Here are ten apps that won't annoy you (OK, Alarm Free might) and are either clever diversions or simply fun toys. All links take you to the App Store. Check out the gallery for a preview of everything I've mentioned. All of these were free when I first downloaded them, as I'm a terrible cheapskate, but several now cost between $.99 and $1.99, which isn't bad.

Ancient Wisdom
Basically just a database of quotes from three philosophers: Lao Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi and Sun Tzu. To make it a little more fun the developers make the quotes come from cute cartoon monkeys. Not exactly genius, but fun and the quotes are, of course, pure gold. Better than a Magic 8-Ball, I think.

Newtonica Player
This simple app has you spin a mesh ball to generate a "beat" that times the pace of the electronica music. There is a surprising amount of depth to the song, simple as it is. I was able to modify the tune a bit depending on my spinning, direction and how long I kept spinning. Terribly simple but fun because of those little tonal surprises.

Fireworks
Wherever you tap your finger a firework is launched to that spot and explodes. Nice little animations, plus it works in landscape mode and offers several backgrounds. The sounds could go further, and the fireworks aren't all that varied, but again, kids love it. Put it in "fireworks show" mode and keep it in your dock for a little fun. Note: at the time I originally wrote this Fireworks was free, but it is only $.99 now, which isn't too much to ask, I think.

xCube
This is just a Rubik's cube in iPhone/iPod touch form. But it is really easy to use, provides several customization options and has an undo feature. If you've ever wanted to learn how to solve the cube but didn't want a big cubic bulge in your back pocket, here's your answer. Note: again, here's an app that was free for a while, but is now $1.99 -- still cheaper than a new Rubik's cube, but more expensive than one at a garage sale. You make the call.

Having been a connoisseur of fine design since the first Mac hit the streets in '84, I'm always attracted to apps that have that certain polish that is associated with Apple products. That's why I was impressed when I went out and looked at the Flickr pool for Weightbot, an upcoming iPhone app that does one simple thing elegantly -- it tracks your weight.

Designer Mark Jardine and developer Paul Haddad expect Weightbot to be released in the next couple of weeks, and it's an app I'd consider buying just for the looks! From the bathroom scale-like Weightbot mascot (at right) to the custom controls for entering your weight, it's apparent that Mark spent some time thinking about the look and user interface of the app, and that Paul was able to implement Mark's vision.

The custom date scroller is especially attractive and functional, making it easy to see at a glance when you entered your weight as you flick through the days. I look forward to seeing Weightbot and future iPhone apps from this team at Tapbots.

Shaker, a fun "Tetris-like" game with a martini theme, has been pulled from the App Store. TUAW provided a first look at the game back in early September. According to sources, developer Phunkware was told that Shaker would be removed from the App Store after the Tetris Company and Tetris Holdings LLC complained to Apple that the app resembled Tetris too closely.

It seems odd that Tetris would wait a month to complain about Shaker's similarities to their game. Shaker had graphics that were nothing like those in Tetris, and a "shaker" game mode in which the accelerometer was used to move and flip the falling blocks. The game supplied martini recipes to top scorers, and was quite a bit smaller in size (3.5 MB compared to 9.6 MB for Tetris).

Can we now expect iPhone games like Jewel Quest II and Trism to be removed from the App Store because of their similarity to Bejeweled? Let's hope not!

When the App Store opened, I went nuts and downloaded a slew of apps. Two weeks later, I listed the 8 I decided to keep, including Major League Baseball's (MLB) At Bat [App Store link]. This week, At Bat has dropped in price from $4.99US to $2.99US.

It's on sale because it will "expire" when the current season ends (Go, Sox!), meaning you'll have to purchase a new version for 2009. Still, if you're a fan and into the post-season, I encourage you to buy it. It's my hands-down favorite iPhone application.

While using At Bat, I realized how an application's features and benefits affect its longevity. Specifically, the features attract your attention, while the benefits grab you for good.

Here's an example. At Bat provides nearly real-time statistics for ongoing games, including scoring, current batter and pitcher, stats, the count at the plate ... even video clips from a game that's in progress.

