In contributing my share to our ongoing series of favorites for Mac and iPhone apps, I think I'm the first of our crew to focus on the iPhone's sleeker sibling. The iPod touch may not have the communications and GPS capabilities of the motherphone, but what it lacks in circuitry it makes up for in panache. I've found apps that are kid-pleasers, apps that leverage the touch's native WiFi location capability, and apps that challenge the brain. (All links are directly to the App Store.)

Comic Touch from Plasq. Although the iPhone's camera is absent, the ability to edit, annotate and humorize synchronized photos on the touch is a delight. Comic Touch may not be the only app in this space but it's proven its worth to me during evenings out or when traveling, as my daughters derive endless fun from captioning family snapshots with thought balloons.

Pandora Radio. Making the portable device into a full-featured internet streaming tool is a work in progress, but a WiFi-connected iPod touch with Pandora is an astonishingly fun and surprising music source, a glass-front Airport Express. I love the Pandora web app, so I was prepared to like the miniaturized version -- what I didn't expect was how connecting it to a stereo and letting it play would lead to "Wow, who's this?" moments. Lacking a microphone, I can't run Midori or Shazam on my touch -- but I can make iPhone users want to use those apps to find out what Pandora is playing through my speakers.

Scrabble. Yes, I know that Facebook users have dartboards covered with pictures of Hasbro's legal team -- I still enjoy the EA version immensely. It's colorful, easy to play and has the feel of the tabletop game and the tactile letter-dragging fun you expect. Shaking the device to shuffle the rack aside (it feels gimmicky and I never do it), all I really want to add is a copy of the Scrabble dictionary for training and reference.

Location-aware touch. Even without the GPS of the iPhone, I've been pleased that so many location-aware apps work just fine on the touch. Where To?, Twitterrific, Urbanspoon and Now Playing -- assuming there's a WiFi network around -- behave just as they would on the iPhone, and whether it's due to the solid location frameworks or thoughtful work by developers, I'm appreciative.

Honorable Mention: Simplify Media, Dot Game, City Transit NYC, and Facebook.

As you might imagine, my iPhone is more littered with games than useful stuff like Steve's or Victor's. Sure, I've got Twitterific and NetNewsWire, but my most-used apps are of the video game variety.

The game that's most grabbed me so far is Aurora Feint. When it was first released, I didn't get much out of it, but since it's been updated a few times, Aurora Feint has turned into a pretty deep puzzle/RPG. There have been some security scares, unfortunately, and the game's "MMO" promises haven't yet come to fruition. But for sheer matching puzzle gameplay (it's similar to the great Poker Smash on Xbox Live), it's probably the most addictive game on the App Store.

My second favorite is Characters (I originally wrote about it on WoW Insider). If you play World of Warcraft and have an iPhone, this is the closest thing you'll find to an official Blizzard app. It lets you see every bit of information on the Armory in a very nice-looking iPhone app format. We're still waiting on Blizzard to provide us with an iPhone version of the in-game Auction House or mailbox, but until then, this is a great way to look up the WoW characters of folks you meet.

And finally, I've been really impressed with Midomi (and also the similar Shazam), a music recognition app. Hit the app, let it listen to a song you're hearing (or even you singing the song or saying the lyrics), and it'll tell you exactly what that song is. And once you've find it, you can listen to it, find it in iTunes or on Youtube, or see band pictures and reviews. Midomi is the kind of app I've never had on any other devices I've owned, and yet I've put it to great use a few times.

Honorable mentions go to Freeverse's (renamed) Moto Chaser, which is consistently the game that most impresses people playing with my iPhone; Trism, which turned out to be an excellent game, and Frotz and Sketches, both of which I've written about here before.

And I'm still waiting for two things: some great persistent pet gameplay (Wil Shipley, what happened to all of those ideas?), and some great location-based MMO gameplay as well. There's good stuff out there, but we're still just getting started in the App Store.