Hasta La Gadget!

The App Store follows trends more closely than your 13-year-old sister at Hot Topic, and often, that’s a bad thing. But this week has revealed a trend I think you’re going to like.

Rolando Lite: While charging full price for what should arguably be a free upgrade is one App Store trend we’d like to see die (see below), here’s one that’s great: lite versions of the most popular non-free games. Rolando is fantastic if you haven’t played it yet, and now you can try before you buy with the free Lite, which is limited to the first stage only. Free.

Super Monkey Ball Lite: And what ho? A free lite version of Monkey Ball too with three stages from the full game? Keep it up game publishers, keep it up.

X-Plane Extreme: It’s kind of annoying how X-Plane keeps packaging new planes into all-new editions of the app, charging 10 bucks for each one, but X-Plane Extreme does look pretty great. This one’s bringing the military jets, from the F-22 Raptor, B-2 Stealth Bomber and the ol’ SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, and they look beautiful. If you haven’t bought X-Plane already and dig flight sims, Extreme looks like the version to get (there is also one for Airliners and Helicopters, if that’s your thing).

Light Bike Full Version: On sale for a buck for a limited time only, this is the just-released full version of Pankaku’s Tron game with the awesome two-hands-one-iPhone four-player mode we liked so much when we first saw it. Very cool. $1

Digital Bass Line: I’ve been wanting to play with Korg’s awesome DS-10 synth software for the DS for quite some time, but until I get my hands on it, this great Roland TB-303 emulator will tide me over. The 303 is the bass synth companion to the legendary 808 drum machine, and it’s reproduced quite faithfully here-really fun to play around with, even if you’re not a musician. It’s $5.

Almond Emulator: And finally, do you ever get the sense you’re watching someone lose their mind via disconnected clues? Like, say, the iPhone apps they write? The Almond Emulator costs $1, and offers the chance to taste, smell, feel and listen to a digital on-screen almond; each button pressed simply changes the text above to read “It tastes just like an almond.” Riiiiight. Probably the strangest app I’ve seen-kick this guy a buck, he needs it to refill his meds.

This Week’s iPhone App News on Giz:

• Where’s My Menupages iPhone App?

• Inside the Mind of the Man Who Gave Us iFart Mobile

• LCD Clock iPhone App Makes Your Real Clock Seem Pitiful and Sad

• Watch and Listen To The Geniuses of This Week’s TED Conference On Your iPhone

• How To Text With Adorable Japanese Emoji On Your iPhone For a Buck

• How To Text With Adorable Japanese Emoji On Your iPhone For a Buck

• Rumor: iPhone 3.0 Might Let Apps Run in the Background for Real Multitasking

• ClearCam for iPhone Stitches 2MP Photos Together Into 4MP Ones

• How to Find Awesome iPhone Apps (no place better than the Week in iPhone Apps, though, obviously)

• Crackulous Allows for App Store Piracy

• Internet Visionary MC Hammer Releases Eagerly-Anticipated “HammerTime” iPhone App

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Just as we condemned the worst app genre last week, today we signal the pinnacle of another App Store standby, the soundboard app. There will never be a better soundboard made, ever. WHAT!?

Lil’ Jon: The Soundboard: Yes, this is it. It can’t go any higher. Thank you, Gabe Jacobs Productions—I’m looking the other way on the fart app you already have in the store. $1 Update: For some reason it’s been pulled. Nooo!

Multi-Photo Email: Does exactly what the title says—lets you send more than one image per email. Much, much needed default functionality that unfortunately costs a $1 to add via third-party, but if you email a lot of photos this is really handy.

Hot or Not: Yeah, I can’t believe this company is still going either. Remember what 2001 felt like by scrolling through the sad parade in line at the DMV. Give them a 1-10 rating. Get your license renewed. Go home. A day well spent. It’s free.

eMees Avatar Generator: If the Wii’s Miis are more PlayMobil, Emees for iPhone is more Boondock Saints. There are a couple apps like this, but Emees looks like it has enough options to make reasonably accurate portraits of your friends and celebrity contacts alike. It’s $3

JetSet Airport: Airport Security is one of the best flash games I’ve ever played, and now it’s on the iPhone. You watch people going through security, and deny those trying to bring on dangerous items (like Spray Cheese). The iPhone adds a neat location-based feature by letting you unlock special unique prizes for over 100 international airports if you play in that actual airport. Great stuff. $5

Zombie Chav Hunt: Chavs are kind of like England’s version of white trash, kind of like hillbilly + Ali G + fake tans + fake Burberry. Here they have taken a further step into terribleness by turning into zombies, and you can shoot them with a variety of weapons. Looks like a good way to blow a few minutes. It’s a buck.

Chop Sushi: Picture a Bejewelled-like puzzle game, but with different types of sushi. Wasabi hurts your opponent (yes it’s multiplayer too), and other types do other things. Fantastic for waiting in line at Japanese restaurants.

This week’s App News on Giz:

• iPhone Twitter App Battlemodo: Best and Worst Twitter Apps for iPhone (if you are a Twitterer even half as hardcore as our own Matt Buchanan, this is essential.)

• Come Up With Some iPhone Apps Apple Would Never, Ever Allow (Adam’s Photoshop contest this week—file your entries now!)

• We Now Interrupt Pandora Radio For This Brief Message, Every So Often

• The SniPod Touch: When Apps Go Deadly

• Ustream’s iPhone Viewer App Now Live In Time For the Inauguration

Tron For iPhone’s Multitouch Multiplayer Mode is Awesome: Four Hands, One iPhone

NSFW: Wobble iPhone App Adds Boob Jiggle To Real Boobs, IS Approved

• BBQ Pro: iPhone Meat Management Simulator

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, our top apps directory, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

With the holidays and our year-end app lists (games and everything else), it’s been a little while since we last dove in to our weekly roundups. Time to catch up!

