These apps won’t be neccecarily released in 2010, some of them will be way older, but I discovered them this year. See it as my most important, best, most inovative apps of 2010.

Today we’re starting off with…

The beste iPhone apps of 2010

Instagram
One of the big trends in 2010 was the digital lomography. What I love about Instagram is that it mixes that with some nice social features. Plus the app looks great, and is totally free! (Read my full review)

Hipstamatic
The other big hit was Hipstamatic. This app doesn’t have any big social features, but it gives you an awesome vintage experience where you can choose your lenses, film and flash. (Read my full review)

Reeder
When I started using Reeder, it was like seeing the light for the first time. There is not much to say about this app, it’s just the best, full featured RSS reader in the App Store.

Instapaper
Another big discovery for my this year was Instapaper. When you’re like me, and you want to read a lot of articles on the go, the app is definitely something for you.

Gowalla
Gowalla isn’t new at all, but it has released a big 3.0 release this year. Now with a completely new design, and a genius Foursquare integration, it feels like an awesome new app.

VLC
Last but not least is maybe the best new tool for the iPhone. With VLC you’ll never have to worry about converting video files ever again. It’s super simple just like it should be.

When Steve announced the all new MacBook Air a couple of weeks ago, I immediately thought, I want one of those!
Here is why…

When I look around on my school, 90% of my classmates own a MacBook Pro 15 inch. Today that will cost you 1700 euros. And while I love Apple computers, that’s a lot of money. So when I wanted to replace my white MacBook (late 2007) last year, I decided to buy a 1000 euro iMac 21 inch instead. Had the same processor, ram and graphics, but it had a much larger screen and it was (back then) 500 euros cheaper.

I know this cheaper solution is not usable for everyone, some people really want (or need) to have a fast 15 inch notebook to work on the go. But when I started to think about it, I didn’t. My old MacBook, which still works perfectly, is just not fast enough to have a decent photoshop workflow, but the iMac would replace that. The only thing I would use my MacBook for is to organize work on the train, to take notes in class, or to view some photos but not to edit them. So basically my MacBook transformed from a notebook, to a very good netbook (I feel a little nauseous when I say that word). The only thing which isn’t practical with the MacBook is the weight, carrying it around everyday on your shoulder isn’t pleasant.

So that’s why I immediately jumped high in the air when the cheaper MacBook Airs were announced. But I couldn’t get to excited. I’m still a student, I don’t work, I don’t have much money. So don’t worry I’m not buying one.

But when my current MacBook ever comes to die (knock on wood that he doesn’t), I’m probably replacing him with a MacBook Air.

The only decision left is choosing between the 11 and 13 inch. When I heard about the 11″ model, I was a little skeptical. But when I saw it in real life, those doubts were gone in a second. It’s a small screen, but not too small. I will take some getting used to, but it’s worth it when you see the size of that thing. When I look at the 13 inch I wonder if the couple of inches more screen and more weight is worth the extra € 200. The only thing I think is worth the money, is upgrading from 2 to 4 GB of ram.

Last decision to make is, MacBook Air 11″ vs iPad. Currently I would choose an Air, because it offers what I need, and the iPad is a little short there. But who knows, maybe that decision will get a lot harder when the new iPad arrives in 2011…

About a week ago I wrote a review about the RSS readers I have used on the iPhone. At the end I said that there is one app I still haven’t tried that looks promising to me. That app is Pulse News Mini and it became free today.

Like I said before, Pulse is a more casual news reader than others. One of the limitations is that you can only add up to 20 different feeds (50 on the iPad, so hopefully soon on the iPhone too).

The cool thing about this app, is the layout. Each feed is is a different row placed vertically, and to view a new items from a feed, you can scroll each one horizontally. Every new item is basically a thumbnail with the title, so it’s very cool to view feeds with pictures in the news items.

For me it certainly won’t replace Reeder, it’s just too limited for that. But I see Pulse as a great companion for my main RSS app. There are a couple of sites that interest me, but because me RSS reader is already pretty full, I decided not to add them. But with Pulse I can add all those sites, and just read a couple of items when I have time. No pressuring unread count, no need to read all the items, just when I casually want to read some articles.

Conclusion

Pulse is a very nice little app. And although it may not be useful for you, I suggest you check it out anyway, just to see what it’s about. And it wouldn’t hurt your wallet, cause it’s completely free.

Since my girlfriend bought an new iPod touch a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been using FaceTime almost on a daily basis. Since we both still live with our parents we’re constantly looking for a good way to communicate. We started with Skype, when she bought a MacBook we switched to iChat, then went back to Skype, and now we’re on FaceTime.

