Editor’s note: Contributor Brad Spirrison is the managing editor of mobile app discovery services Appolicious, AndroidApps.com and AppVee. With this post, he continues an annual tradition of picking the best iOS apps of the year.

It’s telling that Apple chose an app that debuted more than 14 months ago, Instagram, as its “iPhone App of the Year” for 2011. This should not imply that there was a shortage of quality and groundbreaking apps released this year. Far from it.

From social magazines to music discovery apps to console-quality games that players can hold in the palms of their hands, there are hundreds of new titles in the iTunes App Store that will inform, organize, and entertain virtually anyone who owns an iOS device. As more choices become available to different kinds of consumers, however, it’s difficult to identify the undisputed champions of the app world.

We picked 20 of the best iOS applications that came out or received significant updates in 2011. The list is a healthy mix of free and paid titles that can run on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. (We will follow up with a separate top 20 list just for games, which are not included in this list).

There are hundreds of additional titles worthy of mention, and we selected our favorites based on the production value of an app more than its popularity on the Top Seller charts. You might take issue with some of the apps included here as well. But with about 600,000 apps available for iOS devices, everyone is entitled to their own favorites.

Here are ours.

1. Flipboard

After launching exclusively on iPads last year, this pioneering social magazine expanded to all iOS devices in December. Significant updates to the app — including LinkedIn integration and the inclusion of many more third-party publishers like Conde Nast — make Flipboard the best iOS app of 2011. The new iPhone-specific Cover Stories feature that showcases what users are most interested in is also a game-changer.

2. Photosynth

Who would have thought that one of the most enjoyable and innovative iPhone apps of the year would be developed by Microsoft. That’s the case with Photosynth, which lets users quickly and reliably capture panoramic 360-degree gyroscopic images simply by moving their cameras.

3. SoundTracking

This next-generation music detection app lets users not only identify what song they are listening to, but also seamlessly share the track with friends and followers from Facebook, Twitter and foursquare. SoundTracking also lets users tap into what their friends are listening to and tagging.

4. Google Translate

This language translation app from Google excels above all others for its ability to audibly translate spoken words into other languages. Google Translate’s simple and elegant interface translates text between 63 languages and lets users star notable translations and access them for later use.

5. SkyView – Explore the Universe

City dwellers in particular appreciate this astronomy app which uses augmented technology to display stars, planets and satellites that otherwise would be obscured. The dead simple point-and-use functionality, 3D graphics and snippets of celestial background information can make anyone a happy and well-informed stargazer.

6. GarageBand

While Apple created an ecosystem for thousands of third-party developers to innovate and market their wares to iOS devices, the company is also capable of producing its own killer apps. Having GarageBand available on the fly for less than five bucks is music to the ears of working and aspiring musicians and podcasters.

7. Tiger Woods: My Swing

This app, which is also available on the iPad, is arguably Tiger’s greatest professional accomplishment of 2011. Users can compare side-by-side videos of their swings next to Tiger’s. For those spooked by Tiger’s potential skills regression, an option exists to customize alternate “swing lines.”

8. iMuscle

Beyond measuring heart rates and determining how many calories are burned during a workout, iMuscle — also available as a separate iPad application — provides more than 450 unique exercises and stretches. Fittingly, the app offers 3D views to help users target the muscles and areas of the body that deserve the most focus.

9. Snapseed

While there were worthy and less expensive photo editing apps released for the iPhone and iPad this year, none were better than the $4.99 Snapseed. The app’s user-friendly interface combines a nice mix of basic editing tools and cool effects that will please beginner photographers and experienced shutterbugs alike.

10. Super 8

Super 8 is an innovation in advertising as much as it is a real cool retro camera app. A promotion for the JJ Abrams/Steven Spielberg film of the same name, the app lets users create their own Super 8-style movies on their iPhones (scratch overlays and shaky cameras included). Nice to see a major studio release something more thoughtful than a cheesy commercial.

11. Spotify

Spotify was worth the wait. Three years after launching in Europe, this music streaming service finally made its way to North America in July. The iOS application combines access to Spotify’s deep library with great playlist creation and social networking capabilities. Well worth the $10 monthly subscription for hardcore music fans tired of iTunes.