You can identify your favorite team to keep their score highlighted, and enjoy an integrated version of MLB Gameday, which provides pitch-by-pitch information and so much more. All of this is presented in an attractive, readable UI.

Those are the features.

The benefit is a feeling of connectedness, even participation, and that's why At Bat is a keeper. As a die-hard baseball fan, I want to watch every game. I know the stats, the players, the standings; who's playing well, who's on injured reserve and who's in a slump. It's tremendously fun to watch a baseball game on a summer evening and get lost in the drama of it all.

However, life interferes (can you say "toddlers"?) and I sometimes miss a game. Yet, those live stats and video clips alleviate the feeling of missing the game, and that's worth a lot more than $2.99 to me.

The same can be said of other applications. Twitterrific [App Store link] puts 1,000 friends in your pocket (leave your adolescent joke in the comments, please). At any time, I can share a funny picture, observation or idea with my buddies, and get a reply just as easily. Those are the features. The benefit is the comfort of friendship.

The benefit of FileMagnet [App Store link] is peace of mind. Yes, I've got that PDF for the meeting. Yes, I've got the photo I have to show my boss. Phew.

Others that I've eliminated went in the other direction - all feature. Cro-Mag Rally's [App Store link] accelerometer-based steering got boring after 10 minutes.

There are a lot of App Store submissions and works-in-progress that trigger anticipatory drooling here at TUAW (Sling Mobile! Sling Mobile!), among them the program guide and movie finder i. TV; we first saw it a few weeks ago and I've been checking every day to see if it's shipped. Now you can download this free tool from the App Store and see for yourself what's so exciting. (The promo video on the i.tv site borrows heavily from Apple's 1984 ad and the Apple TV intro, so clearly there's an effort to brand this app as 'revolutionary.')

The heart of i. TV (App Store link) is a TV listings browser, which connects to the free data feed from the i.tv site (registration is required), including synopses and cast info. You can select your zip code and programming provider (the app currently supports US and Canadian TV listings only) and the current schedules are there at your fingertips; you can rate, review, filter or flag shows as favorites and optionally share your feedback with other i.TV users.

Along with the TV content, the movies section of the app lets you browse by title or by nearby theaters, and watch streamed trailers of your selected films. Trailers and previews of TV shows are also included. The UI is clean and the app is easy to navigate; I was able to find show listings quickly for several series.

As cool as the initial version of i.TV appears to be, the development directions are exponentially cooler. Future versions of the app are planned that will include remote DVR programming (ooh!), IR blaster integration (yes!), DVD rentals (ahh!), movie ticket purchases and even the ability to watch full TV shows streamed from the programming source (hmm.).

Note that there is another app with a similar name, ITV, which provides French television listings and goes for $2.99 US.

The geniuses at Weather Underground have done it again! Now they've capitalized on their insight into weather radio to bring the iPhone world WunderRadio. Available in the App Store (click opens iTunes) for US$5.99, WunderRadio provides NOAA Weather streams based on your current location.

But there's a lot more to WunderRadio than NOAA Weather. Weather Underground has joined with RadioTime.com to provide thousands of radio streams from around the world. Once again, based on your current location, WunderRadio provides a listing of nearby stations to provide you with local AM, FM, and Internet radio streams.

Enthusiasts of live police, fire, and EMS scanners get a bonus in the form of scanner feeds from ScanAmerica.us. With all of this content, who needs iTunes? Of course, the app has to do a good job of capturing the audio stream on the iPhone.

"The initial impetus behind this application was to provide iPhone users with instant access to local weather radio streams," said Alan Steremberg, President of Weather Underground. "During development, we decided to extend the scope of radio stations offered by working with RadioTime - the result is an easy to use portal to over 60,000 of the best talk, music and sports radio stations around the globe."

Read on for a quick review of WunderRadio.

We've all heard people talk about therapeutic breathing in common terms -- "take a deep breath", "breathe easy", or "remember to breathe". If you're under a lot of stress, therapeutic breathing can help to calm you down.

