Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Chad’s Pick: Reeder

I love Google Reader. The web interface is nice, but I desperately want an app to sync it with. I have found the perfect app; Reeder. Why? It looks great, has the fastest sync there is and the interface is fast and clean. At only $1.99, this app is a steal! [$1.99 - iTunes link]

James’ Pick: iPod

One of the reasons that I purchased my first iPhone is that I have always been looking to converge all of my devices into one. I travel every week for work and carrying around an iPod, a digital camera, a cell phone and a portable DVD player can be a real pain while trying to go through the security line at the airport. With all of my cords, etc. I almost always get stopped and searched. Now while it seems I am picking the iPhone in general, I most use the iPod function. While being stuck on the runway, delayed at O’Hare, or long cross country flights, I need my music to help me get through the flight. If music isn’t what I want to do, I can always catch up on my latest TV shows and movies. [Built-in]

Justin’s Pick: Maps

I know everyone frowns on picking built in apps, but I haven’t tried any new apps worth talking about so my pick is the Map app. In the past few weeks it’s helped me, more than once, navigate new roads after getting fed up with traffic and turning off the highway onto some random street. Plus, I’ve used the traffic feature to avoid some routes in the first place. Besides TweetDeck, Weather, and Facebook it’s probably my most used app. [Built in]

Matt’s Pick: Notifications

I’ve never regularly used an RSS reader, because I would add a lot of feeds, then when I’d open it, I had all these things to read and that little number badge would be in the hundreds staring at me from my springboard. I happen to be one of those people that if there’s a number badge on an app, then it needs to be resolved immediately. So I deleted the app. Resolved, right?!? The resolution to my issue was using the Notifications app. This allowed me to set up certain RSS feeds to be checked and Push notifications to be sent to me. Notifications doesn’t only do push for RSS, but Twitter, Gmail & more, This allows me to pick and choose which RSS articles (or whatever) to view when they pop up instead of putting them off for later. [$2.99 - iTunes link]

Leanna’s Pick: Bejeweled 2

PopCap Games sure knows how to feed into my addiction of puzzle games. A few months back they successfully took over my life with Peggle and now I’m addicted to Bejeweled 2, more specifically, Blitz mode. Bejeweled Blitz is a one minute speed version of the classic game that is also available on Facebook. With Facebook Connect, Bejeweled Blitz is now with me everywhere I go! Not only is this game terribly addicting, but it looks and sounds amazing as well. [$2.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: Instapaper (Pro/Free)

I learned a while ago that I had time to either read, or write — not both. Luckily, technological advances like RSS and Instapaper have let me squeeze in some honest-for-pleasure reading again, if only newsy/opiniony web matter. Still, with drop-dead simple bookmarklet integration on the desktop (find an article, hit the bookmarklet, it’s saved), and transparent syncing between desktop and dedicated iPhone client, no longer is my day filled with “boy I wish I had time to read that non-iPhone-related post” but rather a single tap on Instapaper and it’s now “boy I hope I have time to read this non-iPhone-related post later!” (I purchased the Pro version to support the developer, but there’s also a free version if you want to try before you support) [$4.99 - iTunes link] or [Free - iTunes link]

Crackberry Kevin’s Pick: BlackBerry Bold 9700

[Er, thanks Kevin. We think. Check it out on CrackBerry.com if you must... - Rene]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!

Reeder, iPod, Maps, Bejeweled 2, Notifications, Instapaper – TiPb Picks of the Week is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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NetNewsWire [Free with ads - iTunes link] and NetNewsWire Premium [$1.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone, the mobile version of NetNewsWire for Mac and FeedDemon for Windows, have just hit 2.0 and brings a lot of compelling features to the table — especially for RSS geeks:

• Google Reader sync including Starred items synchronization
• Twitter integration – send articles as tweets
• Instapaper integration
• Latest News view –
• New article view
• New up and down arrows for navigating through news list
• Title and date of most recent item on Feeds screen.
• Excerpts and dates on news item lists
• Send articles via email without leaving NetNewsWire

It’s enough that I’m finally going to go all in on Google Reader and NNW 2.0 (at least for the next week — we’ll see if it sticks).

Screens after the break. If you give NetNewsWire 2.0 a go as well, let us know what you think.

NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone Brings Google Reader Sync is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

The iPhone and Twitter go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Okay, maybe not, but they’re both darlings of the weberatti and enjoy popularity, prestige and — when it comes to the App Store — a growing plethora of choice combinations.

One such iPhone Twitter app enjoying attention lately is atebit’s Tweetie, now on release 1.2. The nice thing for iPhone tweeters is that each Twitter client seems to focus on something different, giving us a good amount of diversity and choice. Tweetie, for example, excels at functionality. You can do a lot with it, perhaps more than any other Twitter client currently shipping. What kind of functionality? Where do I start!

