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Barnes & Noble is one of my favorite book stores here in town. I just recently checked their iPhone app and I was very impressed.

B&N Bookstore is the name of the app in App Store should you search for it. Let’s see how this free iPhone App measures up beyond the basic functionality of searching for books, music & dvds.

In the first screen you’d see a bookcase where you can swipe to see book covers like in a carousal. Under that is the area where you see different sections like Recommendations, Bestsellers, New Realeases, Review & Studio. This is tagged as the Discover section and is like virtually strolling through the bookstore.

I was looking at the Bestsellers and you can see the online and list prices there. Nice.

One of the newest features is that now you can read book reviews right from your iPhone! Extra nice!

Now comes the cool factor for you iPhone owners. Let’s say you have a book in front of you that you want to check a price for.

Go to the ‘Search’ page and click on the green camera button. Take a picture of your book cover and the app will find your book from the millions of books in the store!

Amazon’s iPhone App has had this feature for a while but I was still impresses with how accurately and swifty it found this Drupal Book for me.

And the Stores page lets you quickly find a Barnes & Noble around you with a simple click of the familiar ‘Locate me’ button near the search box.

B&N Bookstore App is a must have for a book lover, IMHO. Plus, the the price can’t be more right - Free.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Hello there! Hope you found a nice app, or a cool hack or the latest iPhone news. Don't miss future updates, grab our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and get free updates.

My favorite iPhone blogging app WordPress has updated to version 1.3. It gets complete OS 3.0 compatibility along with a bunch of bug fixes.

I couldn’t find a list of new features from the iPhone WordPress blog but you could get details by looking at the blog.

Also, you might see that the version is shown as 1.21.1 in the About section but be assured you have 1.3 if you see it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For all you pinball fans, there is good news!

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball game with crisp graphics and excellent game play. If you are used to going through a couple of screens before you start playing a game, you will appreciate the simplicity in Wild West Pinball.

As soon the game loads you just tap the screen to get started. I noticed that this game had dropped from $1.99 to FREE at lunch and loaded it up. You can see I didn’t score much but I was really impressed by the way the screen zooms in the area where the ball is and then comes back down just in time so you don’t lose it.

Wild West Pinball boasts of

• Full hi-res 3D graphics
• 40 fps frame speed
• Camera effects
• Live scoring table
• Realistic physics
• Shake your iPhone to shake your pinball table
• Pause/play game play anytime

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball simulator game!

Available in:  App Store

Price: $1.99 -> Free

Popularity: 1% [?]

iPrivate Browser is a simple and secure web browser that lets you surf the Internet without leaving any history or cookies behind.

Apple makes a great effort to not let any lewd apps get through to the AppStore.

iPrivate app lets you browse with anonymity and saves you the embarrassment of unwanted history or cookies showing up when you are using Safari. It goes a step further by letting you quickly hide the page you are surfing by providing 2 big buttons.

You can switch instantly by hitting the black ‘http://www.’ button or the Google button to look like you were doing something else.

You can set the homepage for this app and a bug preventing access to secure links has now been fixed. Version 1.2 is coming soon with password protection and 3.0 web loading.

Even though it is called iPrivate, it screams to be named iPorn browser. And some folks might appreciate the thoughtfulness of the developers. :-p

Price: $0.99 -> Free

Popularity: 2% [?]

Amazon recently just launched their new Kindle 2 (Latest Generation wireless reading device) and priced it at $360.

Amazon just launched a free iPhone Kindle App that lets you read Amazon eBooks with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog in your iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, you can read the first chapter of any book for free if you want to try out the App without buying a book from Amazon Kindle.

It has a lot of the Kindle features like resizing text, bookmark pages, viewing notations you made on Kindle, etc.

The price point for Kindle is kind of out of my league at the moment and I have my entertainment budget lined up for stuff elsewhere this year.

But, the iPhone Kindle App creates a sweet spot where I can buy and read eBooks on my iPhone from the vast eBook Catalog with one of the most competitive pricing elsewhere.

If you already own a Kindle or planning to buy Kindle 2, the iPhone App makes a compelling statement.

Reason - WhisperSync. This feature automatically keeps track of where you left off in each book and it allows you to pick up from that spot in any Kindle-friendly devices you may have. You can leave your Kindle 2 bedside in the night and pick up on the reading on your way to work in a train/bus from your iPhone.

As Amazon’s Kindle service expands to more mobile devices, this feature is going to be kick-ass.

With Amazon moving into the iPhone eBook market, it’s time the other players stood up and took notice as the competition is going to be really stuff from now on.

If you are a iPhone eBook app writer, what do you think about this development?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Not so comfortable wearing your own ties?

Tie-a-Tie Deluxe app shows you how to tie your different knots for different occasions. You don’t have to grab your laptop and Google anymore.

You can look at both diagrams and photos to make sure you can learn to easily make that perfect knot with your tie.

You can do 7 different knots

• Windsor
• Half-Windsor
• Four-in-Hand
• Small Knot
• Cross Knot
• Pratt Knot
• Bow Tie

The diagrams and photos guide you through each step of the knot. Also, there are descriptions of appropriate use for each type of knot helps you decide which one you should do. You can just swipe between different steps and flip between diagrams and photos.

The $2.99 app is FREE in App Store for 48 hours. So grab it now but even at $2,99 it can be such a time/life saver at those occasions you’d need it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Magic Touch is a great photo retouching app for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you are bored with just taking plain old pictures with your iPhone, you can put your artistic touch to your pictures easily with this cool app. And just with the touch of your finger.

