Check out some of our favorite picks that will let you keep track of your spending and eating — and help you make a drink or two.

Monitor holiday consumption with the Calorie Tracker app. Image: Livestrong.com.

The holiday season can be stressful: the shopping, the spending, even the parties can be incredibly stressful.

Luckily, all you Apple (AAPL) iPhone users have more than 100,000 apps to help your holiday season go a little smoother. Yes, there's the obvious "Better Christmas List" app or the “Asking Santa” app, but maybe before it gets too close to the yuletide cheer, you should make a trip to the iTunes app store. That'd be one way to make the trip to your in-laws a little more bearable.  All in all, a happy app holiday!

Make your shopping experience easier — and more affordable

Everyone's trying to find the best deals this time of year. And besides tackling someone on Black Friday or being glued to your laptop on Cyber Monday, you can look for apps that can help your shopping. Try Red Laser, priced at $1.99. All you do is take a picture of a product barcode, and it'll recognize the product and search for prices on Google (GOOG) and TheFind. So instead of buying something marked-up, you can see where you can get the item for the cheapest.

Stop using a checkbook and start using an app

There are more than enough apps to help you keep track of your finances. Mint.com, for instance, has caused a small revolution in the iPhone and digital community, showing you how much you're spending and how much you’re actually making. Mint.com is like having a digital version of your loving, but overbearing, scolding mother living in your inbox and iPhone. But for the holidays, try BudgetCare for $1.99. It's especially tailored for individual transactions. So this way if you just want to track your holiday expenses, it's a bit easier to sort through.

I'll be home for Christmas…on Wednesday at 5:32 p.m.

Many of us will be traveling for the holidays, and let's face it, we might enjoy the in-flight movie, but what we all care about is our destination — and whether we'll be home in time to make the holiday festivities. So rather than being preoccupied, you can stay occupied by checking your flight status in real-time with FlightTrack. For $4.99, you can check whether you'll have any delays, if they've switched gate numbers or if you just want to see which other planes are flying in the air with you.

Eggnog, anyone?

So you're finally home and you're in charge of drinks. No fear! Here comes (the free) Mixologist: Drink Recipes to the rescue! You've got almost 8,000 recipes at your disposal. Pick the liquor, pick the spritzer and shake it up–your iPhone, that is. And then you can pick up the real shaker and be the life of the party! This is one holiday app that keeps on giving.

Watch those calories!

Now that the party has really gotten started, it's easy to get stuck eating hundreds of obligatory holiday feasts. That really doesn't do much for your diet though — nor your pant size. So maybe it's best not to completely pig out and use an app that'll give you a handle on your eating. With livestrong.com's $2.99 Calorie Tracker app, you can search a food item, add it to your database and then you can search for the appropriate workout to burn those calories you just added to your system. Might as well get a head start on that New Year's resolution.

Let's make some Christmas cards

And no holiday would be complete unless you took some crazy photos and made them your Christmas card for next year. But why wait until next year, when you can dress them up and send them now? For $2.99, with the Grinch edition of the Dr. Seuss Camera, you can take a picture of your holiday antics, lay some Grinch illustrations on top of the faces you and your nephew are making and then send those greetings out to your loved ones right away. Who said the Grinch ruined Christmas?

The company has ousted two of its cheesiest iPhone developers. It's time to finish the job.

Some Brighthouse Labs apps. Source: iappphone.com

Last summer, Apple (AAPL) made headlines when it revoked the license of one of the most prolific third-party iPhone developers, a Pakistani operation called Perfect Acumen that managed to get 943 apps past the App Store review process before somebody noticed that most were nearly worthless and dozens contained blatant copyright violations. (See here.)

On Monday, Apple struck again, pulling the plug on the 1,898 apps published by Molinker, a Chinese developer that had been caught gaming the App Store ratings system, allegedly by offering free programs to users who agreed to give the apps five stars. (See here.)

Is Cupertino getting its store in order in advance of the big pre- and post-Christmas sales season?

It certainly seems to have raised its standards, rejecting silly apps — like Ka-Ching — that would have easily passed muster when the company was racing to reach the 100,000-apps mark.

Now perhaps it can start clearing out some of the spam it's already let in. One big fat target: Brighthouse Labs, a shadowy company whose 1,855 titles clutter up the App Store's virtual shelf space with one-off recipe-, quote-, and sports-fan apps.

Legitimate developers have long complained about all three of these companies. Together they've pushed nearly 5,000 applications — representing 4.5% of the App Store's total offerings — past Apple's reviewers, making it that much harder to find the apps that are worth buying.