Larva Labs has announced a new iPhone / iPod touch app called Breath Pacer that is designed to help you practice slow breathing and take advantage of the benefits. Breath Pacer lets you determine a personalized breathing algorithm based on your height, then takes you through guided inhaling, holding, and exhaling of breath. Animated cues show you when to inhale, hold, and exhale, and you can choose relaxing music to listen to along while using Breath Pacer.

As Larva Labs points out, for the price of a good cup of coffee, you can reduce your stress and acheive a deeply relaxed state. Breath Pacer is available in the App Store (click opens iTunes) for US$2.99.

Since most people travel everywhere with their iPhones, it is only fitting that an application would come along that would allow you to create a grocery list. Now if you want, you can shop in the store while listening to tunes and looking at your shopping list -- Grocery iQ [iTunes link] allows you to do this and more.

To add an item to your list, just tap the "+" button in the top right corner. When you start entering the name of an item, Grocery iQ will start searching its database of more than 130,000 items. This is amazing, because everything that I threw at it, it recognized! The database even has brand-name items, if you prefer to search that way. You can enter the quantity of the items needed (from 1-100) and some notes about the item. Something that sets this application apart from others is the ability to sort items by aisles -- and the app automatically tries to match your item to an aisle (however, you will probably have to re-arrange this to match the layout of your preferred grocery store).

Another nice feature added by the developer is the ability to email the list to yourself or someone else! It doesn't just email a plain 'ole list either, it formats it to look just like it does in the application (with sections and everything). The application also keeps a running history of the items you purchase -- from this list, you can easily re-add items to your shopping list.

This application should be on any iPhone/iPod touch owner's to-buy list if you forget items at the store, or just want to track your shopping list a little better. It would be nice to see a simple calculator in the application, so you could add up your list as you go through the store (or perhaps cache the recent price of the item). This application costs $4.99 at the iTunes App Store and weighs in at 7.2 MBs. Be sure to check out our gallery of screenshots to see the application yourself. An application update is expected soon that will add support for multiple lists/stores, and add even more information to the item database.

We have all been waiting on an iPhone VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solution, since we heard that Apple would allow VoIP application access while connected to WiFi. Fring has finally made our dream a reality -- and it's a reality that's available today!

Fring is a new, free iPhone application that integrates with Fring's network and allows access to the following IM/presence services:

• Fring
• Skype
• AIM
• Yahoo
• Twitter
• ICQ
• MSN

In addition to simply chatting with buddies from the above services, you can place VoIP calls to other fring users, or using Skype/SkypeOut or another SIP provider (Gizmo, Vonage, etc.). We'll take a more in-depth look/review this weekend -- so be sure to stay tuned to TUAW. In a quick test, I was able to call Skype users from my iPhone and carry on a (slightly echo-y, but perfectly audible) conversation.

You can download this application today by visiting the iTunes App Store. The application weighs in at 3.0 MB. You can also get more information about this service and the application on the Fring website.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

We're officially a nonpartisan bunch here at TUAW (actually, quite partisan, but only for the Mac) but the announcement of an official iPhone application from the Obama campaign is still worthy of mention. Several high-profile iPhone devs & designers were involved in the project, including formerly-of-Tapulous Mike Lee, Louie Mantia and Tristan O'Tierney. Raven Zachary led the team that included Jonathan Wight and more, all volunteering to rush the app to completion.

In addition to the obvious-but-cool features of the app (download news from the campaign, watch YouTube videos of speeches and endorsements), there is quite a bit of iPhone special sauce. Location awareness means you can see local events or find your nearest campaign office; a 'Call Friends' tool sorts your address book by priority, putting your contacts living in battleground states at the top of the list and letting you reach out to them with a single tap. Very sleek!

Even though there isn't an official McCain campaign application for the iPhone, the App Store has plenty of election-themed apps for voters of either the red or blue persuasion. However you plan to make your voice heard this year, let us give you a gentle reminder that if you're an American citizen over 18, you need to make certain that you're registered to vote.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

One of my favorite racing games for iPhone / iPod touch is GTS World Racing from Handmark and Astraware. If you haven't loaded this fun app on your pocket pal, you might want to race over to the App Store before October 19th since GTS World Racing is on sale (click opens iTunes) for $2.99.