Not only can you create an account, you can create multiple accounts. Awesome for those who want to tweet under, say, a personal name, a blog name, a work name, and a club name, for example.

Once logged in you can see Tweets, which includes all the posts of those you follow, Replies, which includes @(username) posts flagged your way, messages, which includes direct (private) posts just to you, Favorites, which are any posts you’ve flagged with a star, and More, which includes additional options.

Tweets

In Tweet view you can scroll to the top if you tap the title bar, just like in Safari. From there you can hit the inline refresh button to get the latest updated. If you get to the end and of the list want to see older tweets, you can tap on Load More.

To write a tweet, tap the new tweet button (looks like the new message button in Mail, but is top right in this interface).

Tap on a Tweet and you get a single-screen view of it along with an info button to see the user’s profile, and if it was a reply, a button at the end of the tweet to follow it back up-stream. Handy feature that.

For quick actions, you can swipe from left to right over it to reveal Reply, User, and Star controls.

Favorite’ing

Simplest first: Star lets you toggle on or off favorite status for the tweet.

Replying

Reply will open a new Tweet composer with an @(username) at the ready, as well as buttons to attach a photo or share location. (If you’re a new user, Tweetie like any other location-aware app will ask permission to use your location several times — and you can always revoke that permission later if you become concerned). If you choose to cancel, you also get the option to save a tweet-in-progress as a draft — very nice.

User Info

The user screen gives you an amazing amount of options: you see the @(username), the number of followers, the profile description, and web URL, and can follow or stop following right there. Beneath the general info are options to view Recent Tweets, to Search Twitter for that @(username)’s replies, to see who they’re Following and who their Followers are, to Send a Public Reply (@ reply), to Send a Direct Message, and to Block and Unblock a user.

Replies

The Reply tab is similar to the Tweet tab but constrains the list to those who have sent you @ replies.

Messages

Messages lets you see any tweets sent directly and privately to you, or conversely private messages you sent directly to others. Unfortunately and counter-intuitively, you can’t swipe on direct messages to reveal the same controls you get when you swipe on a tweet — please add this feature! You can hit the Reply button at top right, but there’s no “d (username)” that typically signifies a direct message, and the lack of a visual cue makes me paranoid that I may be responding to someone else, or to the public. You can also tap on the message itself to reveal the single message view (along with the option to Mail Link to this Tweet), and the tiny info button top right to load the user profile.

Favorites

Favorite view constrains the list to only your starred (favorite’d) tweets.

More

More gives you a metric ton of additional features, including your Profile, the ability to Go to a User, a list of other twitter users Nearby (based on location), popular keyword Trends on Twitter at the moment, and the ability to Search Twitter. Some of these are really nice to have, though both Profile and Go to User failed for me when I tried them.

Options

Some of the finest — and foulest — Tweetie functionality is hidden away in the iPhone Settings panel. Exit Tweetie and hop over there to change the default Theme (bubbles is currently the only alternative), increase the font size, and toggle Display Name between full and screen names,

If you use Instapaper and want to save web pages for later viewing, you can toggle support on for that as well.

Advanced settings let you turn Multiple Accounts on and off, control Image Compression via a slider, toggle Landscape Keyboard (which is a full screen landscape keyboard, but the app only remains in landscape when it brings up the keyboard. I’m not a big fan of the landscape keyboard in general, but for those who like it, this alone is a killer feature.

Popularity Enhancer is either a stroke of comedic genius, or is just a really sad essay on the state of the App Store. Suffice it to say, if you loves you some flashlight and fart sounds, turn this sucker on.

Lastly, you can set the amount of tweets that Tweetie loads at launch, either making it start faster, or with a greater amount of data.

Conclusion

Tweetie is simply the most functional Twitter client I’ve used to date. However, functionality does not always equal usability. Many software designers will tell you what is left out is at least — if not more — important than what is put in. Tweetie doesn’t fall victim to this completely, but all that functionality does come at the expense of some usability and discoverability. Some users will inevitably prefer simpler, easier to use clients. Others will simply enjoy the power Tweetie provides.

At $2.99, it’s more expensive than the free Twitter clients but considerably cheaper than other, paid clients (which can reach $9.99). For my money, the feature set alone makes it a must-have for serious iPhone Twitter users.

If they could make it a tad more consistent (i.e. swipe private messages the way you can tweets), and really give it WebApp class features (can I delete a Tweet? I can do that on the web, couldn’t find a way on Tweetie), it would be darn-near invaluable.

Pros

• Supports Multiple Accounts
• Incredible Feature Set
• Can has fart sounds

Cons

• User experience could be more consistent
• Can has fart sounds

TiPb Review Rating

Review: Tweetie Twitter Client for the iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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