The app store provides developers with a great marketplace to sell their iPhone and iPod Touch software. Developers put a lot of time into crafting these applications and most of these, especially the expensive ones, are to a very high quality. I have used bought a number of apps and games on my iPhone and here is a wide selection of ones I have on my iPhone. These are my top paid applications and games for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Countdown ($0.99/$1.29) -The title of the app pretty much tells you what it does, it counts down to a certain date and time. You may be thinking that the iPhone already has this functionality built into its clock app, but this has a few more features. You can have multiple countdown clocks, each with its own title and icon which you can get from your photo albums. I used it for counting down to the releases of my favourite TV shows and it worked great. I always knew when Heroes was coming out, down to the second.

Rooms ($2.99/$4.19) – One of the thing previous jailbroken devices could offer was an IRC client. After a long time waiting after the App Store was up, finally a client came. It is called rooms and is a decent IRC client. It allows you to connect to multiple servers and room and acts like a normal client would. It doesn’t look as appealing or work as good as the previous unofficial clients did but it is a start. If you need IRC on your device, unfortunately this is your only choice.

Twitterrific ($9.99/$13.99) – Twitter Addict? This is one option for you to tweet and read other tweets from your iPhone, without using the mobile site in Safari. This app does exactly what you would expect a twitter app to do. It also allows you to post pictures, either from the camera or camera roll. It can also to a couple of other things you may like. There is a free version of this app, the major difference is the advertising. If ads don’t worry you and you’re not willing to pay this premium price, get the free version.

Aqua Forest ($7.99/$10.99) -This is an amazing game! It uses both the touch screen and accelerometer to its advantage in unique and interesting puzzles. Each one is different and requires a different set of skill set. Out of all the games in the App Store, this is definitely the one to buy! It offers so much, and everyone will enjoy it, no matter what!

Battle At Sea ($4.99/$6.49) – I use to enjoy playing Battleships at school, and this app is a digital version of that game. You put your 5 ships down anywhere on the field and then each of your ships get a chance to shoot. Kill a ship, it can no longer be used. This game is quite fun, and if you’re connected to the same network as someone else with this app, you can do a multiplayer battle. The only problem with this game is that after you get the hang of it and get a strategy going, the computer seems a bit dumb and only beats you on a fluke.

Bejeweled 2 ($7.99/$-) -Everyone know what Bejeweled is, and this is the iPhone version of that popular PopCap game. You use you fingers to move the pieces to form a small row and then it disappears and more blocks fall into the level. This keeps on going till you run out of moves. This game feels a bit limited and after playing it for a while, you feel like you haven’t accomplished much. This could be easily fixed with a high scores list of some description so you can keep track of your top games.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Cart 3D ($5.99/$8.29) – My old favourite PlayStation character is the star of yet another racing game, but this time for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You control the car in this game by using tilting and you can also jump by tapping the screen and get weapons that you can you to your advantage in the race by taping the icon. I did have a problem with the turning controls since they are bit difficult to use and aren’t as good as with a controller with a proper D-Pad or Analogue Stick.

Enigmo ($4.99/$6.49) -This is a really interesting physics game where the objective is to get droplets of water into a bucket thing. To do this, you have to use objects you are provided to direct the water to move or bounce through the level and into the bucket. It is very challenging and offers many hours of playtime. To extend it even further, it even allows you to download user created levels, so there is so many levels to accomplish in this game.

Lumen ($3.99/$5.29) – The objective of this game is to guide a laser beam through all the checkpoints. You do this by using mirrors to direct the way the light turns. Also the checkpoints have different colours so you have to use gems to change the colour of the beam so it can pass through the checkpoint. This is a really cool puzzle game and you should at least check out the free version, Lumen Lite. The main version has many more levels as well as the ability to access the custom user made levels database for even more challenges.

Super Monkey Ball ($9.99/$13.99) -This game was one of the ones demoed at the announcement of the App Store. This game developed by Sega is really well done and shows what these devices are capable of in terms of gaming. The graphics of this game are stunning. In this game, you are in a ball and you roll around the level using the accelerometer. Make sure you don’t roll off the edge or else you die. Unfortunately the controls can be a bit difficult and don’t respond that well which makes it difficult not to go over the edge.

Note: Prices listed are in USD and NZD. Prices of the apps in your store will be different from the ones speficifed in this article.