For the record, here are the 10 most prolific (but not necessarily spammerific) App Store developers, as counted by 148Apps.biz's Jeff Scott:

1. Iceberg Reader (3,431 apps)
2. Brighthouse Labs (2,148)
3. Molinker Inc. (still on his latest list, 1,898)
4. FidesReef (1,250)
5. Your Mobile Apps Inc. (938)
6. IndiaNIC Infocom Limited (804)
7. xhumans (761)
8. Appsessions, LLC (701)
9. O'Reilly Media, Inc. (617)
10. SOFTBANK Creative Corp. (592)

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Apple's controversial software emporium gets a sympathetic hearing at the New York Times

Photo illustration: The New York Times

Apple (AAPL) only opens its doors to reporters when it needs something from them — like glowing reviews for a glitzy new gadget.

What it needs right now, apparently, is a friendly account of what's going on at the iPhone App Store, a runaway hit galloping so fast that even Apple — a company that knows a thing or two about control — is having trouble holding on to the reins.

And a sympathetic ear is what it got from Jenna Wortham, a former Wired freelancer who joined the New York Times two years ago to cover Web start-ups and mobile communications for the paper's Bits blog.

Apple granted Wortham interviews with two senior vice presidents — Phil Schiller, who supervises the App Store approval process, and Eddie Cue, who runs iTunes — which she supplemented with material from Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, Flurry's Peter Farago, a handful of developers, and Apple's major competitors.

Her 3,000 word piece is the lead story on the front page of the Sunday Business section, and Apple PR should be pleased. Among the highlights:

• Friendly quotes from Morgan Stanley's Huberty (a former Apple bear recently turned bullish), who calls the App Store "revolutionary" and compares it to both AOL's role in popularizing the Internet and Microsoft's domination of desktop computing.
• Friendly quotes from Farago, a mobile analytics guy, who talks about Apple eliminating "friction points" in software development and distribution.
• Self-serving quotes from Apple's Schiller, who is described — bizarrely — as "normally reserved," and who tries to reframe the complaints of frustrated developers with the message that the review process is "a necessary evil" and that Apple is doing the best it can.
• Success and horror stories from the developers of Flick Fishing,  Tap Tap Revenge, Trillian, Bump and FreedomVoice (still waiting for approval 396 days later).
• Divergent points of view from Research in Motion (RIMM), Palm (PALM), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and the jailbreaking catalog Rock Your iPhone.

Wortham comes back to her Schiller notes in an accompanying sidebar in Bits that lists some of the programs on the senior VP's own iPhone. The apps he plugs: Shazam, CNN’s app, Facebook, MLB.com, NBA Game Time, ESPN ScoreCenter, Eliminate, geoDefense and Best Camera.

Wortham's piece may serve Apple's interests, but for anyone who follows the mobile app scene, it's a must-read. You can get it here.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

An iPhone app illustrated with caricatures of the 111th Congress finally gets the green light

Photo: App Store

At least someone at Apple (AAPL) has a sense of humor.

Less than a week after the iPhone Developer Program rejected as "objectionable" and "defamatory" an application illustrated with caricatures of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, the company has  reversed itself and approved the app.

Bobble Rep for the iPhone and iPod touch was conceived by director Ray (Super Capers) Griggs and illustrated by Mad Magazine caricaturist Tom Richmond. The drawings serve as an entry into a data base of information about the politicians, whose oversized heads bobble when shaken or flicked with a finger. The app is now available for sale here for $0.99.

"I'm glad Apple came to their senses," says Richmond, "and realized that this app is not only not derogatory or insulting to our congressional representatives and senators, it's a beneficial program and a little fun as well."

Richmond spent months drawing the heads of all 540 members of the 111th Congress, including nonvoting members from Puerto Rico and Guam.

Fox News on Saturday was taking credit for Apple's decision to approve the app, although it was Richmond himself who drew national attention to its rejection earlier this week with a widely read entry in his blog.

See Apple bans Nancy Pelosi bobble head.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Games dominate with nearly 17% of titles. Entertainment, books and travel are close behind.

Click to enlarge. Source: 148Apps.biz

Less than 16 months after it opened for business, the App Store now offers more than 100,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, according to an Apple (AAPL) press release issued early Wednesday.

Two independent sites, AppShopper.com and 148Apps.biz, which track listings in the U.S. App Store, count 97,026 and 96,161, respectively. [UPDATE: A third, apptism.com, lists 100,699.]

