Best iPhone Apps

The App Store is chockablock with feed readers, but a truly great one has been a long time coming. Reeder is the one. Version 2.0 introduces blazing fast downloads to match the elegance of the app's interface.

KaleidoVid turns your iPhone camera into a kaleidoscope, turning the world around you inside-out in shards of elaborate and colorful prisms. Sounds innocent enough, but once you start playing with it, you’ll compulsively seek out colors, textures, and patterns to make it sing.

Meebo lets you juggle chats from several instant-messaging accounts, supporting over 100 services, including biggies like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook and Google Chat. BeejiveIM nabs an honorable mention for its collection of power tools for IM diehards.

Bookmark offers dead-simple listening, navigation, and bookmarking for audio books. The app works with audio books you’ve synced from iTunes, so it plays nice with books from outfits like Audible and Librivox.

The White House’s official app plugs politicos into the raw feed from the White House communications crew, featuring blog posts, press releases, photos, videos, and live video from whitehouse.gov.

Wink revisits the old-school photo booth, letting you print and mail honest-to-god paper photo strips from your iPhone.

Moodagent builds playlists from tracks on your iPhone, selecting music based on mood criteria you select for an improved—and emotionally attuned—version of the iTunes genius feature.

Momento is a sleek diary for capturing quick observations, notes, and photos—call it a micro-journal, like tweeting to yourself. The app can also pull in Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Last.fm feeds so that no matter where you share your status, Momento captures your daily thoughts.

If you’re always stumbling across new music and just as quickly forgetting what it was, let this app be your music memory.

NPR News lets you tune into local NPR stations or assemble your own custom show out of segments and podcasts from a vast archive of NPR programs. Stitcher Radio meanwhile lets you construct a custom talk radio station from podcasts based on your favorite topics, preferred sources, and listening history.

There’s nothing better than IMDb for settling forehead-slapping “who is that” movie moments, and the website's iPhone app offers the same authoritative film and TV database in an elegant wrapper.

Boxcar monitors your Twitter and Facebook accounts, alerting you when you receive replies, mentions, direct messages, or Facebook notifications. You can also set it up to monitor Twitter searches and trends, multiple Twitter accounts, or your email inbox.

Simplify Photo connects to your home computer's photo library to let you browse your snaps over the Internet from anywhere you go.

Cooliris gives a whole new meaning to “wallpaper,” giving you an infinite wall plastered with fab photos, music videos, Twitter posts, YouTube confections, and a firehose of real-time photo journalism.

These pictures are worth a thousand words—or at least several letters. Type Drawing is a novel drawing program for scrawling pictures with a stream of type. Type the word or phrase you want to use as your “brush,” choose a typeface, and then draw on the screen with your finger.

Since 1984, the TED conference (short for Technology, Entertainment, Design) has challenged the world’s smartest people “to give the talk of their lives” in just 18 minutes. This app streams the audio and video archives of those talks to your iPhone or iPod Touch, letting you listen in on the ideas that excite our culture’s leading thinkers in the realms of science, art, government, design, and business. Fascinating and informative.

Having a great time! Wish you were here! Postino lets you share your vacation bliss without ever leaving the beach. The app lets you mail actual paper postcards featuring your own photos anywhere in the world for $2 or less.

Unchain yourself, and think outside the box store: IndieBound shows you the way to your local independent bookshop. The app’s store finder lists the indie stores closest to your current location (or any US address you provide). The app also provides a variety of book lists to find your next read, like chatting with a local bookseller for a recommendation.

Wikipedia’s big thing is that it’s free—free to edit, free to use. So why pay for a Wikipedia app when you could just browse online for, um, free? The modest price is worthwhile for serious wikithusiasts: Wikipanion Plus delivers speed and convenience with a browser cleverly adapted to the small screen and the link-heavy encyclopedia.

Hurtling down the freeway or snowboarding a mountain isn’t exactly the ideal moment for long contemplation of your iPhone screen. FluxTunes takes the danger out of flipping songs when you should keep your eyes on the road (or the slopes), letting you touch-control your music without looking.

Slide your finger around the screen to make an animated robot sing. Cute right? But beneath this precious exterior is a sophisticated sound synthesizer to please even the most demanding musicians.

When you don't have time (or attention) to read that loooong article you found online, park it at Instapaper and come back later.

Bring golden-age comics from the mid 20th century to your iPhone or iPod Touch with this slick comic book reader.

Watch clips or, occasionally, full episodes of shows from CBS, Showtime, the CW, and others.

Last.fm is what radio should be: It's free, plays only the music you're in the mood for (no ads), surfaces new music to match your taste, and offers a slew of info about any band when you care to know more.

If iPhone's simple Stocks app doesn't cut it in your quest to master the markets, give Bloomberg a place on your home screen.

If your scheme to hold the world ransom has been frustrated, or you pine for glory days of Cold War intrigue and toying with Her Majesty's Secret Service, perhaps this app will provide consolation.

Remember that incredible book your friend was raving about? The mind-blowing novel that will change your life? Um, no? Next Read helps you keep those must-reads in mind by tracking book suggestions and building or sharing reading lists.

If any app can uncover the painterly masterpiece lurking inside your iPhone, it's Brushes. The app makes your screen a canvas and your finger a brush, with a keep-it-simple approach that's perfect for both quick sketches and ambitious paintings. Its secret is its simplicity: Brushes gives you three realistic brushes, a limitless selection

Take your entire digital music collection with you wherever you go, and tap into friends' music, too.

The name doesn't lie, this app is honest-to-god sportacular. It's hard to imagine how it could do more to please even the most hardcore news-and-stats sports geek (it even covers rosters for fantasy-league teams).

There are lots of Twitter apps, many of them great contenders, but this one gets the top pick for its elegant interface, clever filtering, and a flock of chirpy features.

CameraBag simulates old-school lenses and cameras, giving you 10 retro filters to transform your photos and launch them into the past. Take a photo from within the app, or edit a picture from your photo library.

Spin the radio dial—and keep spinning through thousands of radio stations in every corner of the world.

Who knew? Turns out a vast number of people harbor the desire to nurture carp. Koi Pond has been an App Store bestseller since the get-go, offering a gorgeous interactive animation of a Japanese water garden.

What's on TV tonight? i.TV has the answer, with TV listings for your area, including cable and satellite services. The app is much more than a TV guide, though: It's a complete personal media planner.

Remember that guy from school, the walking music encyclopedia who knew every band and could name every song after just a few bars? Shazam is that guy, only without the attitude.

Alas, your iPhone's camera is not its strongest point. The fixed lens can't zoom to compose a shot, and colors are often lackluster. Photogene shores up these shortcomings by letting you edit photos on the go.

Other news apps offer more depth (New York Times, WSJ) or breadth (AP Mobile), but no other app beats USA Today at quickly scanning what's happening in the world.

Stanza turns your iPhone or iPod into a novel, a reference book, or an entire library. It's packed with features to make iPhone reading as good as it can be, including bookmarks, screen and font choices, and dictionary lookups for squirrelly words.

Squeeze your friends into your pocket with the official Facebook app. This compact view of the Facebook universe lets you check your friends' activity, add status updates or wall posts, start a live chat, and share new photos.