Vlingo
Vlingo (free) has just pulled off a magnificent coup and has scooted past Google's new-and-improved mobile app to grab the title in voice-activated iPhone apps.

Speak into the phone to search Google or Yahoo, to dial a contact, find a spot on a map, and update your status on Twitter and Facebook. And yes, you'll be able to edit status updates before you send them, in case Vlingo didn't get it right.

Todo
The iTunes App Store is glutted with to-do lists and time managers, but many are so simple they're ineffective. Appigo's Todo (US$12.99) has the highest price of its cohort, but is also more complete than the budget offerings.

Unlike other to-do lists, you can have Todo assign a due date and priority ranking; it will winningly associate tasks with mobile numbers and websites. You can further synchronise your lists with your pro Remember the Milk account and with Toodledo, both web-based task organisers.

A Personal Assistant
An ultimate mobile productivity app, A Personal Assistant is a dashboard for all your online accounts. After adding an impressive array of social, financial, productive and shopping services, A Personal Assistant will display them as buttons.

Tap to view your banking transactions and total balance, travel itineraries, social commitments, and friends' status updates on a slew of social networks. To help keep data secure, Pageonce has 256-bit encryption and settings to determine how passwords are saved, to limit data to just your iPhone, and to disable your mobile account if you lose your phone.

Ziibii and NetNewsWire
If you're hungry for RSS feeds, Ziibii for iPhone (free) gives you an interesting way to get 'em. RSS stories, along with Flickr photos and Twitter and Facebook updates, are depicted as rafts floating along a river. Tapping a button switches to list view, where headlines from various sources are shuffled together. Tap on Filter to narrow it even more. Kudos for Ziibii's built-in browser, which makes jumping from the preview to the full article often seamless.

If you're already registered with one of NewsGator's free services, NetNewsWire for iPhone is your app. It's a little leaner in the interaction department than Ziibii, but people with voracious appetites for news can do with the essentials, like email links and add stories to a clippings folder to read from Safari later. Macheads can sync with NetNewsWire for Mac.

Bloomberg
Wall Street may not be everyone's cup of tea, but those who delight in watching the wild dips and spikes of the market will appreciate Bloomberg's sober application (free). A newsreader and stock ticker, the iPhone app contains a regrettably read-only news feed (we'd like to pass on articles to friends) and statistics on various exchanges in global markets. Charts and tables track highs and lows for individual stocks, industries and exchanges. The most devoted market hounds can create personalised portfolios of stocks and holdings in the My Stocks folder to keep a hard eye on daily fluctuation.

Fring
Skip past expensive data charges for international calls with the free VoIP caller Fring. With it, you'll be able to talk to friends using Skype, SIP, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Google Talk and ICQ's protocols — as long as you have a strong Wi-Fi connection. In addition, you can skip over Palringo altogether and IM with Fring instead. It supports the chat services above, as well as AIM, Yahoo and Twitter; but you'll lose out on photo messages.

Facebook for iPhone
Facebook's native iPhone app (free) nails it on the essentials, capturing so well the essence of Facebook.com you'll be tempted to use it solely on the iPhone. New photos auto-upload to your status bar and to the Mobile Photos album. Images are crisp. A dedicated screen for Facebook Chat makes it more enjoyable than it ever was online. Yet iPhone's Facebook app, like its sisters on other platforms, is all about basics. You may be disappointed to learn you can't play third-party Facebook games, add friends, or edit your profile (you can update your status, however).

Twitterlator
It was a tough choice, but Twitterlator and TwitterFon — both free — are our favourite Twitter apps for iPhone and iPod Touch. Twitterlator is the glossier of the two, offering geotagging and options to organise friends and even optimise the app for lefties. Any app you need a screen full of hints to decode is too clever for its own good, but no explanation is needed to post geotagged photos and tweets from Twitterlator; you tap the back arrow to reply to a tweet, the star to flag it, and the forward arrow to view a link in Twitterlator's in-app browser. There's also a field for searching Twitterstreams and separate screens for the public timeline and personal replies.

Firebox
Those with simpler needs and tastes will pay half as much for Firebox's data-keeper and will get half as many options. And that'll be just fine. Just US$5.99 gets you a simple text-only list of starter categories, like software registration keys, serial numbers for gizmos and credit card details. You can add your own folders and fields, all of which will be locked behind a master password and Blowfish and PBKDF2 encryption. There's no desktop app yet, so for now, Firebox data remains locked in the iPhone. Because of a sparse, text-driven interface, we recommend it only for those with less varied information to store.

PassGen
If devising secure passwords isn't your strong suit, the free PassGen password-creator is your answer. Set the desired password length with the slide bar and then tap or shake the iPhone to get your random number. You can also define passwords for hex encryption from the main interface, and email the password to yourself as a backup. From the Settings menu, you can include or exclude letters and special characters, and turn on or off the shakes. Still on our wish list are ways to manually set the password length and save favourite passwords on the iPhone.

Simplify Media
If you'd rather listen to your own collection without taxing your iPhone's memory, you'll want Simplify Media for iPhone (free). You'll first need to add Simplify Media to your Mac or PC, and then add friends if you'd like to share albums. After signing into your account from your iPhone, you'll be able to play those tunes remotely. Expect a delay when you first launch the app and when songs buffer for streaming.

Shazam for iPhone
What do you do when you're searching for the title or artist information for that snippet of a song rattling around your head? Shazam and Midomi — both of which are iPhone versions of established websites — grabs them. Shazam, the simpler of the two, instructs you to place your iPhone speakers close to the music source and record the audio for 30 seconds. Midomi, on the other hand, lets you speak, sing, type and record sound to help you find your tune. Both return music videos when available and steer you toward legitimate purchasing through iTunes. While both were fairly accurate in our tests, they faltered in the face of background noise.

Coolgorilla Talking Phrasebooks and Planet phrase books
We've had enough travel experience to know that when it comes to giving yourself a crash course in a new language, simpler is better. Coolgorilla's audio phrase books for Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and German quickly became our favourite in this crowded category. Pleasant voices slowly and clearly sound out common words and phrases that are simple enough to commit to memory after only a few repetitions. The free application may not be as polished as others, but it covers the same categories and adds another one for essential terms.

Picoli
Considering how vital the iPhone's camera is to any number of programs, it makes sense that many applications are cropping up to perfect your shots. Picoli (US$5.99) can correct for brightness, colour, balance and sharpness, flip and rotate images, and add effects. Picoli, thankfully, saves changes in a separate image, so you won't lose your original if you change your mind. There's no red-eye correction in this straightforward app, but Picoli does a more-than-decent job with instant on-camera editing and is a great choice for those who publish images without first transferring them to desktop image editors.

myLite Flashlight
Literally a flash light of a different colour, myLite (free) goes a step beyond the majority of bland iPhone flash-light apps to bring you the full spectrum of colours and strobes, including SOS lighting and a lighter to get into the concert act. You may need myLite's pulsing red rays as an emergency strobe or its neon green beacon to signal a friend in a crowded concert. At the very least, it will impress the kiddies and you'll be all set to host spontaneous dance parties.