Mint: The app I’m most excited about over the last few weeks is Mint—a free iPhone companion to the popular online financial planning site. Mint gives you recent transactions, balances and budgetary breakdowns for any of your banking, investment or credit accounts, presented with really nice typography and design. It’s read-only—you can’t make any transactions—and if you lose your phone, a kill switch on Mint.com will disable remote access to your account. I use this app every day now. Free

iHand Massage: It’s a hand massager. Suuuuuure, and that sexytime font was chosen for its superb double ‘s’ ligatures, mmhmm? iHand gives you full control over your iPhone’s vibrator to relax away all the tensions of the day in whichever way you choose. $1

iBonsai: A diversion, but a pretty one: iBonsai uses a random-number algorithm to grow infinitely diverse bonsai trees before your eyes, which you can then rotate around in 3D and save as your wallpaper. $3 is a little steep, but it’s very pretty.

Bailout: The texts of US laws are in the public domain: If the developers of Bailout are making a grand ironic statement by demanding you pay $2 for the full text of the Bailout bill, hats off. I doubt they’re that smart, though.

Zephyr: Another hit from the guys at Smule, creators of Ocarina and, of course, Sonic Lighter. Zephyr lets you draw images with snowflakes, adds wintery whoosing sounds. Right. But the social aspect is very cool: you can then send your message out to other users of the app, who will see it drawn out on their own screens in real time and can then send a reply. I haven’t received Zephyr stick figure porn yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. $1

Shapewriter 2.0 Pro: Shapewriter is an innovative text-input tool from the creator of the T9 auto-recognition system that’s now ubiquitous on phones everywhere: drag your finger over a soft keyboard connecting letters into words like a connect-the-dots puzzle, and Shapewriter will sort it out with surprising ease. The free version also has recently received a full v 2.0 overhaul, but the pro version for $10 will remove the supported ads and add landscape typing, internal copy and paste, and few more features not found in the free version.

RjDj Shake: And finally, RjDj Shake builds on the awesome concept of music generation that responds to your environment in real time by adding accelerometer input. Seven different scenes twist the sound you hear in different ways according to your shakes and shimmies. $3

This week’s app news on Giz:

• The Best iPhone Apps of 2008

• The Only 10 Games Your iPhone Needs

• Softbank’s Speeek iPhone App Translates Spoken Japanese to English On the Fly

•IAmAMan Period-Tracking iPhone App for Sleazy, Shameless “Players”

• Crayon Physics iPhone Game Looks Amazing

• Don’t Be That Guy With The New Year’s Noisemaker iPhone App Tonight

• Safari+ Adds Desktop Functions Like Text Searching to Mobile Safari

• Melody Bell Turns iPhone Jiggling Into Ensemble Performance Art

• iSteam iPhone Steam Simulation App is Amazingly Cool

• A Disney Artist Draws Way Better Than Us…On His iPhone

• Mr. Game & Watch Saunters His Way Over to the iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Christmas and Hanukkah will soon be here. Many of you will soon have iTunes gift certificates to blow—why not support a good cause? This week’s apps give some/all of their proceeds to charity.

Songs of Love: The first (and as far as I can tell, only) iPhone app released by a charitable organization, Songs of Love’s mission is to create personalized songs to help cheer up kids who are battling cancer. It’s a free app, but it shows you some of their work and in video and audio form, and has a donations page.

Phospho: Yes, it’s another 99 cent flashlight app. Yes, you could just use a Safari page to find you keys. But if you’re going to buy a flashlight app, make it this one—Phospho donates 100% of your buck to charities that aim to fight blindness in children and adults worldwide.

iZen Garden: Another popular app genre is the Zen Garden. iZen happens to be among the more well reviewed of the bunch and actually looks pretty cool (different colored sands! Lots of rakes to rake it with!), and it gives 5% of the $3 to the Tibet Fund.

Gratitude Journal: Oprah claims to have changed her life with a Gratitude Journal; this app will give you the same chance. The idea is to write down five things you are thankful for each day—not a bad idea this time of year. You can add photos to your entries as well. 10% of the buck it costs is donated to charities, although the developers don’t say which ones.

Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita and Tanakh: The holy books of Islam, Judaism and Hinduism in their complete form, each fully searchable and bookmarkable. The Qur’an even has an audio recording of each Ayah in English and Arabic, and is discounted down to $5 (the others are $10). 100% of all proceeds goes to the Aga Khan development network which helps developing communities in Africa, Central/South Asia and the Middle East.

Now don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy?

We covered a lot of great new apps this week on Giz, here they are. And if you are hitting the slopes this holiday like our favorite snowbunny Blam is, check out his Ski and Snowboard app Battlemodo;

• iPhone Geisha Will Dance For You For A Small Fee

• I Love Katamari for iPhone/iPod Touch Lightning Review

• Apple Warns Developers App Store Approval Process Sucking More Than Usual

• Wazabee 3DeeShell Adds 3D Screen to iPhone

• Tilt-Shift Photography On the iPhone, Sorry Starving Artists

• Television App For iPhone is Not Quite Hulu, But Getting Warmer

• Konami Releasing Silent Hill, DDR and Frogger for iPhone, Too (on top of METAL GEAR SOLID)

• ReedBox Recreates Eno’s Bloom iPhone App With Magnets

• Earth-Shattering Changes in Google iPhone App Update

• Agile Lie Detector: Tell Me the Truth, iPhone!

• Wazabee 3DeeShell Adds 3D Screen to iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend and a very happy holidays everybody.