Welcome one and all to the weekend, a time for rest, relaxation and fresh pickings from the App Store.

Before checking out this week’s apps, we’ve got seven days worth of Apple happenings to run through.

First up, the week kicked off with a scathing review of the Daniel X graphic novel — an utterly dull comic-book barely improved by its leap to iPhone. Later in the week though, I took a look at Tumblr’s official iPhone app, turns out that it’s a brilliant tool for capturing moments while on the go.

On Tuesday, there was a curious new addition to UK retailer Play.com’s store: the 16GB iPhone 3G. Apparently taking advantage of EU regulations — ensuring the availability of SIM-free mobile phones — the device’s are retailing at a hefty $900.

Midweek, Apple introduced cross-border shopping for twenty different countries via their online store. Unfortunately, our own Darrel Etherington was less than pleased to discover that Canada has been left out of the International shipping fun. Plus, owners of the unibody 17″ Macbook Pro were also treated to a firmware update fixing graphics issues with the system.

Bringing an end to the week’s Apple happenings, over at GigaOm.com, Om Malik received a tip-off concerning a new app for iPhone: Skype. That’s right, there’s rumored to be an official Skype iPhone app, due for release very soon. Unfortunately, for me, it may be too little too late: I doubt that it’ll be feature-packed enough for me to swap over from Nimbuzz.

Moving on the apps, this week I’ve been looking at Bowman, Gengo Lite, AudioBoo and Elemental Monster TD.

Bowman (99 cents)
The original version of Bowman is an excellent little physics-based Flash game, controlling an archer, you simply drag back on the arrows to launch them at your target. Back in February, I mentioned an unofficial 99 cent Bowman game that hit the App Store, for iPhone and touch. Now it seems that the official Bowman game has been released, alongside updated graphics, it packs three different modes: Single player, Multiplayer and Bird Hunt. Try the Flash game first and then, if it hits your target, grab the iPhone version.

Gengo Lite: Finnish (free)
Last Sunday I made the epic move of packing up shop and moving from my apartment in central London to Finland. As I don’t speak the language here, I decided to hit the App Store in a bid to find out if my iPhone can help me learn the local lingo. The Gengo Flashcards apps are particularly special — featuring both a plain old flashcard mode and a more exciting game mode. Plus, there’s a wide range of languages on offer: alongside Finnish, there’s Spanish, French, Italian and even Hindi, Farsi and Turkish among others.

AudioBoo (free)
Occasionally an app comes along that has the potential to change the way we use our iPhones on a daily basis. Both Tweetie and Evernote fall in to that category, the former giving me beautifully stream-lined access to Twitter and the latter enabling me to take notes and stay organized wherever I may be. AudioBoo is another one of these potential game-changers. It’s an app that plugs straight in to Facebook and Twitter allowing you to record tweet-style audio messages. Quick to set-up, easy to use and certainly very good fun, this is definitely one to check out. Stay tuned as I’ll be posting a full review to TheAppleBlog next week.

Elemental Monster TD (99 cents)
Over the past few weeks, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Tower Defense (TD) games. If you’re not familiar with the genre, it’s essentially a type of strategy game where you build offensive towers on a map to attack waves of enemies. It’s over-simplified real time strategy gaming: more immediate than Command & Conquer and easier to learn (with much less depth) than Warcraft 3. Elemental Monster TD moves the genre forwards: introducing trading card collection alongside action-packed tower defense. What results is a game with stunning graphics, ultra-strategic gameplay and a few added twists to the tower defense genre. Normally $3.99, the app is on offer at 99 cents until March 30.

And that’s your lot for the week, I’ll be back next Saturday with more picks from the App Store. Plus, drop by TheAppleBlog during the week for the latest app reviews too.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

Keep Your Word, produced by Bamboo Apps is a tool for those learning a new language. It allows you to build your own dictionary as new words are discovered, classifying and grouping the terms exactly how you want to, while helping you learn a large vocabulary through various exercise modes.

Features

As someone who seems to lack the talent for learning new languages, I was interested to see how this app could help me to grasp the basics of a foreign tongue. The first thing to note is that Keep Your Word isn’t a tool to teach you a language from scratch. The application functions more as a learning aid as you learn a language elsewhere, allowing you to gradually categorize and build up a dictionary of vocabulary.

Far from being solely a database of words, you are able to create smart groups, add ‘tags’ to easily categorize sets of words and tell the application when you have successfully memorized a word. The main selling point is the collection of ‘exercise’ tools to assist in learning vocabulary. These consist of flash cards, quizzes and the ability to print word lists.

When first opening the application, I was a little disappointed to find a lack of pre-built dictionaries or word lists. The idea of needing to create an entire dictionary for yourself from scratch seemed daunting to say the least. Fortunately, Bamboo Apps have developed Words Parade in conjunction with Keep Your Word, allowing you to easily share and download pre-built dictionaries. At present, only a couple are available — Basic Mandarin and Cantonese — though I foresee more languages being added in the future.

