13 Free Apps For iPhone, iPod Touch13 Free Apps For iPhone, iPod Touch

The iPhone and iPod Touch are powerful computers that fit in your shirt pocket. Out of the box, they do a lot -- e-mail, Web, music, videos, and more. But they get even more powerful when you download and install third-party applications.

Developers have been hard at work producing applications for the devices, which add capabilities that give users easy access to popular social networking service, news, Internet radio, business applications, and more. You have to pay to get many of the applications -- but many are available for free. The free apps aren't low-quality, developers are giving away some of the best and most useful iPhone applications.

The only place to get the apps is from Apple itself. You can download them from the App Store section of iTunes on your desktop, or using the App Store app that's on the iPhone itself. The App Store now includes more than 5,700 applications, and growing.

What are some of the best free apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch? We're glad you asked. Read on.

1. Facebook
Keep up with Facebook while you're away from your computer. The official Facebook iPhone app lets you do many of the things you can do from your desktop, including checking out your friends' status updates, use Facebook Chat, upload your own photos, read your News Feed and comments, run a search, manage friend requests, view your in-box, and more. Download Facebook from the App Store.

2. LinkedIn
The official LinkedInapp lets you tap into your professional network on the go. Get updates from your network, find needed contact information, read profiles, update your status and review your own profile. The iPhone app integrates with your address book -- you can find a contact on your network, then quickly. copy their contact information to your address book. Download LinkedIn from the App Store.

3. Pandora
The official Pandora: application lets you build and listen to free, streaming radio stations on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Just input one of your favorite artists, songs or classical composers, and Pandora will create a station that plays that music and more like it. Rate songs as they play to fine-tune Pandora's selections. Download Pandora from the App Store.

4. Remote
Apple Inc.'s Remote lets you turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote-control for your desktop iTunes or Apple TV. You can select music, play, pause, skip, shuffle, view album art, edit playlists, search your iTunes library, control AirTunes speakers, and more. Download Remote from the App Store. 5. NYTimes
Get "All The News That's Fit To Print" with the NYTimes app. Read the latest articles and by time or category and look at photos. The app stores content locally on your iPhone or Touch, so you can access the Times even when you're offline. Download NYTimes from the App Store.

6. Sportacular
Sports buffs will love Sportacular, by Jeff Hamilton, for up-to-the minute scores, standings, stats, and news for major pro and college sports, including MLB, NHL, MLS, and NCAA football and basketball games. Download Sportacular from the App Store.

7. Instapaper
Do you love to read articles and blogs on the Web, but don't have time to keep up when you're at your desk? Instapaper, by Marco Arment, lets you bookmark and copy Web articles to your iPhone or Touch to read when you're away from your computer, formatted for the smaller mobile display. Instapaper downloads articles directly to your device so they're there for you to read even when you don't have an Internet connection. You can use Instapaper to store and read any Web article or text-based Web page, from electronic newspapers, magazines, blogs, or plain old Web sites. It's the electronic equivalent of your magazine "to be read" pile -- but it doesn't clutter up the coffee table in your living room. Download Instapaper from the App Store.

8. Now Playing
Feel like a movie? Now Playing, by Cyrus Najmabadi, shows you local movie schedules. Start by letting Now Playing use the iPhone GPS to pinpoint your location, or if you're on an Touch or first-generation iPhone, type in your ZIP Code. Now Playing will show you a list of movies in the vicinity, sorted by title or location. You can see ratings from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, play trailers, check out summaries, look up movies on the Internet Movie Databse order tickets from participating theaters -- you'll be so busy fooling around with Now Playing that you won't have time to go to the movies. Download Now Playing from the App Store.

9. Stanza
The Stanza e-book reader connects with Internet libraries of millions of free titles, ranging from the Bible to the latest science fiction from Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Browse and download the volumes directly from your iPhone or Touch, then read them at your leisure, even when you're disconnected from the Internet. Or you can use Stanza's desktop application to convert files in Word, PDF, or other popular formats for reading on your mobile device. Download Stanza from the App Store. 10. Twitterific
Iconfactory's Twitterific lets you keep up with all your Twitter friends (a/ka/ your "tweeps") when you're out and about. Send and view messages, photos, and location updates. Twiterific includes its own mini-browser, so you don't have to shut down Twitterific and launch the iPhone's built-in Web browser just to view links people post to Twitter. Download Twitterific from the App Store.

11. Wikipanion
Robert Chin's Wikipanion lets you access Wikipedia articles formated for easy reading on the iPhone or iPod Touch. You can run searches directly from Wikipedia without having to first navigate to the Wikipedia page, and change the font size of articles. When you open the application, Wikipedia returns to the last page you visited. And Wikipanion has international support. Download Wikipanion from the App Store.

12. Yelp
The Yelp app lets you access the Web-based social networking service for reviews of local restaurants, businesses, services, parks -- just about everything under the sun -- all over the U.S. and Canada. With your permission, Yelp accesses your location using the iPhone or iPod Touch's location awareness, and then runs searches near you. You can bookmark search results on the device for later access.

Let's say you're visiting Santa Fe and you feel like you'll have a guacamole explosion if you eat one more burrito. Yelp helps you find great pizza or Mediterranean food in the vicinity. You can also find dentists in La Mesa, Calif. or computer repair in New York.

Yelp is extremely powerful and useful -- but also bafflingly frustrating in its limitations. You can't log in to your Yelp account from your iPhone app, meaning that any bookmarks you've saved on the iPhone aren't easily accessible from the desktop, and vice-versa. You also can't follow your friends' reviews, and write your own from the iPhone app. Still, for what it does, the Yelp app for iPhone does a great job. Download Yelp from the App Store.

13. 1Password
Agile Web Solutions' 1Password keeps an encrypted store of your logins and passwords, and the URLs associated with them, along with credit-card and bank account numbers, freeform text notes -- anything you might want to carry with you encrypted in your pocket. 1Password lets you log in to password-protected Web sites with one tap. Optionally, you can synch it with the Mac desktop version of the app, sold separately for $35.95. Download 1Password from the App Store.

Those are just some of the great free apps that are available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Download them, check them out, keep the ones you like and delete the others. When you've exhausted our list, you'll find plenty more at the Apple App Store -- look for the Top Free Apps column of the home page of the App Store in iTunes.