12. Pinterest

Embracing the minimalist style of Tumblr, this blogging app allows users to create virtual bulletin boards of their favorite things. Friends and followers can then re-pin their own comments on words and images that attracted them. This is not an app for the verbose.

13. Quora

A must-have mobile extension to the popular questions and answers site, the Quora app captures information about nearby locations using the GPS capabilities found within iOS devices. Where else can you tap into the collective wisdom of the digerati wherever you travel?

14. Weather+

With mainstays like The Weather Channel and Accuweather already available for iOS devices, it’s difficult for other upstarts to find any sunlight. Weather+ shines through the clouds by providing looped visualizations of each type of weather forecast displayed at any time of the day.

15. IntoNow

A Shazam for television, IntoNow identifies what a user is watching on TV merely from picking up signals from its audio track. IntoNow, which was recently purchased by Yahoo!, uses proprietary fingerprinting technology called SoundPrint. The app also makes it easy to share what you’re watching with friends and followers.

16. Bill James Baseball IQ

Armchair baseball general managers can now access the Sabermetric wizardry of acclaimed baseball statistician Bill James with this free iOS app (that debuted for $14.99). The level of detail here is unprecedented for any piece of software that can be displayed in a device smaller than a baseball mitt.

17. Google Currents

Google’s Flipboard competitor is the best pure news aggregator available for mobile devices. While currently no match for Flipboard in terms of social integration, Google Currents is faster and offers more intuitive customization options with third-party publishers. Not surprisingly, it’s also the best way to tap into Google+ profiles from thought leaders like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki.

18. HBO GO

Beyond the premium content this app serves up to HBO subscribers, HBO GO is pioneering how broadcast and cable networks make programming available to users on-the-go. The ability to tap into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from any place at any time is a pretty, pretty, pretty good thing to have.

19. Procreate

Simply the best painting app available for the iPad. The clean and simple interface enables painting in real time. There is enough variety and options to appeal to painting pros as well as talentless amateurs just having some fun.

20. Garmin StreetPilot onDemand

While turn-by-turn navigation technology is not revolutionary, packaging it within a 99-cent app (with an eventual $2.99 monthly subscription) is. The app also features great pedestrian-friendly walking directions.

Top image: Daniel Y. Go

The abstract, psychological-exploration atmosphere reminds me somehow of the mesmerizing Mirror Stage, and the dreamy narration reminds me of Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks. At any rate, it looks like a compelling little adventure.

Note, I say Photosynth but the game apparently runs in Flash, which suggests it’s some Photosynth-ish derivative. We’ll see. The game will be released when it’s released, apparently; bookmark accordingly.

[via IndieGames]

In the video it’s releasing on YouTube for the occasion (embedded below), Microsoft claims ‘hundreds of thousands’ of users have already used Photosynth – which was released to the public back in August 2008 – and uploaded more than 12 million photos in 350,000 synths.

Now it’s taking the next step by using Silverlight technology in order to make it possible for user to port their Photosynths to Virtual Earth, running on Macs and PCs alike (unless you refuse to run Silverlight on any of those, of course). It touts this as a must for tourism agencies (for obvious reasons) but also businesses who want to add a cool visual layer of their stores, outlets and offices. The example it is featuring on the Virtual Earth product site is for a real estate listing, and the result of the synth is stunning as ever.

In addition to the integration, Microsoft announced that the latest release of Photosynth introduces commercial licensing, privacy controls, and one-click highlighting for viewers to easily explore synths.

It’s also worth noting that this integration announcement comes several months after Microsoft started including hyperlinks to hosted photosynths on its Live Maps web application.

I can really see how many tourism agencies and businesses from around the world can benefit from showing off whatever they can show off on a digital version of our planet, but I also see the challenges ahead for Microsoft. After all, the company is going to have to convince not only those organizations but also potential visitors to install and use both Virtual Earth and Silverlight on their computers, and getting the word out that something like Photosynth even exists. So far, these are all examples of services that haven’t exactly seen stellar success and seem to be far away from even edging into mainstream popularity.

Either way, I think the combination is powerful and enticing. What do you think?

Photosynth, Microsoft’s impressive photo viewing project that stiches together images to create pseudo-3D worlds, got a major upgrade last week. The app has ditched Direct 3D (which only works on Windows) in favor of Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-platform viewer, which means that Photosynth is now Mac friendly. So if you’re on a Mac and have only been able to look longingly at our coverage of the app over the last two years, here’s your chance.

Mac and Linux users have been able to take advantage of an experimental Silverlight Photosynth viewer since December, but the viewer has been missing a few key features until now, and Mac users haven’t been able to really participate in the Photosynth community. Now all Photosynth embeds will be in Silverlight by default. Also included with the update is a new ‘highlights’ feature, which makes it easier to find important landmarks and impressive photos in the Synths you’re exploring (previously you had to wander around aimlessly to find the best shots).

The Photosynth blog notes that the switch to Silverlight comes with some sacrificies – namely, users may see slower frame rates and ‘delayed point cloud density’, but the team is working to improve on these issues and the benefits afforded by Silverlight outweight the setbacks.

Photosynth hasn’t exactly hit the mainstream yet, but it’s starting to get more attention. Earlier this year CNN featured a Synth called ‘The Moment‘ that captured President Obama’s inauguration (it’s really a must-see if you didn’t get around to it in January). Also worth checking out is the unofficial Photosynth viewer iPhone app, which came out last month.

It’s nice to see that the team is still going strong, despite Microsoft’s decision to dissolve Live Labs (of which Photosynth was a part of) and distribute its projects to other product groups. Update: Live Labs isn’t shutting down, according to a post on its site, though some of its personnel have gone on to join other products.

iSynth (iTunes Link) is a new application that brings Microsoft’s impressive Photosynth 3D photo viewer to the iPhone. Photosynth stitches together user-submitted photos of the same subject, allowing users to ‘fly-through’ the area by clicking on each successive photo. The technology works best in places and events with many user-submitted photos (popular Synths include the Taj Mahal and President Obama’s inauguration). The site is very fun and often gorgeous, and is certainly worth checking out if you haven’t seen it before.

iSynth brings much of the functionality of the original Photosynth to the iPhone, and for the most part it works well. In fact, the touch-screen interface makes the experience even more intuitive than the original – tapping on the screen causes the app to zoom in on the highlighted photo, shifting the viewer’s position in the 3D scene. Unfortunately, because the iPhone’s screen is so much smaller than a computer monitor the feeling of ‘walking through’ each scene isn’t quite as good as it is on the original application, but it’s still fun nonetheless. And the application is perfectly suited for those moments when you just need to kill time for a few minutes – just fire up the app and take a virtual stroll around the Taj Mahal.

The free iPhone application was developed by Greg Pascale, a former Photosynth intern who received permission to build the app from Microsoft (though Microsoft didn’t build the application and does not support it). Also worth checking out is Microsoft’s Seadragon Mobile (iTunes link), which allows users to flick through large albums of high-resolution photography, including 2D versions of albums from its Photosynth product.

Thanks to Kyle Mulka for the tip.

You’ve likely seen Photosynth in action before, but reader KSA sent this in and we thought we’d share. Look at all those people! Check it out.

Microsoft should be sending interns to offices and bars all over town with cameras, building this service up. I feel Microsoft has a long record of making cool things available but not pushing them or giving them the exposure they need. Photosynth and the underlying tech is fun and cool, but unless people have it staring them in the face, they’re not going to care one way or the other. They also need to integrate it more with the Live maps experience; at the moment it pops up to the Photosynth site, why can’t it be a little virtual window?

First off, Photosynth only works on Windows machines. That includes creating them and merely viewing them. I made this one using Boot Camp on my MacBook.

That out of that way, this is a quick little Photosynth of Samsung’s booth at IFA 2008. Theirs was probably the most visually impressive at the show. More stuff on the way, as I just found out that the video I took with my cellphone is actually watchable. Amazing, this technology.

The Photosnth is HERE!

In the startup world, server spikes and downtime are a fact of life. We’ve seen countless startups fall prey to the huge rushes of traffic they receive at launch, and while it can be frustrating at times (see past comments), it’s not generally viewed as a sign of failure or incompetence.

But when you’re one of the largest tech corporations in the world, launching a much-hyped service, you’d think you might be prepared for something out of the ordinary.

Today Microsoft released Photosynth, a site that stitches plain photographs together to create a pseudo-3D world. Microsoft first presented the product back in 2006, and has since demoed it a number of times. The two year wait for Photosynth ended today as Microsoft finally opened the doors to the public.

And the millions of users who clamored to try it out promptly brought the server to its knees.

Okay, so Microsoft’s servers failed. It’s not something that should be happening to a massive tech company, but it isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. But instead of issuing a standard explanation apologizing for the outage, Microsoft wrote a blog post that sounded downright happy. Here’s an excerpt:

With everyone waking up around the world traffic has been on a steady ramp up since that release and has far exceeded even our most optimistic expectations.

Getting ready for the launch we did massive amounts of performance testing, built capacity model after capacity model, and yet with all of that, you threw so much traffic our way that we need to add more capacity. We are adding that extra horsepower right now and should be back up shortly.

Thank you for the incredible reception!

We see similar optimistic responses to server failure all the time from startups. Except they’re startups. Imagine if Apple had responded to the iPhone’s server registration outage by proclaiming that it was overjoyed by the overwhelming response. It’s understandable that Microsoft is happy to have made a product people like, but let’s save the celebrations until the program actually works.

I got to cruise over to Smith Tower yesterday to talk with Microsoft Live Labs about Photosynth, and as of this writing the site should be live and all the things we talked about will be available for you to play with. It’s best to see it in motion, so either grab that camera or watch the video above for a taste of the Synthy goodness. Sorry the sound is so bad.

The video is a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff but really there isn’t too much there you can’t see by just heading over to Photosynth.net and testing out a few synths. May I recommend my own? Or, of course, you could look at one of the many gorgeous panoramas made up by people who work at some magazine called National Geographic — whatever that is. Read on for a basic explanation of what’s going on when it “synths” stuff.

Read more…

I got to cruise over to Smith Tower yesterday to talk with Microsoft Live Labs about Photosynth, and as of this writing the site should be live and all the things we talked about will be available for you to play with. It’s best to see it in motion, so either grab that camera or watch the video above for a taste of the Synthy goodness. Sorry the sound is so booty.

The video is a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff but really there isn’t too much there you can’t see by just heading over to Photosynth.net and testing out a few synths. May I recommend my own? Or, of course, you could look at one of the many gorgeous panoramas made up by people who work at some magazine called “National Geographic” — whatever that is. Read on for a basic explanation of what’s going on when it synths stuff.

So the whole process is automated, all you do is put a bunch of pictures in. They warned me that my first few synths might turn out a little weird, and that you have to be aware of some idiosyncrasies in the Synther’s code. What it does is look for similarities between pictures, and once it has found them, it uses depth cues and stuff like the focal length and distance objects have travelled in the picture, and creates a 3D map of the area. The map itself (see it by holding down control) is cool as hell and reminds me of voxel landscapes like in Outcast. I certainly had trouble making one of my apartment, I’m getting better at it with every try.

Some stock footage they gave me. Better resolution but it doesn’t have that je ne sais quois.

It uses that 3D map as an arena for a camera to move around in and look at your photos projected flat onto where it thinks they fall in the map. It’s generally pretty good about this. Sometimes it connects things a little strangely or throws out stuff that doesn’t have enough similarity with other pictures, but if you’re careful you can make something work well. I recommend taking lots of pictures. Inside the synth, you can zoom in to the maximum detail available in your photograph; it doesn’t recompress or anything, it’s just a different way of accessing that information. It streams the data using the Seadragon tech that made some of the Surface demos so compelling.

Once you create an account, you have 50 gigs of space for your synths, which is awesome, because mine were all at least 50MB each and I intend to make some probably 10 times that size. You do have to upload everything to their server, and everything is public now, but they’re working on setting up private synths. I have a decent upstream and it never took longer to make the synth than it did to upload all the pictures, so that’s nothing to worry about.

I can see this being used pretty widely as long as they can make people try it once or twice; it’s super easy and it’s really a great way to feel out a space remotely, for instance if you’re advertising a venue or apartment. It’s also a great educational tool, because it’s pretty intuitive and kids will enjoy zooming around a dinosaur skeleton or bug and getting up close to see the details. So what are you waiting for? Go try it out!

Wow, this is really, really goddamn cool. I love how the “skeleton” created by all the photographs is visible, a ghostly meta-world based entirely on aggregate data and an insane amount of processing power. You can switch between day and night, rotate smoothly, zoom, it’s color-corrected, it looks fantastic. I’ll let the guys in the video explain just what is going on, but man do I want this on my rig.

Deep respect to Microsoft Research and UW for putting this together. Check out the higher-res version at their site. [via Reddit and I started something]

Tonight they are pushing a new 3D model – coverage of the Space Shuttle Endeavour on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before launch. If you are on a Windows machine only, you can view it here. Click and drag the mouse, zoom in and out, etc.

There are other interesting projects as well – see our coverage of Everyscape, Fotowoosh and VisualSize. See also Microsoft Street Side and Virtual Earth as well as similar efforts from Google, which should eventually incorporate a lot of this stuff into one big interactive virtual world.

How long will it be until we can stroll through the streets in a virtual world that is identical to our own? Given the state of a number of technologies, not very long. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen Microsoft Street Side and Virtual Earth as well as similar efforts from Google. But different technologies are now being deployed that are even more interesting that the results achieved from large companies taking and processing massive numbers of photos into now-standard 3D views.

Two standouts are Microsoft’s Photosynth Project and newcomer Everyscape, which Brady Forest wrote about today on O’Reilly Radar.

Photosynth

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

First, Photosynth. The idea is to take many pictures of a given thing or area and combine them into a 3D image. Fly around it, zoom in whatever. The results are jaw-droppingly beautiful – see the demo video above by Blaise Aguera y Arcas from earlier this year. The BBC also just announced a partnership with Microsoft; they’ve launched a new site using Photosynth technology that will show 3D photographic representations of historic sites around the UK (Ely Cathedral, Burghley House, the Royal Crescent, Bath, the Scottish Parliament buildings and Blackpool Tower Ballroom). For now, though, Photosynth only works on Windows machines.

Everyscape

Everyscape is a much simpler product technically but is quite a bit more useful in the near term. They turn regular 2D pictures into 3D images that look like they were taken with special cameras. Viewers can pan around a 3D area, and move from point to point. See the demo on their site to get a feel for it. The video at the top of the post was created by founder Mok Oh and seems to show features that go way beyond the early beta version of the product.

Everyscape launches this Fall, promising ten cities. Users will also be encouraged to submit their own photos to be included in the models.

The company is attacking Google and Microsoft head on in those companies’ efforts to photograph the world and let people meander through it. They may have a chance – there are no special downloads required and they’ll be relying on users to take many or most of the photos used in the service. Whether they make it or not is unclear, but it’s fun to play with these products anyway. Good luck to them.

Fotowoosh is another service we’ve covered with much simpler goals than Photosynth or Everyscape: they just turn a single 2D photo into a 3D image. But the results are very cool.

PhotoSynth is the first prototype to come out of the new Microsoft Live Labs and is a great example of cool technologies made possible by corporate largess. If it works well when it hits market, I can imagine countless uses – the company bills the system as 3D Photo Tourism.

If storing, sharing and moving around digital photos is the primary theme of most of what we’ve seen online so far, I’m excited to see what more can be done with composite images. Startup photo sharing system Snapmania last week unveiled a similar, smaller application called the Tourist Remover, which compares multiple images from different angles of the same location and removes unwanted objects from a composite photo. Unfortunately that application is reported to work poorly and in very few conditions. Microsoft has another service, Group Photo, that reproduces those functions. It’s a tough life as a media start up in competition with the big guys.

Videos of PhotoSynth in action are available on the project site.