Not all the applications in the app store are serious. There are a wide variety of games in the store, even good free ones. The iPhone and iPod Touch is an amazing device for games with its large widescreen, accelerometer controls and touch screen, these all put together can be put to good use in interesting games. The iPhone and iPod Touch is very powerful and can support games that are on par with a lot of the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable games. I have played quite a few different games on my iPhone. Here are my top free games for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Aurora Feint -This game is pretty similar to Bejeweled, where you have to line up 3 cubes to make them disappear. The only difference is that the blocks are getting pushed up, so you must not let them get to the roof of the level. You can tilt the device to allow you to move the blocks vertically or horizontally, in relation to the game board. The unusual thing about this game is that you are collecting to blocks so you can get abilities and things for your character. I assume that there is going to be more to this game, because this game is Aurora Feint: The Beginning.

BubbleWrap – This is an interesting game to show off the touch screen. You have a sheet of bubble wrap, and you have to pop them. Pop as many as you can in the allocated time and you may get a high score. The bubbles come back up so you can pop them again. Its fun for 5 minutes, but it is a really good app to show off what the touch screen on this device can do.

Cube Runner – Most of the people that want to play on my iPhone want to play this game. Its a very simple looking game, where you control the turning of a little ship thing and you go through the level dodging cubes and as you progress, you get faster and faster and then weird things start happening to try and put you off. This simple game is quite challenging and fun. Do check this one out. It’s a great demo of what this thing can do.

Lightsaber Unleashed -Who doesn’t want a lightsaber? Well here you can have one, a virtual one, with built in lights and sounds. You can have different coloured one that can fill up the whole screen with saber glow and as you move it around, it makes battle sounds. Its a really cool app to show people, especially geeks. Other than that, it is useless, but cool to have there.

Sol Free Solitaire -As the name suggests, this is free solitaire. This app has a large selection of card games, including solitaire. Its the exact same game you are familiar with, just on the iPhone or iPod touch and using the touch screen. There is not much more to say. If you like card games, get this app!

Spinner Prologue – You are a button thing, and your goal is to traverse through the maze to the finish. Instead of directly controlling the object, it moves forward and you move your device around, from a vertical position to make it turn. It starts off easy and straight forward, but it gets really difficult further on and the levels get more complex and you need to be able to traverse awkward parts of the maze, and fast.

Tilt Me Lite – This is a fun little game for demoing the accelerometer on this device. You have to get a little ball, onto a small circle and hold it there for a few seconds. As you roll over the tiles on the level, it makes a sound. It provides really interesting sounds as you play along. It gets a little more difficult when you have to get 2 balls onto 2 different circles at the same time, and hold them there for a few seconds. Fun little game and great demo.

Tris – Unfortunately, this app is no longer in the app store because the developer was forced to remove it by the people who own Tetris. This app is Tetris. The controls could be a bit better but that is the only gripe about this game. There is not much you can do to Tetris. Tetris is Tetris, and this is a well made version of it. I like the high scores list, except for the fact that it is filled completely with my name. If this app ever returns, snap it up while you still can.

One of the great things about the App store is the wide variety of free apps. A lot of these are pretty well done, some even being higher quality to some paid apps. These applications do a number of things including storing and displaying different kinds of information and performing various tasks. I have used quite a number of apps on my iPhone and here is a wide selection of ones I have on my iPhone. These are my top free applications for iPhone and iPod Touch.

1Password – This application is great for storing your passwords onto your iPhone. It is PIN and password protected so you don’t have to worry about someone finding out your passwords. It can be time consuming to type in a password using the iPhone and this app makes its a piece of cake to login. Also, if you have heaps of different passwords for sites, this will make it easy to manage them on this device.

Balance – I use this application to keep track of the money that I have stored in one of my bank accounts. This is not a very feature full app but it does what I want it to do, keep track of deposits, and any odd withdrawals, on my account. I can access and see the balance of my account anywhere. I’m sure there are many other applications this can be used for too.

DoBot ToDos – This is a free to do list application. What makes this one great, is that you can have multiple categories of list, and inside them have your todo’s for that. You can write notes with them and set due dates, like you can do with most other todo applications. I use this for keeping track of personal tasks as well as school tasks. These are kept in separately, which is how I like them.

Fring – This app is pretty new but I can see it being a really useful app. What this does it allow for VoIP calls over wifi. You can use this to talk over Skype or SIP or lots of other common voice chat messaging clients. The quality is really good as well. There are still features that could be added, but this is a really nice, and promising app. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do VoIP over 3G, which is what a lot of iPhone users want.

Light – The Light app I use has been removed from the app store for some reason. Still, you should definitely find a good light app from the store. You may not use it for a while and it will just be sitting there on your home screen but one day, it will come in handy, and you can thank me then. My one has a bunch of customizations, you can change the colour of the light, and there were even some flashing ones. My personal favourite is the police light, a blue and red flashing light. In saying that, the white is the best, because it is practical to use so I can see in the dark.

