I’m a bit of a sucker for apps like Koi Pond that look great, provide a moment of escape and… do NOTHING ELSE. Aquarium falls squarely into that category.

Anyone familiar with SereneScreen, the old "Aquarium as screen saver" app, will immediately recognize this app. Start it and fish swim around, the aerator bubbles away happily and… well, actually, that’s it. Yes, you can change the volume of the bubbler and it does list the fish you’ll see swimming by… but that is it. It does nothing else. Yes, Aquarium does even less than Koi Pond. You can’t change the fish that swim. You can’t tap on the screen and watch the fish react. You can’t do anything but sit back and watch the fish.

Let me begin this post by making it clear that, when it comes to humor, I am anything but a prude. I’m not easily offended and, so long as measures are taken for children not to be exposed to "off-color" humor or images, I’m not concerned with the kind of humor that used. Heck, I laughed my head off at Borat.

Having noted that, I can’t help but feel that this particular application crosses the line. At least it does for me.

A number of months ago Jamie wrote about her fondness for the eBook program Stanza. Personally I tend to be an eReader  kind of guy but that was largely because of its ability to access two commercial e-book sites (eReader.com and Fictionwise) and purchase and download books over the air.

That changed yesterday when Stanza  announced a new partnership with Fictionwise. Fictionwise has been growing by leaps and bounds and recently took over eReader.com.  Now with its new partnership it’s available on yet another platform — and it’s always a good thing.

The announcement of a prompted me to take another look at Stanza and, overall, I’m pretty impressed.

According to Engadget Mobile, Gartner’s latest and greatest analysis of the global smartphone industry has some interesting things to say about the Smartphone past and, perhaps, future.

Nokia is still number one globally.

Blackberry is tearing up the market by growing 81.7% in Q3.

And the iPhone… well "for the first time, iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America."

That’s kind of impressive until you realize that…

We reviewed Chopper back in July and really liked it. We noted that it proves an iPhone game doesn’t have to be fancy or sophisticated to make excellent use of the iPhone and iPod Touch’s unique features and be a whole lot of fun.

Reminiscent of some of the early video games, Chopper, is strangely addictive.

The game’s object is to save the civilians, shoot or bomb the bad guys, don’t get hit by rockets and don’t crash. That’s it. An upgrade a while back brought some excellent improvments. ith so many excellent game no available, however, I’m not sure Chopper is worth $4.99. Fortunately…

A couple bits of news regarding the App Store were released today.

The first is that Apple has just released a Best of 2008 list for applications in their App store, based solely on number of downloads the app has. The list is separated into two columns—paid and free apps. It also ranks the top downloaded apps in their respective categories. It doesn’t pack many surprises for those that check the Top 25 tab in the App Store often but it’s worth a look. Click here for the list.

The bigger news today is that Apple is now allowing developers to release 50 promotional free copies of their applications to whomever they desire. The promotional code is used by typing it into the form under the Redeem tab in the iTunes store. This will especially come in handy for speedier application reviews and even allow for a beta testing period, shrinking the void between developers and the community’s helpful criticism.

I am continually amazed by the improvements in iPhone and iPod touch gaming that are taking place on a seemingly daily basis. The games are getting more sophisticated, the graphics are getting more vivid, and overall, we’re seeing more and more games released that bring computer or console gaming to the diminutive handset. Who could have ever thought that Nanosaur, with its incredible graphics, could be rendered perfectly on an iPhone? Or a racing game like Fastlane could suck you into the iPhone’s small screen so easily?

The latest "wow" game to arrive in the App Store is Brothers In Arms. It is remarkable!

I’ve been on a bit of Internet radio streak for the past few days. While I continue to be huge fan of Pandora and last.fm I’m also finding that those applications which provide direct access to web-based radio streams can be quite useful. Last week I took a look at a couple…
this week I’ll be taking a look at a few more.

Today’s entry is a brand new free app Public Radio Tuner. Public Radio Tuner is about as simple and Internet radio application as you’re going to find.

 You just never know when an iPod Touch and a simple little app will come in handy. Tonight was a good example…

The minute I first got a cell phone ages ago and noticed the large clock in the center of the screen, I abandoned the concept of ever wearing wristwatches ever again.  Since I need to carry around a cell phone anyway which clearly displayed the time, it meant only one thing to forget rather than two (of course, that also means that if you lose one, you lose both).  Taking that idea to the iPhone and/or the iPod Touch, there are a myriad of clock applications available that are either free or cheap (the most expensive I found was 99 cents).