It’s no secret that iPhone applications are a breakout hit for Apple, even beyond their own expectations. Because of this, a culture of app fanatics is popping up online, which include a slew of new podcasts and video shows that cater to people looking for the best and brightest apps out there. Frankly, with all the crap that makes it onto the App Store, I’m glad there are people out there testing these things out for us first.

Revision3 (where we produce Tekzilla) just announced a new show called AppJudgment, which also covers BlackBerry, Android and Palm Pre applications alongside the more familiar iPhone apps. Here’s the most recent episode:

My friends Scott Johnson and Eric Skyhawk have also launched a new podcast called AppSlappy, which is quickly making it’s way up the iTunes charts. They cover what’s new in the App Store, hot deals of the week, and also give us their take on what apps they’ve been using lately.

Last but not least, Sean Bonner (along with a huge cast of well-known names in new media) is hosting a new show called iPhun. It’s honest, quick-paced, and sarcastically funny in the best way. They also have more in-depth written reviews on the blog, so check that out as well.

On a slightly different note, fellow Emerson alum Jared DiDomenico has a music project called Nuclear O’ Reilly with his friend Brad Naprixas, and they created their new album entirely on the iPhone application Beatmaker (iTunes link) by Intua Software. It’s called, very appropriately, Phoning It In. Worth a listen just to hear how much effort went into it, but it’s pretty damn catchy as well. Here’s their “making of” video:

As applications (and the iPhone itself) become more advanced, users will continue to find new ways to be creative with them. Time for me to go download some new ones!

By this point in my life, I should have determined that technology, like everything else, is fallible. In fact, probably more so than most things.

As an app junky and frequent traveler, I was excited by the glowing recommendation given to me by a cab driver one morning:

So I downloaded it, opened up a RideCharge account, and decided to give it a try the next time I had a non-vital (read: not late for an airplane) cab trip to reserve. The application works by finding the nearest cab to your location and sending your request directly to their dispatch computer. You then authorize payment via the app as well, which should immediately show up on the cabs computer system as soon as it goes through.
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I’ll be judging the Boxee Dev Challenge along with my friends Cali Lewis, Chris Pirillo and Boxee CEO Avner Ronen. Here are the details:

the new boxee API enables developers to build and publish apps for boxee users. while people are working on a variety of boxee apps, we thought it would be a good idea to provide some extra incentive for the developers.

the boxee dev challenge will have 3 categories: Video, Music and Photos.
in each category we will have a People’s Choice award and a Judge’s Choice award:

People’s Choice Award: Drobo + 4TB from Seagate
Judge’s Choice Award: Sony Bravia XBR9 46″

the deadline for submitting your application is June 14th at 11:59pm PT, but we encourage you to submit early and often as we’ll be talking up cool applications as they come in.
voting will take place between June 15th – June 22nd.

on June 23rd will have a boxee event in San Francisco (RSVP here) announcing the People’s Choice and our esteemed judges will choose a winner from the 10 most popular apps in each category.

Looking for more info on how to develop boxee apps: check out http://developer.boxee.tv and take a look at the sample app (we will publish additional sample apps). please submit your app to dev_challenge@boxee.tv.

I’m excited to see what apps you guys come up with! Good luck!

Last week my brand new Kindle 2 arrived, and for the past few days I’ve been blissfully downloading books and reading them every chance I get. Then, I started seeing reports of a rumored new Kindle, and I became nervous: “A new one? Already? But the Kindle 2 just came out in February! Who would do such a thing?”

When the announcement of the Kindle DX happened on Wednesday, I was besieged with Twitter messages asking if I was pissed that I just paid $359 for a brand new Kindle 2 when Amazon released a new one that next week. Instantly, my mind went into defensive mode: “No, of course not! This one is huge, and more expensive! I don’t even read textbooks!” But a the same time, the early-adopter bug was chittering in my ear that I now owned an inferior product. Lets take a look at this handy graph on Amazon:

OK, so it has its pros: PDF support without conversion and the rotating display would be pretty sweet, plus the larger display. But are those features really worth the uptick in price, which I already believe to be quite inflated? Not for me!

Side note: I talked a lot of smack about e-book readers on the iPhone on last weeks TWiT, but I’ve had a change in heart. While it still hurts my eyes after a while, the Kindle iPhone app (iTunes link here) is really cool. I read almost an entire book on it yesterday while I was between takes at a video shoot, and it was great.