This action-filled race game features a number of different cars, countries, and tracks, and uses the accelerometer to control the speed and direction of the car. It's a much more realistic racing game than Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D or Cro-Mag Rally

For more info about the app, including a movie showing the game in action, check out our August preview of GTS World Racing.

Softalk, a UK development firm known for their messaging and productivity solutions, has released the first iPhone spreadsheet application. The application has the really original name Spreadsheet, costs US$7.99, and is available now from the App Store (click opens iTunes).

The first release features over 50 functions and the ability to email spreadsheets created on the iPhone to Mac or PC for further editing. The function list includes:

Date/time functions -- DATE, DATEADD, DAY, DAYABBREV, DAYNAME, HOUR, LASTDAY, MINUTE, MONTH, MONTHABBREV, MONTHNAME, NOW, SECOND, TIME, TODAY, YEAR

General functions -- COL, COUNT, ROW

Math function -- ABS, CEILING, EVEN, EXP, FACTORIAL, FLOOR, LOG, LOG10, MAX, MIN, ODD, POWER, ROUND, SQRT, SUM

Statistical functions -- AVE, MEDIAN, MODE

String functions -- CONCATENATE, LEFT, LOWER, MID, RIGHT, UPPER

Trignometry functions -- ACOS, ASIN, ATAN, COS, COSH, PI, SIN, SINH, TAN, TANH

The initial App Store reviews of Spreadsheet aren't exactly glowing, which is why TUAW will be doing a detailed review in the near future.

I want my iPhone to have voice dialing. Belgian developers Creaceed are moving in the right direction by introducing the Vocalia English speech recognition tool for iPhone. This app just does one thing right now -- displaying contacts from your Address Book when you say names. You still need to tap on the name that appears to open the contact, then tap on a number to dial it. Creaceed is working on adding new functionality to future versions.

How well does Vocalia recognize names? I tested it by reading the first 100 names in Contacts. Without training Vocalia, it was able to correctly recognize 98 of the names -- that is, it put them on a screen with three of the closest sounding names. For 83 of the names, the correct name was at the top of the list. The two names that weren't recognized properly were Guilherme and Guiseppe. You can also add nicknames or other pronunciations to any name to further improve accuracy.

Between now and October 18th, Vocalia is on sale for US$3.99 in the App Store (click opens iTunes). The regular price of Vocalia is $7.99.

Apple has dropped the non-disclosure agreement ([effin'] NDA) for released iPhone software.

In a statement to developers on its website, Apple said they put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes proprietary Apple software they wanted to protect.

"However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone's success, so we are dropping it for released software," the statement read.

Developers will receive a new agreement, sans-NDA, covering released software within a week or so. Unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released, according to the statement.

Apple also thanked everyone who provided "constructive feedback" on the issue.

The full text, after the jump, and an update.

[Via @chockenberry.]

Long-time TUAW readers know that I'm a fan of geocaching, and that I wrote a post about using the iPhone 3G for geocaching back in July. At the time, there were no true geocaching apps available for the iPhone 3G, so I talked about how to use the software that comes on the phone to find hidden caches.

Since July, a number of apps have appeared (Geopher Lite and iGeocacher to name a couple), but I've been holding out for one from Groundspeak, the folks who first started up Geocaching.com back in 2000. While listening to my favorite podcast, Podcacher, this morning, I heard co-host Sonny talking about the upcoming release of the "official" geocaching iPhone app. When I returned home from a walk I was tracking with TrailGuru, I visited Geocaching.com and read the details in their online forums.

The app has been submitted to the App Store, will cost US$9.99, and will initially allow iPhone owners to find caches near them, look up trackable items like travel bugs, save cache information for use when outside of phone network range, and limit results to save bandwidth. The next version will provide the capability to log found caches while in the field.

Be sure to check out the Geocaching.com forums for more screenshots.