is maddening, sharing App suggestions with friends is enough fun to make almost anyone jump up and down, clapping like a little school girl. Now AppsFire aims to make that easy to do - and that's just the beginning of the company's vision.

Sharing apps by mobile email could be the killer meta-app.

Company co-founder Ouriel Ohayon told us today that the app will be free and will be monetized through affiliate app links and other mechanisms. Here are the favorite apps of founders Ohayon and Yann Lechelle. I've posted an AppsFire widget of my own favorite apps below, RSS readers can click through to the full post to see it. Note that AppsFire has only indexed about 10,000 apps so far (!) and there are a number that you may have on your phone but won't show up right away. (Breaking News Online and PDX Bus for me.) BoomBox Pro, by the way, is super hot. It's a Blip.fm player and oh my do I love it!

"The vision is to provide many discovery mechanisms," Ohayon told us by Skype, "there are many more coming. For example, in our app we have a VIP section, a way to check Twitter and ask how many recommendations an app has, what the best app for this or that purpose is. Allowing influencers to show the world what apps they use, we'll have a top ranking of shared apps (something Apple does not provide) including geo targeting (top shared in your region). Think of it as a Connected Genius with several layers of discovery for apps with zero data input required since we read your iTunes."

Ohayon says the app was submitted about a week ago. Our fingers are crossed that it will be accepted soon. We're quite excited about it.

Below you'll find app recommendations from the following people: Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, Chris Messina, open source community organizer, Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global, Baratunde Thurston, Web Editor at The Onion and Andy Baio, founder of Upcoming.org and now CTO at the soon to launch startup Kickstarter.com. We hope you enjoy these recommendations and we encourage you to share your own in comments.

Only three apps were named by more than one person on this list! They were smart travel social network Tripit, memory augmentation and note taking service Evernote and Twitter client Tweetie. All three are worth checking out.

Matt Mullenweg

In addition to Tripit, Matt said his favorite apps were:

Taxi Magic lets you get taxis in major cities without making a phone call.

Shazam identifies the music your phone picks up in a room.

WordPress has an iPhone app! It lets you write and edit posts, upload images and more.

Chris Messina

Chris Messina designed the Firefox ad in the New York Times that kicked off mainstream adoption of the browser, he co-founded the international Barcamp conference series, he's on the Board of the OpenID Foundation and he's one of the leading thinkers behind the movement to create a standard format for user activity streams across social networks.

In addition to Tripit and Tweetie, Chris said his favorite apps right now are:

Instapaper Pro is a bookmarking app that saves a copy of articles you want to read off-line on your iPhone.

Foursquare is a popular new location-based, game-like social network.

Summizer is a multi-search tracking tool for Twitter.

Things is a to-do app that gets great reviews.

NYTimes is a beautiful off-line reader for the Times, which we've reviewed and like a lot.

BrightKite is a cutting edge location-based social network that we reviewed here as well.

Comixology is an iPhone comic book reader and library.

FlightTrack Pro checks airline flight status.

OpenTable lets you make restaurant reservations.

Marnie Webb

Marnie Webb is co-CEO of TechSoup Global, a nonprofit that distributes software to other nonprofit organizations and hosts NetSquared, a group that helps nonprofits share what they've learned about using Web 2.0 technologies. She's also a mom and her iPhone app list shows it.

In addition to Evernote, Marnie says her favorite apps are:

Have2Pee is key, Marnie says. "I have a 4 year old and knowing the closet public restroom is game changing."

iDialUDrive - "I spend a not insignificant amount of time commuting. Programming calls like a playlist helps me to just hit start and get in touch with the people I need to."

Ominfocus - "I'm a GTD geek and, after playing with far too many productivity tools, I've settled on this one."

The Extraordinaries does on-demand volunteerism by mobile phone. Marnie says: "not a lot in it yet, but huge potential to volunteer quickly and effectively."

Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is a contributor to the Huffington Post, a comedian, Web Editor at humor site The Onion and the host of Discovery Channel's forthcoming show Popular Science's Future of.

In addition to Tweetie, Baratunde says his favorite apps are:

Asphalt - a car racing game.

Boxee Remote lets you use your iPhone as a remote control for the web TV service Boxee. "It helps me bypass the cable company," Baratunde says.

CityTransit NYC Subway Map

Movies (By Flixter) - find and discuss movies.

Apple's Stock Quote app. "I launch it a lot by accident and scream out loud at not being able to delete it."

Andy Baio

Andy Baio is a social software developer and writer. He co-founded the events site Upcoming.org and has just become the CTO for soon-to-launch social project funding site Kickstarter.

