The floodgate of new iPhone apps is open and enlarging all the time. Hundreds of new entries hit the App Store every week. This is a wonderful thing, but it does cause a good deal of consternation.

If you are an iPhone owner, how can you keep up with what's out there? After all, according to Macworld, there are now nearly 500 fart apps available for your pleasure out of the 65,000 (and climbing) apps in the store. Cutting through the static is nearly impossible.

If you are a developer, how can you get the word out about your wonderful new creation? Well, there are number of ways, and since you're reading TUAW, you found one. We get many more app review requests than we can ever handle and I'm sure all the Mac and iPhone oriented sites are in the same position. Regardless of the quality of your new baby, it's hit or miss as to whether a blog or other news outlet will ever get around to reviewing it.

Apple runs a program where developers can generate a number of free promotional codes for publicity purposes. When a code is redeemed either in iTunes or right in the App store on the iPhone, the free app is installed just as if it was bought. Traditionally, the bulk of these promo codes go to sites like ours that provide publicity and hence sell apps. While Apple was briefly blocking any apps with a 17+ rating from getting promo codes, as Michael reports that policy has shifted again. The developer of Eucalyptus, an e-book reader, was surprised to find that Apple is now allowing him codes for his 17+ rated app.

[To give you an idea of how involved the app approval process can be, we earlier reported that Eucalyptus was first denied approval because they were using the Project Gutenberg catalog of public-domain books where you could download a totally non-illustrated version of the Kama Sutra. No one seems to know why the plethora of other Project Gutenberg powered e-readers had no trouble being approved, or why these apps' ratings varied.]

In late May a new site called AppGiveaway opened and partnered with developers to get paid apps into users hands for free. Sites have always had the occasional contest to win something, and that's always been good for sales, since whether you win or lose, if you entered, at least you were introduced to the product.

AppGiveaway does it differently. It provides an incentive to both buyer and seller. Developers contribute promo codes to be given away; each contest contains a full description of the app and a number of screen shots. Contests, plus a small number of Apple related stories, are all AppGiveaway does. In the month of June, AppGiveaway awarded over 130 apps and so far over 100 have been given out in the month of July. Checking the site now, there are currently 20 apps that you can enter and win.

Check it out. You'll be helping yourself and in turn, helping the developer community to get the word out. Then come right back and tell us what you found.

Back when we looked at Radar, a photosharing site with an accompanying iPhone app, I mentioned that while Twitter had monopolized the "text exporting" function from your iPhone, there would be a slew of companies to try and grab the rest of the media you want to broadcast. Radar, I said, wanted to be the photo app. And AudioBoo, it appears, wants to be the audio app (we've yet to see a strong video contender pop up with the 3GS, though YouTube is certainly serving for now).

I've been using AudioBoo (iTunes link) for a few weeks now, and I have to say, it definitely does what it says on the box: after a short signup session and the installation of the app to your iPhone, you can record and upload (and almost more interesting, listen back to others') audio quickly and easily.

You hit record, can talk for a while (i haven't hit a limit yet, though three minutes is what I originally heard, and that tends to be about right for these little mini-podcasts), then hit stop and upload, add a picture, title, and tags, and a few minutes later, your audio is right there on the web for everyone to hear. I've used it on my EDGE phone and my friend's 3G, and I have to say the experience is better on the 3G -- the upload speeds are much better (I generally have to wait on my iPhone until I get on Wi-Fi to upload the audio), and to my ears, the audio sounds better. Here's a recording I made at a Cubs game on my 1G with a few friends, and a recording my friend made on his 3G at a restaurant. Edge works, obviously, but the 3G seems to work better.

While it was hard to miss that Apple.com received a complete redesign with this week's WWDC events, the finer points of the site's new functionality are now coming into the, erm... spotlight. Eagle-eyed TUAW readers have been commenting and reporting on a number of interesting new enhancements to apple.com's abilities, such as the horizontal sub-navigation that Gruber mentioned on some of the product sites (try apple.com/mac to get an idea).