Apple's total includes 3,000 or 4,000 apps available only in its 76 overseas stores. Another nearly 9,000 apps have been approved by Apple but for one reason or another are no longer available for download.

The distribution of applications remains roughly the same as it was a year ago. According to 148Apps' count, the U.S. App Store carries, among other offerings, more than 16,000 games, 13,000 books, 2,700 navigation programs, 1,200 medical applications and 442 weather apps.

Below the fold: A bar chart comparing the App Store's 100,000 with the numbers available at the official application markets for Google's (GOOG) Android platform, Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, Nokia's (NOK) Symbian, Palm's (PALM) Pre and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile phones.

Sources: Apple, AndroLib.com, Computerworld, PCMag, Palm

Note, in some cases a lot more apps have been written for the platform than are available on its online store. For example, Microsoft's Robbie Bach told PCMag last month that there were 20,000 Windows Mobile apps on the market; fewer than 250, however, are listed on Microsoft's Mobile Windows Marketplace.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

So much for expectations. Apple (AAPL) blew past them all — its own and those of a crowd of increasingly bullish analysts — by reporting its most profitable quarter ever, earning $1.82 a share on revenue of $9.87 billion for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009.

The Street was expecting quarterly earnings of $1.42 on revenue of $9.2 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Apple's shares exploded in after-hours trading. Having closed at $189.86, shares leaped more than 13 points in the next hour and 40 minutes to $202.87 — one thin dime away from the all-time high of $202.97 set in intraday trading on Dec. 27, 2007.

Sales for the year were a record $36.5 billion, up 12.5% from 2008. Earnings per share for the year topped $6.29, up more than 17% from the year before.

Strong sale of iPhones — following price cuts and the introduction of a new model — helped boost Apple's earnings.

But the big surprise was the Macintosh. Apple sold 3.05 million Macs for in Q4 — a 17% increase from same quarter last year — thanks to its new Snow Leopard operating system, re-energized back-to-school sales and a big order from the state of Maine.

"We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter," said Steve Jobs in a prepared statement."

Highlights from Apple's earnings report include:

• Mac sales: 3.05 million units, up 17.3% year over year
• iPhone sales: 7.4 million units, up 41% from last year
• iPod sales: 10.2 million, down from just over 11 million a year ago
• iPod touch sales were up 100% from last year
• Gross margin: 36.3%, up from 34.7% last year
• Cash: $34 billion, up $2.9 billion from $31.1 billion last quarter
• Guidance for the December quarter: revenue between $11.3 and $11.6 billion, EPS between $1.70 and $1.78, gross margin 34%

Apple's press release is available here.

A replay of the conference call will be available for the next two weeks, starting at 5 p.m. PDT. The instructions are here. Seeking Alpha has published a transcript here.

See also:

• The Street awaits Apple's earnings
• Retail data show Mac sales up 13%
• Will iPhone sales disappoint investors?

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Photo: Electronic Arts

On Monday, nearly two weeks after Electronic Arts (ERTS) confirmed its imminent arrival, the iPhone version of Rock Band — one of the most successful video game franchises of recent years — showed up on Apple's (AAPL) iTunes App Store to mixed reviews. (App Store link here.)

The lion's share of the first 40 messages on the App Store were one-line positives: "Amazing." "Awesome!" "Saaaaweeeeeett!"

But the longer, more thoughtful — and more useful — reviews were less kind. The main complaints seemed to be that it was too expensive ($9.99), too easy (lacking an "extreme" level), and that some of the advanced features, such as multi-user play over Bluetooth, didn't work as advertised.

The big problem, however, is that the program is 15 months too late.

Veteran game-players are comparing it not only with Harmonix' original Rock Band for Sony's (SNE) Playstation 3 and Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360, but with Tapulous' Tap Tap Revenge, which has occupied the beat-tapping mobile game market since July 2008 with free and paid ($0.99) versions.

The competition is fierce. Tap Tap Revenge is one of the most successful iPhone games ever released; by last spring one in three iPhone and iPod touch users had downloaded it.

So early reviews are critical. I had fun playing the game at the easy levels, but as of Monday morning, "missmaxim's" write-up of Rock Band had been voted most helpful. We've copied it below the fold:

Source: iTunes App Store

Most iPhone apps lose money, but some freebies — like Shotgun — rake in the cash

Source: Mobclix

As an app, Shotgun Free doesn't do much. Give it a shake and it makes the sound of a shell being chambered. Tilt it up sharply and the gun fires with a bang as loud as an Apple (AAPL) iPhone can make — which isn't terribly loud.