MiGhtyDocs – If you use Google Docs, this application is great! No, this doesn’t allow you to edit your documents or spreadsheets, but it does let you view them on the iPhone. But there is an added bonus, you can view any cached documents for offline viewing when you don’t have an internet connection. It’s really good for storing files you may want to look at offline, and on our iPhone.

Pocketpedia – Got any of the Pedia software on your Mac? If so, then this is definitely a must have app. This allows you to access your media collections right on your device. Even if you don’t have this software, it allows you to create collections right on the device. You just search for the Movie, Album, Game, or Book, and it finds on Amazon and you can add it to your list. You can also use it to make wishlists, so if you find an item you want, you can add it to your list to get at a later date.

Remote – This has to be the first application that you download! It does wonders. It allows you to control your iTunes via your iPhone or iPod Touch. It has a similar interface to the iPod tools on the device, so you should already be familiar with how to use it. It looks exactly as if you were controlling the music on your device, except you are really controlling music on an external iTunes library on your network. I found it to work really well when using a full screen application, such as a game, and didn’t want to minimise to exit to control my music. Remote allowed me to do this easily.

Shazam – I’m sure you’ve been either listening to the radio or in a shop playing music and wonder what is the name of the song playing. Well this app helps you with answering that question. You launch the app and get it to listen to a few seconds of a song and it will return you back the name of the song, the artist and the album and save it in a list, and even provide you with links to purchase it in the iTunes store. With this app, never again will you be wishing you knew what the name of the song playing.

WeDict – This is a pocket dictionary, on your iPhone! It comes with word lists and allows you to easily find the definition of a word in a few seconds. No longer do you have to find a dictionary, and then spend time searching for the word. This take 10 seconds to get you the definition of the word you are looking for. Not everyone needs a dictionary, but if you do, why not get this app?

The iPhone is an amazing device, don’t get me wrong. In saying that, there is still room for improvement. That is why we have hacks for this device. A “jailbroken” iPhone can do much more than its virgin self. These include unlocking, unofficial third party apps, background applications, accessing the file system and theme modifications. The main reason my iPhone is jailbroken is because it is illegitimately on Vodafone, which required an unlock to do so. All the other reasons are secondary, but do offer so much more over an unjailbroken iPhone. There are 2 major pieces of software that jailbreaks your iPhone, or iPod Touch, PwnageTool for Mac OS X and WinPwn for Windows XP/Vista.

After receiving a 1.1.4 jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, I quickly wanted to update and jailbreak to 2.0. After over a month of waiting. Eventually it did finally arrive and I could happily get iPhone software 2.0. This method required me to get the WinPwn software, the official 2.0 restore image. WinPwn then creates a custom software image, with the jailbreak and Cydia (unofficial third-part app loader.) It then pwnd iTunes to allow me to restore this custom firmware onto the iPhone. From here, it’s all up to iTunes for updating the device.

First you need to backup your iPhone. This is so you can later restore your settings, messages and such back onto the device. From here, you put your iPhone into DFU, which an unusual process that you can find instructions to on the internet. This will get iTunes to prompt you to restore your device. Then you hold down the shift key while clicking restore and then you can now select the custom software you built earlier. Then it pretty much does its job updating the software. After this lengthy wait, you will then want to restore your setting and sync your music, videos and such back over to your iPhone. This whole process took me about an hour.

After that, you are left with a nice, jailbroken iPhone, ready with Cydia to get your fix of unofficial third party apps, along with the new App Store for your official applications. You also should have all your settings and files back from before the restore. Thankfully, this process has been made much easier. Shortly after Apple released the first 2.0 bug-fix version, the team behind PwnageTool released another jailbreaking tool, QuickPwn. What this does is jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch without having to do the full, lengthy restore each time. I used this process to update to 2.0.1 right through to the most recent 2.1 software.

To do a QuickPwn, you first get the QuickPwn software, and the official iPhone software. You then use iTunes to update your software. This will get rid of all your jailbroken apps, but all your other files and setting will stay in tack. Because this isn’t a full on restore, it takes a fifth of the time to update. After you have your upgraded iPhone, you then launch the QuickPwn software and follow the instructions. It will get you to point to the official firmware and then instruct you on how to DFU the iPhone. Then after a few minutes, the process will be complete and you can now re-download your unofficial third party apps.

It is amazing how they managed to change the way you jailbreak your iPhone device. No longer are they days where you spend over an hour to restore you iPhone with the custom jailbroken firmware, we are now in the quick jailbreaking days where there are no restores or restoring backups. The process takes a short 15 minutes, or less. The jailbreaking process couldn’t be so easy and friendly to do.