A really cool new (and long overdue) feature to searching Apple's site is more or less the web-based equivalent of the Spotlight interface. As you can see, the search box is pinned to the top right of ever page at apple.com now, and running a search produces near-instant results in a drop-down menu style interface. A 'View all search results' option at the bottom of that menu displays the page I snapped for this post, complete with a more robust and categorized list of search results that can be expanded and collapsed, helping you find just what you need far more quickly. The site even appears to be using cookies to store a recent list of your searches, keeping them always accessible at the far right of this search results page.

Altogether these are some very, very welcome new tools for searching Apple's exponentially growing product, information and support material. It should be noted, however, that the last update Apple made to their discussion forum still holds true, and that includes its own powerful search tools; this spotlight UI seems to apply only to the rest of apple.com.

Mac Hints & Tips is a killer site that catalogs (of all things) over 6,000 hints, tips, workarounds and other handy pieces of Mac OS X trickery. Compiled from Mac user groups, Apple websites and various other published and unpublished sources around the globe, this highly bookmarkable (and subscribeable) resource is run by one mere mortal by the name of Paul Taylor, who is seeking donations and subscriptions to keep the site and monthly PDF truckin'. Paul currently allows users to sign up for a yearly membership to gain access to the entire database of tips, searchable by keyword or application name, and he also accepts good ol' fashioned donations (though we've all seen how well those go), but he's trying to get the word out to see if the community can toss a few more dollars into the bucket o' hosting bills. To see whether Mac Hints & Tips could be worth your time and a donation or a membership, Paul keeps archives of the past three months available on the main page (in both HTML and PDF), in addition to the current issue.

Check out Mac Hints & Tips, as I know I've found it to be an invaluable resource over the year or so I've been a reader, and it would be great to see such a killer resource get credit where it is most certainly due.

The promotional email for the .Mac webmail refresh that went out over the weekend might have been a bit more revealing than we originally thought. Reader Harry noticed the address Apple used to send it was a bit different than the standard 'noreply@apple.com' (and honestly, I'm signed up for so much promo stuff these days I don't pay attention to who it's from with stuff like this anymore). The email was sent from an inside.apple.com domain, and following it redirects you to an apple.com/chatterbox 'we'll be back soon!' maintenance page - not the typical 'Looking for something at Apple?' page.

Some googling revealed that others have seen this /chatterbox/ link used before, especially with images that are linked in newsletters, so this might be nothing more than some internal system for site and/or email and newsletter management. The 'we'll be back soon' bit simply makes it a little more interesting, as that sounds like it could actually be something public. In all likelihood it's nothing, and you can simply move along.

MacNN found a survey from comScore Media Metrix for the month of August which ranked apple.com as the 14th most visited site in the U.S. with 31.5 million unique visitors. On the top of the list is Yahoo! with more than 131.3 million visitors, while Dell surprisingly leapt from 47 to 35, though MacNN notes that is largely due to the battery recall. YouTube, surprisingly, rose to the #32 spot with 19.1 million visitors in August - I always figured they were closing in on MySpace somewhere near the top of the hill.

MacNN has more details of other properties and observations made from the survey, so take a gander if you have an interest in web and marketing trends.

We've noticed around the web, and also received a number of reports from you observant readers, that the list of recalled batteries didn't quite match up between the CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) and Apple. Understandably, quite a bit of confusion was building over this, but fortunately, InsanelyMac News is reporting that the CPSC has updated their list to match Apple's, so everyone should be on the same page now.

Also, we and others have been linking to various battery recall pages, missing the correct page for this most recent recall and causing even more trouble. This is the proper link for the most recently announced 1.8 million battery recall page, so we hope this helps clear things up.

Apple must have heard our jab at their one-line Nike+ Sport Kit support document yesterday and decided to whip up a full-blown Nike+ support section of their much-loved iPod Support site. Delusions of grandeur aside, the support section offers the typical troubleshooting and 'How do I...' sections, along with a video tutorial detailing how to run how to get on your feet with using this slick new kit to enhance your run. It also includes a link to Apple's new Nike + iPod Sport Kit discussions sub-category which lives under their iPod nano forum. While these should be handy new resources for all sorts of internet-related arguments over Nike and why 5G iPods didn't make the cut, just remember to still get out on your feet with your shiny new running kit, as we're pretty sure Apple Stores won't accept "I just never got around to it" as a return excuse.