In addition to Tweetie, Any says his favorite apps are:

Yelp

RJDJ remixes the sounds around your phone into music. Whoa.

Touch Term SSH is an SSH access tool for your iPhone.

ZenBound a puzzle game with wooden structures and rope.

Field Runners is a Tower Defense game.

Eliss is a retro game.

Edge is a Tron-like game where tilting your phone navigates a cube through an obstacle course.

That's what these folks like to use on their iPhones. How about you? Here are some of the favorites of ReadWriteWeb's staff.

Music Apps / Internet Radio

• Pandora (M)
• Slacker Radio (F) - our review
• Last.fm (R)
• Tuner (P)

News

• New York Times (M,F) - our review of version 2.0
• USA Today (P)

Photo Apps

• Photon (F) - our review
• Pixelpipe (F) - upload your photos to over 70 different photosharing and social media services (we just posted a review of Pixelpipe's new Firefox plugin today)
• Mobile Fotos (P) - browse and upload photos and videos on Flickr
• iview (P) - share photos on Tumblr

Social Networks

• Facebook (P, M)
• Foursquare (P) - our review

Twitter Clients

• Tweetie (M, P)
• Twitterfon (F, R)

E-Books

• Kindle for iPhone (F) - our review
• Stanza (P) - part of our list of seven must-have offline apps

Productivity

• Todo (F) - lots of to-do list apps for the iPhone - this one is $9.99, but worth the money
• Groundwork (R) - access Basecamp from your iPhone
• YouNote (R) - note taking app, but also works with photos, drawings, and audio
• Soonr (F) - access documents from your desktop on the iPhone

Chat / Voip

• Skype (P, F) - our review ("It's Real and It's Spectacular")

Health

• Diamedic (R) - for tracking glucose levels, insulin injections, lab results etc.

What are Your Favorite Apps?

These are the apps that we use every day, but you surely have your own favorites, so feel free to leave a comment and let us know which apps you prefer.

Recession? What recession? According to a survey from ABI Research, many U.S. consumers are spending hundreds of dollars per year on mobile applications. Over 15 percent of those surveyed had spent nearly $100 over the past twelve months and a surprising 16.5 percent had spent between $100 and $500 during that same time frame.

With the high level of spending being reported, those unfamiliar with the mobile industry could easily be led to believe that mobile applications must cost a pretty penny. However, just the opposite is true - mobile applications are relatively inexpensive - often only a dollar or two on iTunes for example. That makes the amount of money being spent all the more telling - people aren't just buying apps, they're buying a lot of apps.

Yet it's those App Store prices that ABI analyst Jeff Orr claims are hurting the overall mobile industry. "If you exclude Apple from the mix, applications for other platforms cost about $7-25 each," he says. "Many developers, lacking the resources to author applications for all available smartphone platforms, have to focus on one. That means they have a 'margin vs. volume' quandary: sell many copies for the iPhone at a very low price of which the developer receives 70%, or sell fewer via one of the other application storefronts, but charge a higher price and earn more per transaction."

On the other hand, however, Orr notes that Apple did a lot for the industry with their marketing campaigns for mobile applications. Their efforts led to sort of a 'halo' effect that has positively impacted the sales of apps on non-Apple platforms.

Some Big Caveats About These Numbers

Before everyone takes these survey numbers to the bank, though, it's important to look at them a bit more closely.

First of all, the sample size of this survey was far too small - only 235 smartphones owners were involved. That may be enough to hint towards a trend that requires further research, but it's not large enough to drawn any concrete conclusions from.

Secondly, smartphone users who didn't install an application weren't included in the survey so, obviously, the data is skewed here as well. The survey results seem to imply that application purchases are something all smartphone owners do, but that is not the case. We imagine there are probably tons of executives out there whose Blackberry devices are used for two things only: phone calls and emails. That said, it seems once you cross over to being an application buyer, the sky's the limit when it comes to spending.

One final note about the survey is that the findings are self-reported and most people don't do very well at estimating how much they've spent over a period of time. We could probably ask our readers a similar question and report our findings as "research" too.

Hmm, let's do that:

Fast forward a decade and Easycontact has made sharing contact information easy again - by using the iPhone wi-fi connection to enable beaming between two handsets. Just select the contact information you want to beam, hit the Wi-Fi button, and select the recipient from the list. Your business card - or any contact or group from your iPhone - jumps to the other iPhone. Voila! Everything old is new again.

The beaming functionality is similar to Handshake, a contact sharing app released last year. But Easycontact raises the bar with its attention to aesthetics and ease-of-use - which should come as little surprise given that Tapinoma, the company behind the app, is composed of former Apple employees.

Look and feel isn't the only difference. Easycontact adds the option of emailing the contact information to the recipient if they don't happen to be carrying an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Beaming making you nostalgic? There's also an audio feature which seems to be designed to simulate modem-like audio feedback on the transfer and its progress. (We couldn't get it to do anything more than churn out static.)

One other important difference between the two apps? Easycontact costs $2.99 US and it doesn't offer a free version like Handshake.

If the videos promoting Easycontact or the beauty of the app don't win you over, the functionality surely will. We feel it's well worth the $2.99 to get this kind of feature on our iPhones. See if you agree by downloading Easycontact (App Store).

Yet they're hardly alone when it comes to big businesses that are missing out on leveraging this new mobile platform. Several companies that should have apps, don't. Why is that?

Listen Up: We Want Apps!

Today, there are numerous companies that could and should have iPhone applications or, at the very least, an iPhone-ready mobile web site, do not. Another that comes to mind immediately is My Coke Rewards. Coke Rewards are the points you can collect from the bottle caps and 12-packs of Coca-Cola beverages. You enter them in on the company's dedicated web site or via SMS in order to receive free prizes and discount coupons. Yet, there's no iPhone app for this. In fact, the entire site runs entirely in Flash, so there's no way to browse to the site using the iPhone at all. It's a terrible mobile experience from one of the world's biggest retailers.

Other companies missing the boat are those in the travel industry - companies like Priceline for example. Although Priceline operates a mobile site at www.priceline.mobi, there's no app available in the iTunes store. Imagine the missed opportunities! Who doesn't want to get a cheap flight or hotel? However, one of their competitors already has an app up-and-running: Travelocity. The Travelocity app offers several travel tools and a one-touch button for booking tickets. But where are the other big players in travel? Orbitz? Expedia? No apps from you?

While still on the subject of tickets, the giant ticket brokerage Ticketmaster is also sorely missing from iTunes. Instead, the lesser known Tickets Direct is getting all the iPhone owners' business as their app lets you search and purchase tickets for thousands or concerts, sports, and theater events.

Then there is Apple's partner, Starbucks. Given the integration between the two companies when it comes to music, it's hard to believe there isn't an iPhone app for ordering your latte by now. Although a lot of iPhone owners desperately want this, we do understand that building a system to handle mobile orders would take time. (Still, we hope this is something that they're working on.)

For that matter, we hope all the restaurant chains and pizza places are working on mobile ordering systems. Many chains have mobile web sites, but this isn't enough for us anymore. We want one-touch access from our homescreens. Especially for those restaurants who already provide curbside-to-go services. Why not have an app for this? It just makes sense.

Other businesses that should be leveraging the iTunes platform are the shipping companies like UPS and FedEx. There are several different mobile shipping trackers available now, but all are third-party applications. None come from the actual shipping companies themselves. Without their own apps, these companies are missing out on an opportunity to establish a brand presence on a platform that is increasingly being used in the workplace, thanks in part to the iPhone's ability to receive Microsoft Exchange email...not to mention the CEOs who are now demanding that I.T. support the device.

Also missing from the App Store are apps for major retailers. Where's our Best Buy app? Circuit City? What about our favorite clothing store? Grocery store? Car dealership? Although there are price comparisons apps aplenty and Amazon's app of course, several brick-and-mortar operations are still missing from the store. And while Jaguar's iPhone-only magazine launched in 2007 was clever, we want more. We want real apps.

Finally, why haven't local papers thought to use the iPhone platform to save their dying businesses? Most papers of any decent size already have developers on staff who work at maintaining the paper's web site - why not ask them to build an app instead? Some larger news organizations have already done this including AP News, USA Today, and the New York Times (Disclosure: RWW is syndicated by NYT). But where are the smaller, local news organizations? This could be how they could save themselves. Who wouldn't want to read the local paper on their iPhone? Add in mobile coupons and ads from local businesses to the app and you could breathe new life into the industry.

Who's Getting it Right

Surprisingly, some of the companies getting the iTunes experience right are the ones that don't immediately spring to mind when you think about companies needing an iPhone presence. For example, you may be surprised to find that retailers like Nike and Kraft have recently launched iTunes applications. Kraft's iFood Assistant helps customers create shopping lists and find the nearest grocery store, all while maximizing exposure for their product line through the 7,000 searchable recipes it contains.

Nike also recently launched an iPhone app to promote their sponsorship of Italian soccer. Called Nike Goal, the app is an extension of the Nikefootball.com web site.

Major retailer Target not only gets points for knowing to advertise within Pandora's mobile app, but they have their own iPhone application, too. The app is a gift finder app that lets you search for gifts by price and gender. Clearly, the app was launched just the for holiday shopping season as it came out in November, 2008. However, this app could be so much more that what it is today. We could use our iPhones to add items to our Target gift registries, collect mobile coupons, or check out the latest sales. So Target, you only get half credit for this one.