But the app is popular. It's been downloaded nearly 4 million times since it was launched in early March. An average of 60,000 to 70,000 people have been using it daily ever since.

More to the point, the small ads that run across the bottom of screen are displayed 200,000 to 300,000 times a day, which is how Shotgun Free ended up as case study No. 1 in a white paper issued this week by MobClix, the Palo Alto start-up that acts as a middleman between Shotgun's developer — Inedible Software — and the advertisers who pay them $3 per 1,000 ad impressions. That works out to $600 to $900 a day.

There are eight case studies in the MobClix report, and a lesson for mobile developers in each of them.

In the case of Shotgun Free, the lesson is that when the ads were rotated twice as frequently — every 15 seconds, rather than every 30 seconds — the click-through-rate doubled and revenues increased 20%.

The lesson of BlackJack Free, which generates 1.5 million ad impressions a day at $0.40 to $2 per thousand (depending on the size of the ad), is that users rebel when you replace small ads with big ones.

The publishers of Duck Shoot (150,000 to 250,000 daily ad impressions for $1.00-$2.50 per thousand) managed to breathe new life into a paid app that had run out of steam by offering a new, ad-supported free version.

Shotgun's developers went the other route. They started out free — "it's a simple shotgun, it deserves to be free," says Inedible co-founder James Anthony — and then introduced a $0.99 "pro" version with more guns and no ads. They make a lot more money giving it away.

Of course, with more than 85,000 iPhone apps competing fiercely for attention, most developers lose money. That's why Mobclix — which makes a market in mobile ads — showcased only winners.

The white paper is available as a pdf here. To see a video of Shotgun's developers talking about their business model, click here.

See also:

• Trouble in the (99-cent) App Store

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @ philiped]

Source: Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs likes to wait for nice round numbers before he announces his milestones, and on Monday Apple (AAPL) hit a big one: the 85,000 apps in the iPhone App Store have now been downloaded more than 2 billion times — a number Jobs described as "staggering."

"The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate," he said in a prepared statement, pointing out that more than half a billion apps were downloaded in Apple's fourth fiscal quarter alone.

He's right about the acceleration, but judging from the slope of the curve above, it's not quite as dramatic as he makes it sound.

It took Apple 74 days to rack up these half billion downloads, and 82 days to get the previous half billion.

Put another way, users were downloading apps at the rate of 6.1 million a day between April 23 (when the App Store hit 1 billion) and July 14 (when it hit 1.5 billion), and the rate of 6.7 million a day between July 15 and Sept. 26, a 10% increase.

Impressive, but given how many customers Apple has added in the past quarter, maybe not staggering.

Among the other numbers Apple announced Monday:

• Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod touches (up from 37 million in April)
• The App Store is available in 77 countries
• There are 125,000 registered iPhone developers (148Apps.biz counts only 20,583 active publishers, but some publishers employ many individual developers)

You can read Apple's press release here.

See also:

• How the App Store got to 1 billion downloads
• How Apple's App Store got to 1.5 billion downloads

Someone must have lit a fire under Apple's (AAPL) App Store review staff last week.

Having drifted along for much of September, approving as few as 58 new apps on a single day, the staff green lighted "an avalance of apps" on Friday according to AppShopper.com. A total of 1,394 new applications were approved that day, 302 of them games.

AppShopper doesn't say whether Friday's haul set a new record, although that seems likely. The previous high over the previous two months was 947, set on July 30.

As of Tuesday morning, there were 81,161 active applications available on the U.S. portion of the App Store, according to 148Apps.biz. New apps are coming in at the average rate of 296 a day, according to that site, down from a peak of 356 in June.

According to Apple's Aug. 21 letter to the FCC, new apps and updates pour into the store at the rate of 8,500 per week, where they are reviewed at least twice by a staff of 40 full-time reviewers.

If Apple hasn't staffed up since then, Friday must have been a very busy day indeed.

"We had heard Apple had had quite a back log of approvals," wrote AppShopper's arn, "so hopefully, they have cleared the queue for now."

Below the fold: AppShopper's full chart and what it reveals about the review staff's work habits.

Source: AppShopper.com

Some observations:

• The staff works 7 days a week.
• Saturdays tend to be slow, but Mondays can be even slower
• Wednesdays tend to be especially productive
• A lot of work gets done on Sundays

It was on a Sunday, you may recall, that Apple and  Google (GOOG) began a series of in-person meetings, phone calls and e-mails that ended in the non-approval of Google Voice app.

See also:

• 40 staffers. 2 reviews. 8,500 iPhone apps per week
• What did Apple and Google talk about for three weeks in July?