Tweetie 2 got itself a shiny badge by being the Apple Design Award of the year. And by no means were Apple wrong on this one. Tweetie 2 is by far a very polished app, not to mention it would definitely make the top when it comes to twitter apps. S(l)ick design, yet really fast, filled with features, yet not over-bloated with buttons and options, sounds like an update, yet brand new, totally different app from the original. The already popular Tweetie has been recoded from the ground up. Tweetie 2 now incorporates rich features such as offline mode, drafts, threaded conversations, full landscape support, to name a few.

The first thing you note once in Twitter 2 is the shiny new look. B-bye chat bubbles, hello tweet streams and shiny glowing notification orbs. Now, whenever you get a new message, new tweets or [...]

It’s a given that the iPhone’s native Contacts is perhaps not Apple’s sturdiest creations, and there have been many improvements that users wanted or functionality that should have been there in the first place. The foundations for them are clear, and it’s not quite obvious why the Apple development team didn’t make the next logical step with Contacts. But where Contacts fails, ContactsPlus innovates.

Not necessarily aiming at being a replacement for the iPhone’s native contacts manager, but merely a logical extension, ContactsPlus is the iPhone app that lets you quickly and effectively organize and sort your existing contacts. With ContactsPlus, you can create, organize and delete groups of contacts based on company names, work groups, job titles, or any other field-related characteristic [...]

Now your crazy look won’t go unnoticed anymore as long as you take the time to document it. Snap out that iPhone and take a picture of yourself and post it online via Daily Mugshot. Daily Mugshot is a popular web tool that lets you post pictures of yourselves, labeled daily mugshots, thus letting your friends, and yourself, keep track of you and you daily evolution. This iPhone app acts as a complementary to the complete web service you get when you sign up with DailyMugshot.com.

With your free account on the website, you can take a daily photo of yourself by using your webcam directly on the website, or upload it from your PC, and then share the results with your friends. You can also add all your daily mugshots into a virtual flipbook to share and enjoy. Flipbooks and mugshots are easily shared [...]

Combining Twitter and the iPhone has to be in the highlights of the day, but with Tweet Mic, the simple Twitter client app for the iPhone, you’re bound to have your own spotlight. The app lets you create audio tweets and publish them directly to your Twitter account online.

There’s nothing much to the app, in that it excels in simplicity while being extremely intuitive and effective. Benefiting from a clean and simple interface, leaving out the bells and whistles, Tweet Mic does a great job for what the development team meant it. All you have to do is push the big red button in the middle of the screen, start speaking your mind and push it again to stop recording. Nothing much to it, but there’s no limit to how much you can record, and the service comes at no additional costs whatsoever.

Almost one year after its launch on July 10, Facebook’s own iPhone and iPod Touch application still ranks pretty high in the App Store’s Top Apps. Following their release of their iPhone-customized webapp, which quickly became a bookmark on users’ home screen, a very usable site, filled with all the rich functions and important functionality features, the acclaimed social networking site launched a its own native app to provide users with a mobile directory with rich information about your friends.

Facebook for the iPhone offers some important features that were missing in their webapp, while disregarding some of the crucial things that came with OS 3.0. You of course have all your friends and their info and profiles at the tap of a button. You of course have the possibility to take pictures and upload them straight on Facebook. We’re also looking at a whole bunch of features like notifications, news feeds, a people search function, the almighty wall, access to your Facebook Inbox and respond to friend requests. One crucial development was the built-in chat feature, so you can send instant messages to online Facebook friends.

With GOGII’s free application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, users can send completely free text messages between each other, create and manage group conversations with as many people as they want, or opt for a one-to-one communication.

Sure enough, there are other apps in the AppStore that allow users to send free messages just like the iPhone’s SMS, but most go for a couple of dollars. With TextPlus, apart from it being completely free to download and use, you get some cool improvements in the functionality and usability of such an app.

One of the most important features is the landscape keyboard that was missing from the iPhone’s native environment. Yes, the new iPhone 3GS will let users use the landscape mode across all apps on the iPhone, including SMS. It is nevertheless an important feature that TextPlus saw was missing and anticipated the OS 3.0. Thumbs up for that.

Skype comes forth as the main provider of VoIP services worldwide, even with its close competitor offering similar services Truphone. While Skype wanted to maintain a certain level of consistency across all platforms, the development team didn’t manage to surprise us with most of the features, and although a few capabilities are notably missing, iPhone users will be glad to see a couple of improvements for Skype on this platform.

As with the PC/MAC version, Skype’s screens come well organized and with added capabilities to rearrange your contacts through filters, sort contacts alphabetically or see only who’s online. VoIP calling comes free of charge between two Skype users, while calling landlines or mobile phones will get you into buying SkypeOut credit online. $10 worth of credit will get you more than enough talk-time to not only try out call quality, but also stay on the phone for hours without spending a dime with your cell network company.