What I like

I like the fact that it’s so easy, to set up and to use. I like the fact that it turns even your Mac or iPod in some sort of phone. When you get called on your iPod, it’s just like a phone.

What I also like, and what makes it better than Skype and others, is that you don’t need to have the App open all the time, not on your Mac, iPod or iPhone. When you get called, it just pops up, and you answer.

What I don’t like

While it’s great that you can receive calls while the App isn’t running, sometimes those calls don’t always come at the best time. For instance, when you’re eating, brushing your teeth, or when you’re on the toilet. Those (mostly that last) are the times you hate the video call feature. Or maybe I’m just not used to it yet…

Another this I don’t like, beware this is a technical issue, is that it doesn’t always work like it should. Sometimes when my girlfriend call me from her iPod, I receive a call, I accept, and then it starts connecting, but the actual call never starts. My first thought was that the ports that needed to be open on her router weren’t open. But after opening those up (found the necessary ports on an Apple support page) it still didn’t work. And the weird thing is that this doesn’t happen always, and that calling from her Mac just works most of the time.

Maybe this is just a bèta thing (I sure hope so), because it’s really frustrating, and it forces us to go back to Skype all the time.

Last thing I kind of miss in FaceTime, certainly on the Mac, is some sort of chat functionality. Not that I want FaceTime to become an IM client, but often I like to share a link, some text or a file during a call, but I simply can’t. Same thing with screen sharing… So once again I end up using a couple of other services to solve this problem (Twitter DM, Shared Dropbox folder, …)

Last thing I wanted to mention is Skype 5.0 bèta, which came out a couple of days ago. With this completely new Skype, FaceTime faces (see what I did there :p) a really tough opponent. Skype got a lot simpler, cleaner and easier.

So Steve, FaceTime is great, but it feels a little like a bèta, so you still have a lot of work to do…

Instagram is a cool new photography app for the iPhone (and iPod 4g). And it’s once again an app with lomo-like filters, where you get that old school look (much like with Hipstamatic). But this time there’s a social aspect too!

Like on Twitter, you can follow people you like, and you can be followed by others. You snap a picture of something you want to share with the world, select a filter (your photo will automaticly look much better), you type a little message, select all the services you want to share it on (Twitter, Facebook, …), and done! Now your followers can see your image in their stream, and like or comment on it.

A cool feature in Instagram is the popular tab, you can see the most liked images at the moment, which are most of the time beautiful shots!

Once you start with Instagram you notice it’s very addictive to take some cool pictures and share them with the world. And you know what the best part is? It’s free! So go and download Instagram right now, and give it a try!

P.S.: This is one of my shots from yesterday (add me: laurentmeyvaert)

What you have to understand before reading this, is that an RSS reader is something very personal. Some people have lot’s of feeds, and want a feature rich app or a very clean design, and others just want to keep up with the news in a casual way. This is just what works the best for me.

The first RSS reader I installed on my phone was NetNewsWire. A couple of years ago that was the only decent (and free) reader in the store. I worked quite well, and it was nice to have the same reader on my Mac and iPhone.

When they released the 2.0 version everything went downhill pretty fast. The expectations were really high, and the competition was catching up. In a last effort to make it work I upgraded to the add-free version, but that didn’t help much.

This was a year ago, and nothing has changed since. The developers have posted a blogpost that they’re planning on updating the app soon, but I don’t have much hope.

While searching for a new reader, I downloaded MobileRSS Pro (free for one day). It was like seeing the light for the first time, the app had a lot of features, and wasn’t too slow.

But after a while I noticed that the app just copied the best features for the most popular readers, and put it in their app. So I still wasn’t completely happy with it.

When Byline released the free version of the app, I was really excited. I had heard a lot about Byline, and many people said it was the best. And they were right, byline is a really good app, with lots of features, it’s quick and looks great, everything you want.

The only downside was that the free version only supported 250 new items, that it had advertisements, and that there was something wrong with the feed caching setting (you turned it off, and a week later, it started caching again). So I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pay €4 for the full version.

Just when I was thinking about trying Reeder, it went on sale for €0,79! So I bought it, and from the first day I knew I had found the perfect reader. It has about the same features as Byline, looks great, but it has no caching problems and it’s even faster.