If a comprehensive collection of different languages are gradually added, this has the potential to really take the application to a new level.

User Interface

The interface for the application is surprisingly well polished, being intuitive to use and at no point causing me any confusion. This is important, as the application is not targeted at technical Mac users. The main database page makes it clear how many words are contained within each category, and you are able to select a word in order to assign tags, add comments and mark your progress at memorizing it.

The interface for browsing through flash cards is also intuitive, with key commands to quickly navigate around the screen (space flips a card over, arrows navigate between cards, and ‘m’ marks a card as memorized). The size of the cards also expands as you enlarge the app window, making it easy to see their contents from across the room. If you’re the kind of person who likes to spend a lazy Saturday morning brushing up on foreign vocab while still in bed, it’s an amazing feature!

A potential problem, which has been well preempted, is the issue of foreign character sets. A ‘character map’ window allows you to browse through the various characters for different languages — incredibly useful for a language such as Chinese or Japanese.

Limitations

While Keep Your Word does the task it is designed to do very well, it remains very much a learning tool. It won’t help you understand how to construct sentences or pronounce words. Being so simple could well be a selling point for many people, who already have their primary learning method arranged.

There is certainly room for future additions, with the concept of having several languages pre-integrated taking priority from my point of view. While the accompanying website is a good concept, more languages will need to be added for it to really provide a useful resources.

Keep Your Word requires Mac OS X Leopard and is available to purchase for $24.99. The price may be a little expensive for the functionality the app provides, but if you’re learning a new language it is certainly worth experimenting with — you may just find it to be an invaluable learning tool.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

In the meantime a torrent of nervous-looking new arrivals joined the App Store, so it’s time for me to line a few of them up and judge which are fit for action and which should be sent home on indefinite leave.

This week I’m looking at Wallpapers by Gelaskins, Star Trigon Lite and EuroTalk.

Wallpapers by Gelaskins (free) – Where does one find a raft of beautiful wallpapers, all designed by internationally acclaimed artists and proportioned perfectly for the iPhone? Step up Wallpapers by Gelaskins, packed to the very brim with seriously high-quality papers. The selection of artists on offer is nothing short of jaw-droppingly impressive, including, I’m pleased to note, Alien-artist H.R. Giger. The app is free and if you’re iPhone is in need of a makeover this should be your first stop.

Star Trigon Lite (free) – Japanese game shop Namco – you’ll know them from classics such as Soul Calibur, Tekken and Pac-Man – have brought their game-design skills over to the iPhone with Star Trigon. It’s simple one-click play: as the cutesy spaceman circles planets, tapping the screen catapults him round the galaxy catching Uchujin in the process. No, I don’t quite understand either, but the full game costs a few bucks and this free demo is quite strange but great fun.

EuroTalk (free) – Simple ideas, executed with flair and polish, can often be the most effective, especially on the iPhone. Created by EuroTalk, a company specializing in language learning, this app teaches you how to say hello in one hundred and fifteen different languages. For such a simple concept, it’s ultra-polished with an integrated map, search functionality and even a cute little greetings mini-game.

It seems that we’re all out of time for another week’s App Store perusing. But, as always, I’ve managed to spare a moment to tell you all about some interesting iPhone-related goings-on. Purchasing buggy apps from the App Store will never cease to be frustrating, so it’s gratifying to see that this week, one developer is doing something about it (either that or they got their wrists slapped by Apple).

Released a couple of week’s back, Gameloft’s Guitar Rock Tour was an ultra-polished pretender to Tap Tap Revenge’s iPhone rhythm-action throne. The game featured multiple instruments, a selection of (none too shabby) sound-alike hits – including Message in a Bottle and Rock You Like A Hurricane – and even a story-based tour mode complete with wacky awards.

Unfortunately, the game featured a show-stopping bug that meant songs became almost impossible to play as they disappointingly drifted out of time. As the reviews rolled in, most noting this awful bug, Gameloft kept schtum and didn’t comment. Despite the fact that they’ve released some pretty poor titles on the iPhone already, this was quite a let-down for such a large and well-respected publisher.

At some point over the past week, Guitar Rock Tour disappeared without a trace, leaving purchasers of the bug-ridden Rockband-wannabe somewhat in the lurch. Did Apple pull it from the store amidst a kerfuffle of complaints, or did Gameloft make an executive decision to reign the title back in and polish over that awful bug?

Before we could finish pondering this thought, the game returned to the store with the promise of, “Increased stability.” It seems Gameloft heard the masses and made some changes. And yet surely, with a little bit of testing and some more time in development, Gameloft could have avoided this whole mess. Never mind though, it’s the weekend, time to kick-back, chill and grab some new apps.

I’ll be back next Saturday with more apps and more recommendations, in the meantime, drop by the comments and let me know what apps you’ve tried this week (and your thoughts on the Guitar Rock Tour situation too).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities