Today, Ars Technica posted a very handy guide for keeping up with the new, popular and discounted applications in the iTunes App Store. Here are some great pages and feeds you might want to follow to keep you on top of your iPhone App choices:

1. App Shopper New Applications
AppShopper offers a new applications page and RSS feed. These resources track new items as they appear at App Store. If you’re only interested in free apps, this new and free RSS feed is what you’re looking for. The pages and feeds are nicely designed and easy to use.

2. 148 Apps Price Drops
This page provides up-to-date overviews of the latest App Store sales and price drops. The site automatically scrapes the store looking for bargains and adds them to its page. You’ll find several discounted items per day.

3. Medialets Metrics/Medialytics
If you’re more interested in learning how well an application is doing rather than what’s new or discounted, Medialets is the place to turn. It offers a constantly updated ranked list of App Store items. Medialets provides the sales rank, the average rating and the total number of ratings for each app.

4. Pinch Media Updates
If you’re looking for updated apps, Pinch Media has the perfect RSS feed for you. It scans for all apps with recent version changes. Let this feed help you decide when that Application you held off buying really is worth the money after its update.

5. Apple’s App Store Roundup
Discover new, free and top Apps directly from Apple’s site. This interactive browser lets you quickly scan through top items in a number of categories.

Be sure to check out Ars Technica for more info.

iPhone Atlas recently posted an article proclaiming Stanza the most robust eBook reader for the iPhone. Featuring a clean, well-organized interface, Stanza is expressly designed for reading digital publications, including electronic books, newspapers, PDFs, and general web content. The app gives special attention to details that are usually overlooked in other software readers such as hyphenation, text columnation, automatic text scrolling, and user-friendly page and chapter navigation. Lengthy content that can be tedious to read using a web browser or PDF viewer is easy and natural with Stanza.

Stanza features built-in support for HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, and Rich Text Format reading, as well as all the major eBook standards: unprotected Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and the International Digital Publishing Forum’s new epub Open eBook standard. In addition to supporting a plethora of formats, Stanza features an open API that allows developers to implement support for their own document formats.

Stanza also enables you to import your own eBooks using a computer based program currently in beta testing for Mac or Windows that is available from LexCycle. eBooks created in this fashion are shared wirelessly between your iPhone (iPod Touch) and computer.

For more, check out Stanza’s complete profile at Lexcycle.

Jennifer Demski of Campus Technology posted a great article today about the use of mobile technologies to not only enhance communications on campus, but to also provide access to increased administrative information. The article profiles the usage of mobile technology at three institutions: Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3), Illinois State University and Dartmouth College.

Demski’s first profile discusses TC3’s work with SunGard Higher Education’s web applications to create myMobile, an initiative that allows faculty and staff to send e-mails over the school’s existing SMTP server, which are then received by standard cell phones as text messages. The exciting thing about this initiative is that it is designed to adapt the school’s existing web services for a mobile interface, enabling instant access to vital information over a cell phone or PDA. Students can check their grades, class schedules, and campus news, all with real-time updates. The mobile portal also allows faculty to view class lists, e-mail students, and check their schedules right on their phones.

The article goes on to profile Illinois State Univesity’s adoption of Agilon’s Mobile Access for Development Officers. ISU’s executive director of development information and donor services, Jill Jones, initiated this adoption because she wanted to make sure that her traveling development officers had the most up-to-date donor information when they stepped into a meeting with a potential benefactor. Consequently, development officers at Illinois State can use their smart phones to update prospect proposals on potential donors, examine demographic details of donors and alumni, review a donor’s giving history, and more, all in real time.

Finally Demski discusses Dartmouth College (NH) partnership with Agito Networks to install a campuswide mobile network that allows dual-mode phones to switch seamlessly between cellular signals, campus WiFi signals, and 3G/4G technology, depending on the location of the user. Via “fixed-to-mobile convergence,” Agito’s RoamAnywhere Mobility Router (in conjunction with a little piece of Agito software downloaded directly to the phone) monitors the location of an active cellular device and adjusts its signal accordingly, without any disruption to the call.

Be sure to check out Demski’s full article at Campus Technology.

Today, TUAW posted quick review of Briefcase, the latest in a flood of apps for the iPhone that lets you transfer files to and from a PC or Mac and view them on the iPhone. Briefcase is also the only app of this type to allow Wi-Fi file transfer between iPhones.

Several competing applications require running special software on the host computer, Briefcase doesn’t. Mac users just turn on File Sharing in System Preferences and make sure that the iPhone and Mac are on the same Wi-Fi network. A list of machines appears on the iPhone, the you tap on one to connect, and once the user of the computer allows you to have access, you can browse the directories of the machine you’re connected to. WIndows and Linux machines simply need to support remote login via SSH. You can also make remote connections to machines if you know the IP address and SSH port number.

When Briefcase shows up in the App Store, it will cost US$4.99. A free version, Briefcase Lite, just lacks the ability to zap files to other iPhones.

TUAW promises a full review soon; until then, be sure to check out their “first look.”

David Chartier of Ars Technica recently posted a great “mini-review” of the new iPhone blogging client iBlogger. While some clients work directly with a specific service, like WordPress, iBlogger joins a budding group that can speak a variety of blog platform languages. This iPhone blogging client also happens to be a descendant of a long-time Mac desktop client, ecto.

Chartier suggests that as a multi-platform blogging tool, iBlogger is an easy candidate for the jack-of-all-blogs award. It offers direct support for 11 platforms, including (alphabetically) Blogger, Blojsom, drupal, ExpressionEngine, LifeType, LivingDot, My.Opera, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress, and Xanga, as well as support for other platforms that support either the MetaWeblogs or MovableType APIs. For the review, Ars Technica tested the app on a WordPress 2.6 blog.

After constructing an extensive list of iBlogger’s pros and cons, Chartier asserts that the app is a solid 1.0 client that, for $9.99, supports a broad range of platforms, including some we haven’t seen in competing products. With a little more UI polish and these deeper hooks for bloggers who need to speak multiple languages, iBlogger will be a very appealing option for iPhone bloggers who need everything, including the kitchen sink.

For Chartier’s complete post, visit Ars Technica.

Merriam-Webster recently joined forces with ParagonSoftware Group, a leading software developer and content provider for mobile devices and desktop PCs, to bring the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary to iPhone users. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for iPhone is now available at the App Store. The program is supported by iPhones with firmware 2.0, iPhone 3G and iPod touch with firmware 2.0.

The dictionary’s database contains 225,000 entries, including more than 10,000 new words and definitions, which can be accessed anywhere, any time, without Internet connection or additional charges. The new app features an easy-to-use, single-click application for instant access to all words and definitions. The SlovoEd engine compresses the database to a minimum of memory space while allowing users to quickly perform multiple lookups.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition for iPhone has a suggested retail price of $24.99 USD and may be ordered at http://www.merriam-webster.com/store/iphone/collegiate/.

Find more information at PRNewwire.

TUAW posted an interesting update today about Stanford University’s fall iPhone programming course. The course is obviously in full swing, with a reported 80 students signed up. Stanford has also started a project that is beginning to bear fruit in the form of iPhone and iPod touch apps—the Stanford iApps Project.

TUAW reports that five student-developed apps are now being tested as part of the Stanford iApps Project. Two of the apps are targeted at Stanford students and provide management of course registration and bills, while the other three apps are aimed at a much larger audience including the general public and alumni.

These other apps give access to a searchable Stanford University map (see screenshot), schedules and scores for the University’s sports teams, and listings in the StanfordWho online directory.

While future iApps may be the result of the iPhone development course, these apps were developed by TerriblyClever Design. a startup created by Kayvon Beykpour, a Stanford computer science undergrad. Once the Stanford apps are out of beta testing, they’ll be available in the App Store.

For more, check out the full article at TUAW.

We were awfully pleased to hear about Apple’s new Developer University Program for the iPhone and iPod touch. Targeted at university developers interested in creating native apps for Apple’s devices, the program is open to colleges and universities in the US only at this time.

To apply for membership (yep, you gotta apply),  you’ll need an Apple ID (either an existing iPhone developer ID, an ADC ID, or even your iTunes ID) and you’ll need to be able to link your request to a specific course. Applications developed under the program can be distributed either at Apple’s app store or on-site at the university via Apple’s “ad hoc” distribution model. Of course, the program also “allows students within the same development team to share their applications with each other through email, or by posting them to a private website for presentation and grading purposes,” which should make teachers’ and students’ lives a bit easier.

We’re looking forward to seeing a whole new crop of educational applications show up in the apps store, and we hope they’ll get beyond the unquestionably handy but fairly tame collection of memory and language apps that currently make up the majority of educational apps…. A cool interactive chemistry app that triggers the “vibrate” function for haptic feedback to denote an explosion if you mix the wrong chemicals? A grammar app that uses the accelerometer to let students shake to diagram a sentence? Man, oh man… The options are endless!

This week Thumbplay, an online platform of mobile entertainment content, expanded their services to allow users to download reference materials and study aids like CliffsNotes and American Heritage Dictionaries and titles from Scientific American Magazine and the Sierra Club from their cell phones.

The new titles span a wide variety of classes and disciplines including:

• Language and grammar aids: 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses & Misuses, 100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know, 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, 100 Words To Make You Sound Smart
• Literature: CliffsNotes for classic works, including Beowulf,The Canterbury Tales, Great Expectations and Julius Caesar
• History: Great American History Fact Finder
• Science: Scientific American: Ask The Experts, Scientific, American: Geography, Scientific American: The Human Body, 100 Words Science Words Every College Graduate Should Know
• Mathematics: Scientific American: Mathematical Games

“With nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population using cell phones, we’re seeing an increasing demand for ever more engaging and useful content,” said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay’s CEO and founder. “We’re thrilled to add these applications to our ever-expanding content library.”

Apple unveiled three new iPod touch models during its “Let’s Rock” event, all of which are available today. For $229 you can receive 8GB of storage, for $299 you’ll get 16GB, and $399 scores 32GB. That’s knocking $70 to $100 off the price of each.

The new touch body is very slightly thinner, and has a similar tapered back as the iPhone 3G. It will also include an exterior volume control and a built-in speaker for “casual listening.” There is no microphone built in, but the touch will work with new Apple headphones that include a microphone on the cord. This new feature could prove handy for teaching and learning. I can foresee students and teachers creating and sharing educational podcasts, playing and recording lecture notes, etc. from the palm of their hands.

For more details, check out iPhone Atlas’ coverage of the “Let’s Rock” event.