Some of the things you can do with Magic Touch are

• Touch up tools - Clone stamp, smudge, paintbrush, color, overlay, etc
• Extended color pallete - Antique white, bisque, & azure
• Image resizing - canvas size 80×60 to 1024×768 with an output size of upto 2048×1536 (3MP with upsampling)
• See before/after pictures by just rotating
• Change eyes or lip color
• Change nose shape
• Teeth Whitening
• Night Vision
• Sunset

And lots of other features to list here.

And you’d be amazed to know that such a full featured app is on sale for $0.99 right now in the AppStore. I remember seeing it for $4.99 but I am not sure.

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you are a wine lover or just getting into learning about wines, Wine Snob is the perfect iPhone/iPod Touch app for you.

Wine Snob not just lets you track your wine tastings but it also lets you learn about different white and red wines.  You can learn about different wine and food pairings, all the wine lingo. You can keep track of all the wines you taste, notes, prices and vintage.  You can even save a picture of the label along with your notes.

Wine Snob lets you

• Save picstures of labels with each wine
• Tag tasting keywords for easy recall
• Search for wines by name or tasting tag
• Save detailed notes on wines
• See average price, rating, etc.
• Automatically get the wines geotagged
• Sync with your online database for safe backup

Wine Snob is definitely worth at $4.99 but until Valentine’s Day, you can get it for FREE! Try it now at this incredible price.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Apple doesn’t seem to care that we really could use the copy/paste functionality in iPhone. But, that’s why we love the jailbreaking community.

Clippy is a jailbreak app available via Cydia in your iPhone. Clippy brings copy/paste in most apps where the keyboard is available. Eg. Mail, Notes, SMS, Maps etc but not in Safari.

With Clippy installed, you just open the keyboard and hit the ‘.?123′ button to see ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ buttons at the top of the keyboard. Now just use your finger to select a region and press Copy. You get visual confirmation that the text actually copied by seeing the first few letters near the ‘Paste’ button.

Now, just head on over to the app ou want the text to be copied to, hit the 123 button again and press ‘Paste’.

Are you wondering why you would need this? Imagine if you have a long address in your email and you want to map it. Unless you have an excellent memory, Clippy makes it ludicrously easy to just copy the address and plug it into Maps app!

It would be great to have this in Safari as well but this is a great start. MagicPad was another app that promised copy paste in iPhone.

I know some of us are nervous about jailbreaking, but reasons such as this available only via Cydia it might be worthwhile to jailbreak your iPhone 3g.

Popularity: 1% [?]

There are tons of shopping list apps and just list apps in the AppStore.

Mister Lister proclaims that they are taking the trouble out of creating and managing shopping lists. They might be on to something as I do find it hard to keep up with my shopping lists.

So, I figured I’d give Mister Lister a try.

Mister Lister sets itself apart from other shopping list apps by remembering what I buy. This makes creating shopping lists so much easier to create as it makes it simple by showing only the items I care about.

So anytime I need to create my shopping list, i just need to simpy see he list of items, change quantities and start shopping!

You can also create a sticky list and make a list always be at the top. Yu can even copy or email a list!

You have to try it to really appreciate the simplicity of this app and actually make iPhone help you with your shopping list.

And guess what? Mister Lister is FREE all day today (01/16/09) and is only $0.99 for one more week if you missed it.

If you are a Twitterer, you could also get updates/news with deals like these by following us at @TopiPhone.

What is your favorite shopping list app?

Popularity: 1% [?]

SBSettings is available via Cydia only for jailbroke iPhones only. So if you are wondering why you should jailbreak iPhone 3G, here’s another compelling reason.

SBSettings lets you toggle between different modes and access certain apps quickly from the home screen with a swipe of your finger across the top of the screen.

You can toggle functions like 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and adjust brightness with a quick tap after the swipe. The buttons are color coded with green indicating active ones and red/orange indicating the disabled ones.

SBSettings launches from Springboard so you can refresh SpringBoard right from it as well as Respring or go to Dock or access the Power options.

Another cool utility with this app is that you can quickly see your Wi-Fi ip address, your data IP addess as well as check your hard drive free space on your iPhone. It even shows available memory.

SBSettings Gets iPod Widget

With the recent release (not shown in pic), SBSettings has added support for a iPod widget.

Before this, if you wanted to play music while surfing, you had to exit Safari and then play and then resume surfing. SBSettings gives a play/pause widget so you can start playing music without quitting surfing. The iPod widget starts playing random songs when play and if you had paused, it starts playing where you left off.

If you have a jailbroke iPhone 3G, try this now for FREE from Cydia. Also, let us know what else is your favorite in Cydia that you’d like us to feature here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I am a NPR news junkie. I listen to it in my car. I listen to it at work. Except for at times when I am away from my car or when I am not at work.

If you didn’t know, NPR is National Public Radio that offers a huge variety of programs, local news, national news, music, talk shows, business news, politics, etc.

Not anymore. I can listen to it from my iPhone with the Public Radio Tuner app that’s available for Free.

Public Radio Tuner brings your local NPR station via your iPhone no matter where you are in the world.

In fact, Public Radio Tuner goes beyond NPR and is actually a unique collaboration between American Public Media (APM), National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio Exchange (PRX), Public Interactive (PI) and Public Radio International (PRI).

• This app has over 200 high quality public radio streams
• Easy to use interface
• Search by call letters, frequency, city, region or format
• Favorite a station to stream again
• Use GPS to find your local station

Public Radio Tuner is a godsend for news-junkies like myself. I hope you’d like it too.

Download Public Radio Tuner

Popularity: 1% [?]