Best iPhone Apps

Balloonimals gives kids a whimsical set of animated balloon animals to play with, buying harried parents some downtime, no clown required.

Aardvark fields questions on any subject, routing them to real, live people (including you) who have volunteered to offer answers on topics near and dear.

CardStar eases bursting wallets and overloaded keychains by relieving them of all those cards you haul around for memberships, discounts, frequent flyer clubs, grocery stores, and more. Stow your card numbers in CardStar, and the app displays scannable barcodes for each one.

Gas Cubby garages all of your car’s details in a single convenient place to track expenses, maintenance schedule, and gas mileage.

Spelling Soup adds a warming spoonful of adorability to flash-card learning. Illustrated with picture-book-quality drawings and narrated by two chirpy English girls, the game asks kids to spell words by unscrambling a soup of letters.

This handy reference for environmentally minded diners waves you away from overfished seafood, recommending ocean-friendly fish to enjoy in your region.

Bank of Mom lets you shift your kids’ allowance from a cash operation to a line of credit, teaching simple financial concepts along the way. Create an account for each child, and make cash deposits for chores or allowance. You can also bank activities like sleepovers, or time for TV or video games.

Locavore helps you find local produce and plan menus around food that's in season in your area. The app lists the closest farmers markets, along with opening times and locations. You can also check the current harvest in your area, or figure out just where those February tomatoes are coming from. GoodGuide earns an honorable mention for its sprawling review of consumer products' impact on the environment and society.

Bitten by a rattlesnake? Stumped by a wallpapering project? Flummoxed by a mustard stain? Don’t panic: WikiHow has the advice you need to get out of your jam.

Remember your childhood mix-n-match books? Each page had a character sliced into strips, and you flipped the strips to combine them into zany new creations. Slide-a-ma-jig reinvigorates that childhood magic with whimsical and wonderfully drawn figures, combined with a symphony of cartoon sound effects.

RedLaser arms your iPhone camera with a barcode scanner, offering you instant price comparisons on just about any product you put in its crosshairs. Save Benjis earns an honorable mention for a similar service that lets you search by product name.

Tuck Shopper into your cart to make trips to the supermarket (or any store) more efficient. Shopper replaces hastily scribbled shopping lists with an organized, uncomplicated system for building and checking off items to buy.

The App Store has a huge number of flash-card games to help kids learn the alphabet, but ABC Animals stands out from the menagerie with its lively cartoon illustrations and a clever device to help kids practice writing letters.

Carry a complete snapshot of your financial picture with this companion to Mint.com, a free online dashboard for monitoring your money. Like the site, the app shows all your balances, activity, and investments at a glance, plus a review of how you're faring against the month's budget.

This inspired children's game combines the interactive elements of a popup storybook with a singalong of the tried-and-true "Wheels on the Bus" song.

This drag-and-drop puzzle is perfect for kids ages three to six. Drag one of the colorful pieces into position, and it snaps into place.

You whip out your iPhone, snap a picture, and your phone produces an Amazon.com link for the toaster. That amazing magic trick is part of Amazon Mobile, an otherwise workaday app for shopping at Amazon.

Introduce your toddler to words for animals, shapes, objects, and colors with two matching games.

Savor 25,000 recipes in a gorgeous wrapper, with online access to epicurious.com's collection from Bon Appétit, Gourmet, and other magazines.

Painting the living room? This handy palette-builder lets you find inspiration in a photo, or match the curtains by snapping a picture. ColorSnap is a product of Sherwin-Williams, and it's aimed at selling you the paint manufacturer's products. But even if you go with another brand, the app is great for quick palette suggestions, and you can always use the provided color recipes to mix your palette with a competitor's blend.

Whether you're looking for a new home or just being a nosy neighbor, Zillow is the best way to find out what a house is worth, what's on the market, and what's recently sold.