Sadly the price went back up, but that shouldn’t keep you from buying it. For me it’s certainly the best RSS reader in the app store. And with the Mac desktop app on it’s way, I can almost say goodbye to NetNewsWire completely…

EXTRA: One of the most popular readers in the App Store, that I still haven’t tried, is Pulse. The reason for that, is that Pulse is more of a casual news reader. It’s perfect for people who just want to read some articles now and then, or for people who only have up to 20 feeds to read. It’s not really what I need, but I like the idea and design.

Update: I have finally used Pulse, and written a separate review about it.

View This Poll

I personaly love lomo and the whole idea behind it (just having fun, without rules), but I don’t like analog photography. But now there’s an alternitive for me, called ‘Hipstamatic’. The hipstamatic was actually a physical camera back in 1982, and now the guys at Synthetic have transformed the look and feel from that toy camera to an iPhone app.

The cool thing about this app is that you can choose which lens, film and flash you want to use to make your photograph. When you buy the app for € 1.59 you get 3 lenses, 3 films and 2 flashes, but you can expand your hipstamatic with packs that cost € 0.79 each.

Hipstamatic won’t replace the default camera app, but it’s a lot of fun to go out with, and experiment with all the possibilities. So if you love lomography, well designed apps and your iPhone, then this app is certainly something for you!

If you want to see some shots I made with this amazing app, go to my daily photo blog.

The idea behind GetGlue is that you let your friends and the system know what books, movies, TV-Shows, albums or games you like. From those interests GetGlue can suggest some other things you might like too, whether it’s a brand new release or an old classic. The other part of this new social media netwerk is that you can check-in on what you are doing at the moment, what book you are reading or which movie you are watching, and when you’re done, you can leave a little review. Last cool thing on GetGlue is earning stickers, similar to the badges on Foursquare. You can acheve those by checking in on the iPhone app, checking in multiple times a day, or checking in on special events like watching the World Cup.

While a service like Foursquare or Gowalla is fun, it doesn’t add much value to your life, but I think GetGlue does. Discovering new TV-shows is another thing I love to do, and with GetGlue this becomes a lot easier.

GetGlue is a lot of fun (and maybe a little addictive), so give it a try! getglue.com

First of all I have to say that I curently use an iPhone 3G 8GB, so the arguments that I will be giving maybe won’t apply to your situation.

I will start with some features I’ve been (and still am) really excited about. One of those features is Folders. If you have more than 100 apps installed it’s almost a full-time job keeping them organised, and folder is a great way to reduce it to a part-time job, or even just a hobby. It’s really an easy and beautiful way to organise apps by category, or even by developer. And all that is done in a 100% Apple like way, nice and simple.

On my phone (and my mac) I have 5 email inboxes, 3 old (mostly spam) adresses, one for school, and one main personal account. 2 of those accounts are gmail, so with IMAP it’s very simple to keep them in sync between the mac and iPhone. The other 3 are POP3, so when I get a mail on my mac, I always have to go that certain inbox, and mark the mail as read. And with the unified inbox in iOS 4 this hole process became a lot easier. Now I don’t have to navigate to the specific inbox, but all mail comes (like on a computer) in one big inbox. Sadly the problem of pop3 hasn’t solved with this new feature, but that’s something Microsoft will have to do…

Last positive thing in iOS 4 are the little enhancements like the character counter in the SMS app, or the Google suggestions in Mobile Safari or the new glossy dock. Those are not the most spectaculair, but they can certainly help you in your daily iPhone usage.

Sadly the new operating system for the iPhone isn’t all shiny and perfect, certainly for me and my 2 year old phone. The new OS made my phone slow, almost unusable slow! Not only launching apps is slower, just typing has become a real struggle. It’s like the processor can never follow my typing speed, which he could do a lot better with the previous OS. The speed problem has even made me think about going back to the 3.1.3 for a few weeks, because I’m planning on buying a new iPhone 4 when it comes out here in Belgium.

And the combination of the new super fast iPhone 4 in combination with iOS 4 and the addition of multitasking is by what I hear and believe just perfect, with no drawbacks at all!

So, what are your thoughts on iOS 4? And If you never used it, ar you planning on buying a new iPhone 4?

Chop Chop Runner from Gamerizon is a classic run and jump side scroller game. It has a Ninja theme, which is the second one after their first Chop Chop Ninja game.

The controls are super simple, you just tap and hold to jump, and you tap again to attack. But as you all know the most stupid or simple games have the highest fun factor.

The app has a price tag of €1,59 and you can download it right here

But if you don’t want to buy it just yet, you can play a lite version on the developers website (Click here).

Definitely worth checking out!