We're not sure how a one-sentence support document made it into Apple's support knowledgebase, but this strange doc somehow snuck past the velvet rope. It simply states: "There is no way to remove workout data from the nikeplus website", with a 'stay tuned for more info' bit at the end to finish off what is probably the shortest support document we have ever seen.

Getting to the topic, however: it seems just a bit strange that there is no way to remove workout information from this supposedly revolutionary new service/iPod accessory. It's not like we're suddenly terrified about Nike's trampling of user privacy, but we wouldn't be surprised if a few tin foil hat fashion aficionados raised at least some sort of a flag over this.

Apple has told Macworld UK that there are now over 2000 applications on its Universal Applications guide (there were 2,006 as of last night). More and more developers are making the leap to Universal applications and that makes Intel Mac users (like myself) a happy lot.

So, what non-Universal applications are you chomping at the bit for (other than the obvious Photoshop and Office)?

iComment, as we've mentioned before, allows you to add trackbacks and detailed webstats to iWeb sites, and even comment systems to iWeb sites hosted somewhere besides .Mac. Implementing some of these features can be a bit clunky, as you have to sign up for external services to help drive some of them, however, if you just gotta have comments and webstats the latest version of iComment (4.1) is probably the best way to get the job done.

A demo is available, and a license will cost a mere $9.95.

Two hip-hop radio stations, Power 106 in LA and HOT 97 in NYC, have signed on the dotted line with the iTMS to offer an integrated, customized version of the store right in their own websites. The radio stations can design the store any way they see fit, and feature any artists, recent releases and playlists they want. From some quick browsing, I was able to find the iTMS integration at HOT 97's site, but not at Power 106's.

hypebot, the blog where we found this, was quick to point out the vast potential this kind of partnership with the iTMS has for any kind of niche markets, businesses and organizations you can think of: "From skateboard sites selling radical tunes to a museum's site selling period music that matches their exhibitions, this could be a very exciting development for niche and indie music marketers". Indeed, this is a great example of that iPod expansion post Scott had yesterday; it sounds like Apple has plenty of tricks up their sleeve for the iPod and iTMS.

I was pretty darn happy with iWeb's update the other day, and good news of feature  enhancements is still cropping up. Comments on my review of iWeb's new features pointed out such handy additions as a pop-up calendar when clicking on a blog post's date - great for adjusting its schedule. There are also six new themes that add some much appreciated diversity to iWeb's style.

Then today I noticed this Apple Support document that details iWeb 1.1's ability to handle more than one website/database file. Now, you can create multiple database files and work on them separately. In fact, you can keep these files anywhere you want to; not just in your Application Support folder.

Check out the Apple Support document for details on how to create a second iWeb database and how to handle working with multiple sites. There are a couple of minor gotcha's, but overall, this should be good news for anyone who wants to use iWeb to create and manage multiple, completely separate websites (publishing to non-.Mac locations, of course).

Safari isn't the only browser that can pimp it these days, as it looks like Camino has its own custom parts shop now. Pimp My Camino (started by John Hicks; he who set up Pimp my Safari) keeps track of the plugins, addons, haxies and scripts (and more!) for Mozilla's fantastic Camino browser.

I don't know how long Pimp My Camino has been around, but they already have a whole slew of stuff like CamiScript (applescripts for saving sessions, grabbing site feed URLs, etc.) and CamiTools (a feature-packed pref pane), ready and ripe for you to blow an entire afternoon tinkering with.

Sometimes even his Steveness is guilty of having too much time on his hands. Apparently, Mr. Jobs won an abandoned mineral mine in Australia in a game of poker (or so the digg post says). So what does Steve do with the land? Why, construct the world's largest homage to the iPod, of course!

The site can be seen from space (Google Maps link) and still looks to be a work in progress - but wow. I wonder if this is Apple's attempt at putting little white music players in the hands of little green men.