According to AdAge (link behind paywall), apps will be the new way to engage and advertise to your customers, but frankly, we're not seeing many big companies with apps just yet. We hope in 2009 we'll begin to see more. It's certainly time.

The biggest problem with Facebook apps is probably not that they are security-violating and spam-happy. The biggest problem is that this incredible medium for global communication is being polluted by applications that are mind-numbing, insipid and pander to the lowest common denominator of humanity - even if they are otherwise well behaved.

The new Verified Apps program will be based on three criteria:

• Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph
• Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions
• Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won't work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications

Those all sound like good ideas that any decent app should follow, presumably all but a few apps written by students and international developers unable to pay $375 will be accepted as trustworthy. Meanwhile, apps are still treated like second class citizens in the newly redesigned Facebook (they are hidden in the background) and very few truly useful ones have access to enough oxygen to grow.

This verification process should have been in place when the platform launched, though there were so many apps coming through the pipe at the time that such a program might not have been tenable. Now enthusiasm has declined greatly so a vetting program may be less of a challenge.

Honestly, though, Facebook has far more potential than the app platform at least is realizing and its problems run deeper than a verification program is going to solve.

We asked seven members of the ReadWriteWeb team to list apps they discovered about a month ago and that they still find useful today. The resulting list was 22 services long, with consensus around a few in particular. Whether you're a long-time early adopter or just discovering many of the apps that the new web has to offer, we think you'll find some things on this list that you'll really appreciate well into the future too.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Some of the apps I've tested and decided were keepers lately include:

GCal plug-in is an experimental Firefox extension that I read about on Download Squad last month and have grown to really love. It puts a little calender icon in the bottom of your browser, click it and your Google Calendar will appear in a pop-up lightbox on top of whatever page you're visiting on the web. Click outside the lightbox and it closes. So handy!

URLBarExt is another experimental Firefox add-on that I found via Lifehacker and wrote about here. It adds a bunch of cool little functions to your browser's address bar, but the ones I use all day are one-click URL shortening with Bit.ly and one click copy to paste. Works great with Twitter.

MultiClutch is a Macbook Pro app that lets you assign keystroke functions to 3 fingered swipe motions on your mousepad. It's awesome. Right now I've got 3 fingered swipe down as "close tab/window," swipe right as "change tabs in Firefox," swipe right as back arrow in the browser and swipe up as "undo" in any app. I love it! No more tab overload and really quick navigation. Thanks is due to David Recordon for showing me this one.

The Jobwire Crew

The content team for the new ReadWriteWeb Jobwire, our just launched site about new hires in tech and new media, were very happy to provide a list of their favorite apps from the last month as well.

All three said that they had just discovered point and click RSS feed building app Dapper.net and that it is a big winner. It was also just one month ago that the Jobwire crew discovered feed filtering service AideRSS/PostRank. That's a big favorite for the whole RWW family.

Jobwire writer Doug Coleman says that a month after starting to use them he's still loving browser super-extension Greasemonkey (see our recent post Start Using Greasemonkey in Under 5 Minutes) and web page archiving service Iterasi (our review). Jobwire's Dionne Fox named super easy screencast recording app Jing as her most valued recent discovery and writer Nate DiNiro says that Twitter client Tweetdeck and video special effects software Camtwist are fast joining the list of tried and true apps for him.

Frederic Lardinois
RWW writer Frederic Lardinois says he's sticking with newly relaunched music search and streaming site lala (his write up of the service) and web based screen sharing service Yuuguu (here's our latest coverage of Yuuguu). He's also finding multi-service publishing tool Pixelpipe useful but suspects that he may soon replace it with the recently reviewed Tarpipe.

Rick Turoczy

Night time news beat writer Rick Turoczy added page collating service Agglom (see our screencast tour of Agglom). He's also very happy that he's taken the time to figure out Dapper in recent months.

Sarah Perez

Sarah Perez has a whole different list of recent discoveries that have stuck with her. She still likes image enhancing browser plug-in Cooliris, Google's browser Chrome (check out this video of Sarah "unboxing" chrome), AIR Tumbleblogging app Tumbleweed, news ticker Snackr, handsome social start page Feedly, Microsoft's super ambitious Live Mesh and the FFHolic Sidebar for FriendFeed.

That's our list! How about yours? What apps have you found lately that have proven themselves to be more than just a flash in the pan? We all love shiny new things but it's a relief to report that a good number of these apps we've looked at are proving to be more than just cool - they are downright useful.