Seat Guru was the brainchild of business traveller Matthew Daimler who, like most other frequent flyers, found the difference in seating arrangements from airline to airline frustrating, to say the least. In the hopes of alleviating the travel angst of others, Daimler launched the SeatGuru site in 2001. Today, the Seat Guru app comes to your iPhone.

The Seat Guru App

The Seat Guru app brings to the iPhone the same color-coded, interactive seating charts that the website users are already familiar with. The color-coding system is pretty straightforward and intuitive. Green means “good seat.” Red means “poor seat,” and yellow, “some drawbacks.” There are also codes and symbols for emergency exits, closets, galleys, and of course, lavatories.

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The Sparrow app has finally arrived at the App Store. What is Sparrow, you ask? It’s cult-like followers will tell you it’s the greatest thing to happen to email since─well, there hasn’t been anything quite like Sparrow before.

The Mighty Sparrow (the program, not the Calypso star)

Sparrow is a messaging service that has been available for the OS X for some time now, and in that time, they have developed a legion of flowers. Sparrow integrates some of your more popular IMAP messaging services, like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Google Apps, and iCloud. So, instead of having to log into all these different accounts, one click has them loaded to one convenient application.

There has been much anticipation for the new iOS version, the Sparrow app. Although there are many of the same great features as in the PC version, there are a few shortcomings, too.

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Coco Loco, by Chillingo, is starting to create some buzz. The game was released a week ago, and it already finds itself comfortably seated at the number 3 position of top app iPad downloads.

Coco Loco App — The Crazy Chocolate Game

The gameplay for the Coco Loco app is pretty straight forward. The player takes control of a group of fearless marshmallow heroes that must battle the villainous guardians of the chocolate, who look conspicuously like little angry Hershey’s Kisses in Mayan apparel.  You are taken across various zones of rolling hills, underground caverns, and vast Maya-like plateaus. Each zone has 15 stages of gameplay.

The Coco Loco app is a physics-based game that recognizes the tilts and turns of your iOS devices and converts them into deft moves in the game. Now, the critics might say that this is an Angry Birds knock off, especially given that Chillingo is the developer behind both games. But with the Coco Loco app, Chillingo has used the Angry Birds model and taken it a step further.

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Since its first release in 2010, the iPad has been making steady ground on its little, older brother, the iPhone. And between the two of them, these iOS devices have revolutionized the way we think about computing. In particular, the iPad has pointed consumers and users in a new direction, not just in terms of consumption, but also in terms of creativity.

Although the majority of the apps being sold are games, we are starting to see some truly extraordinary ideas in terms of application development. Whether it is the Readability app we wrote about yesterday, the Zombies, Run! running app, or the Apps for Apes program implemented at the Milwaukee Zoo, the iPad has given people a glimpse at will is possible with these tablets and smartphones.

Here are the top five free iPad apps, as determined by Apple.

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We just posted the top five free iPhone apps. Now let’s run down the list of the top five paid iPhone apps.

1. Angry Birds

Who could have imagined that a game whose objective is to fling angry, big-headed birds at the little pigs that stole their eggs could have become such a world-wide phenomenon. Bloomberg Businessweek goes so far as to attribute the exponential growth in applications industry to these little Angry Birds. There are over 500,000 software programs written for the iPhone alone, and given that Apple just celebrated its 25 billionth app download and that in the last year it sold more iOS devices than Mac computers ever, this latest tech growth spurt is just hitting its stride.

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Apple has released its top-selling apps for iPhone and iPad upon reaching its 25 billion download landmark. The lucky 25 billionth person hailed from China and was awarded a 10,000 gift card from the App Store. In commemoration, we decided to list the top five paid apps and free apps for both the iPhone and the iPad.

Top Five Free Apps for iPhone

1. Facebook

I guess there is no surprise here. Having just gone public with their IPO, Facebook has in less than a decade become the biggest social networking site in the world. But it has done more than that. It has become a cultural marker for our times. It not only changed the way we relate to one another; it has also altered the manner, good or bad, in which we share information. Facebook will be celebrating a milestone themselves. Analysts believe that they will reach the one billion member mark in August of this year.

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The new Readability app wants to make reading on your iOS device a little easier and, well, more readable.

Readability App for Your iOS (Android is still coming!)

Do you ever get tired of the two-finger stretching maneuver you have to constantly employ on your iOS devices? We too.

Not every website on the Internet has followed suit in developing a version of its site for mobile devices and tablets. Occasionally you still come across a site that has not fine-tuned their graphics and interface to accommodate easy viewing on iOS devices, especially in the case of the iPhone. Well, Readability has made it its goal to clean up all the visual noise out there, so to speak.

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The developers of the iGorilla app hope you will help them save  the majestic mountain gorilla of the Virugna National Park in the Republic of Congo.

The iGorilla App

Last we week we wrote a story about an organization called Orangutan Outreach that was trying to acquire iPads and possibly develop apps for orangutans that are in captivity around the world. The idea was to engage the orangutans and give them the opportunity to Skype like the rest of us supposedly evolved apes.

Now, we bring to you the iGorilla app, which is “the first app dedicated to supporting the plight of Africa’s endangered mountain gorilla.” The app was developed for the Virunga National Park, which stretches from the Virunga Monutains in the South to the Rwenzori Mountains in the North, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Zombies, Run! is a new app by Six to Start that combines your basic running regimen with some post-apocalyptic zombie mandness.

Zombies Run, Among Other Things

Punctuation is everything. When I first saw a post about the Zombies, Run! app, I read it like this: “Zombies run.” This has a matter-of-fact tone, like, besides devouring human flesh, zombies also run. Then I was, like, “Wait a minute. Zombies can’t run.” This is a well-known fact. It’s probably related to some kind of metabolic condition that has something to do with them being undead, but, I digress.

Anyway, the punctuation suggests a different connotation: Zombies, run!!! Like, “S*#@! Zombies are on the loose. Run like the wind!!”

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FarSight Studios wants you to get in touch with your pinball wizard with its Pinball Arcade app. As of late, most of our reviews have dealt with serious issues like mobile security and fraud, so we thought it was time to lighten things up again.

A Little Pinball History

Pinball dates back several centuries to the pre-modern games of bocce, croquet, and billiards. In late 1700s Western Europe, the billard Japonais was invented—and from this ornate and elaborate “Sin King” creation came our modern pinball machine.

The first coin-operated machines appeared in the 1930s, when David Gottlieb’s Baffle Ball became an instant sensation. Incidentally, Gottlieb is one of the “greatest pinball tables” included in the Pinball Arcade app.

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