I recently had a chance to download and play with FlipBook a bit. Flipbook is a neat little app for using the iPhone or iPod Touch to make frame by frame animations. It uses a set of well-designed drawing tools to create the work which, once completed, you can share them on the flipbook.tv sharing site.

The tools make it easy to paint, color, erase mistakes etc. Undo and redo support means you can experiment to your heart’s delight without concern for ruining your work. And I particularly enjoy having the ability to import camera roll images and then use a variety of tools to customize them. What is particularly nice is the fact that you can use all the tools to do some sophisticated tweaks OR use none of them and take the simple approach. Either way it is a whole lot of fun.

Is the iPod Touch/iPhone a gaming device?

You bet —  especially when there are good games available for it.
 
A number of our readers will behaving a bunch more fun on their iPhones now. Codes went to…

In addition to whatsoniphone I have the good fortune to be a team member over on  www.geardiary.com. For me, one of the great things about GD is the opportunity to be in touch with the terrific people who make it the incredible site it is. It’s about as nice, supportive, interesting, and eclectic group is you’re going to find and the fact that everyone on the team has slightly different interests and needs when it comes to technology makes it all the more interesting.

Not surprisingly, however, there are a lot of writers there who are currently using an iPhone or an iPod touch. I asked everyone to share their top 10 iPhone applications. Most interesting to me was the degree of overlap we had with one another. Here’s a quick list of the overlap.

So which appear at the top? –

On four different lists were:
Evernote
ToDo

On three of the lists are:
Facebook
Twittelator Pro
eWallet
Safari

And on two of the lists are:
eReader
Jott
Byline
Around Me

It struck me how few of the applications are games. Clearly, at least for us, the iPhone functions as a productivity tool and as a replacement for many of the things that we would otherwise do on a computer.

My complete list after the break…

Congrats to readers  "wiruzik" and "jaws". Each receives a copy of Talking Pics from Big Stone Phone. You can learn more about Talking Pics and their other great iPhone apps by visiting them HERE.
 

There were a few excellent submissions to our "My Top Apps Etymotic hf2 Contest".

It could just as easily been called the "Help the new iPhone user  figure out which applications to use first" contest since the recommendations were excellent.

They were so good, in fact, that we’ll share all of them over the next few days.

We know that there are many people who received an iPhone or an iPod touch over the holidays and I happen to think that all of the entries are "must read" posts. But, as the TV series used to say "there can be only one" and so it is that our panel read through all of the posts and decided that the new Etymotic hf2s  go to jnamcharg.

jnamcharg not only suggested an excellent selection of apps, but in doing so made some great points about HOW the iPhone can fit into your life. More-over, the suggestion that a new iPhone-user might best start off with some of the best free apps makes a lot of sense (writes the person whose iTunes app collection just blew past 450). The full post can be read after the break.

Congrats jnamcharg! We know you’ll enjoy the hf2s!.