There is NOTHING Good (and Free!) in the iTunes App Store (because iPhone is a piece of.. )

July 10th, 2008 | apple, ipod-touch

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More than 550 new applications arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch this morning in iTunes’ brand new App Store and more than 130 of them are available for free. This morning we’re taking a look at the best free applications for your iPhone and iPod Touch, available after the 2.0 software update arrives. Check out our list after the jump—and check back throughout the morning, as we’ll be updating it with more picks as we find them.

Note: Most of the apps listed here work with both iPhones and iPod touch models, but we’ve noted where an app requires the iPhone’s voice, SMS, or GPS capabilities to run.

iPhone Remote Controls Your iTunes Library

The iTunes App Store’s marquee freebie, the Remote app turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a remote control for your media library. Remote works almost exactly like the iPod application on your device—the main difference being that rather than playing back music on your iPhone or iPod touch, you’ve got access to your entire iTunes library and you’re playing it over your computer’s speakers. Read more about setting up and using the Remote app>>

Google Mobile App

Google already has a fast and slick iPhone version, but this app is hyper-optimized for quick searching. Search-as-you-type results spin up for web pages, click-to-call business and residential phone listings, nearby stores and restaurants, and more. That’s about it—a faster path to your Google search, but that’s pretty helpful in itself.

Jott for iPhone

iPhone only: Free voice-to-text service Jott is a natural fit for an iPhone app, and its implementation here is pretty nifty. You can simply say a note into the recording interface (at right), and it’ll show up in your Jott notes (or on Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, or Jott-connected applications). You can also simply type a note in, making the Jott app a quick interface for a lot of web apps. Managing all your notes with finger-swipe deletion is pretty handy as well.

Evernote

The universal stuff-gathering site Evernote gives you all the major tools of its desktop and web software in its iPhone app—add text, snap a phone cam shot, record a memo, or upload a photo, and it’s all available for organizing, tagging, or searching later. New in this interface is a straight-forward voice recorder; if you’d rather have your audio transcribed, you can use the Jott app as a gateway to Evernote. Given that even free users of Evernote can have the service scan their pictures and extract visible text, Evernote’s app makes your iPhone a serious universal capture device.

NetNewsWire

As Adam has detailed, users of desktop-based readers like NetNewsWire (Mac) or FeedDemon (Windows) have their reasons for sticking with them. NetNewsWire for iPhone syncs with either of those clients, meaning you won’t read the same items twice. There’s a “Clippings” feature for setting items aside for later (or when you’ll be offline) that also syncs to your desktop, and the interface is straightforward—and that’s about it. If you’re a Google Reader addict, you’re already set up with GReader’s iPhone beta view.

Zenbe Lists

Free service Zenbe works as a multi-account mail organizer in its web form, but they’ve stuck with to-do-style lists for their iPhone app. Those lists, however, can be edited on any browser and synced back to your Zenbe account, or published on an iGoogle page. The real benefit, though, is sharing with other Zenbe Lists users. Anyone you share with can then edit and update your list and sync them back to you—a kind of nifty no-real-computer-required list wiki.

We’ll be updating this list with more free apps as we download and test ‘em out. What should we look at next? Post your favorite free iPhone application in the comments.