This one’s an oldie but a goodie.  Air Mouse Pro [iTunes Link] transforms your iPhone into an over Wi-Fi mouse for both PCs and Macs.  Just install a utility on your computer and Air Mouse connects and gives you control.

The top section of the Air Mouse screen is the mouse – right and left clicks, scroll, etc. – and the bottom is a series of preconfigured buttons allowing you to quickly control music and video playback, your web browser and more.  The app is accelerometer enabled so you can move the iPhone around in the air to move the pointer on your computer’s screen.

Turn the iPhone to landscape mode and the entire screen becomes a touchpad with multi-touch gesture support (scrolling and right-click).

View/Download Air Mouse Pro (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

Photo sharing on the iPhone is possible through built-in options and a wide range of third-party apps, but today’s App du Jour is a new favorite. 

PhotoScatter [iTunes Link] from UniqueApps allows you to upload photos to popular social networking and photo sharing sites like Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Photobucket and Flickr.  Just input your account settings for each of the services you use, take a photo (or select a photo already in your Camera Roll), give your photo a title and description (if you wish) and send it to the selected service(s). 

PhotoScatter makes sharing photos pretty much a no-brainer.

View/Download PhotoScatter (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

=========================================================

Although it’s far from perfect, PDF has become the cross-platform document distribution format of choice.  Almost anyone, anywhere can view a PDF file, whether using a computer or a smartphone.

Scanner Pro [iTunes Link] is a PDF document creator for the iPhone; the app transforms the iPhone’s camera into a scanner (of sorts), allowing you to “scan” and create single or multi-page PDFs, adjust their brightness and contrast, email them, transfer them to a PC or Mac over Wi-Fi, and even upload the PDF files you create to MobileMe’s iDisk and other WebDAV storage services.  You can also password protect your PDF files in cases of sensitive material.

View/Download Scanner Pro (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

If you’re a news junkie (who’s not a shut-in), it makes you a little sad that there are periods in the day where you’re too busy to check the wires for any big news stories that just broke. 

Nodding in agreement?  You need Push News [iTunes Link].  This iPhone app uses iPhone 3.0’s Push Notification service to send you breaking news in real time.  The service is powered by CNN, the New York Times, BBC, ESPN, CNBC and Google News (the next version of the app will add Fox News and USA Today).  Just select the news sources you’d like to receive alerts from and you’ll never be out of the news loop for more than a few minutes again. 

Other features include the ability to put the service to sleep (like during the night when you need some sleep yourself), customizable alert sounds, duplicate blocking, a built-in Safari window for quick reading of full articles, and badge counts of newly pushed stories.

View/Download Push News (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

Looking to lose a few pounds?  Want to be sure you’re meeting your daily nutritional requirements?  Like barcodes?  Then have we got good news for you!

DailyBurn, a web site dedicated to tracking your diet and fitness data, has released the FoodScanner app [iTunes Link], which gives you the ability to scan food items’ barcodes to quickly update your daily intake of fat, calories carbs and more.  If you’ve ever tried entering nutritional data manually, particularly on a smartphone, you know what a great idea this is.

FoodScanner uses the iPhone’s camera as a barcode scanner.  Point the camera at a food item’s UPC and the app does the rest.  DailyBurn has over 200,000 food items in its database, and if you happen to run across something not yet listed, you can input the data within the app.  Eating something like fruit that rudely doesn’t include a UPC?  You can search the database for those foods, too.

If you have a DailyBurn account and an iPhone, this seems like a serious no-brainer to us.

View/Download DailyBurn FoodScanner (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

=========================================================

So you want a turn-by-turn navigation app for your iPhone 3G or 3GS, but aren’t exactly thrilled about forking over $100 to commit to one sight unseen?  We feel your pain.

And so does MapQuest.  Their new MapQuest Navigator app [iTunes Link] is a subscription-based GPS navigation solution for the iPhone.  For $0.99 you buy a two week trial.  If you like the software, you can subscribe to the service for $3.99 a month, $9.99 for three months or an entire year for $29.99.  You must choose to renew the subscription each time it expires, so there aren’t any automatic payments (which we like). Even if you enjoy the service enough to purchase an entire year up front, it’s a substantial savings over more expensive solutions [iTunes Link].

Features of MapQuest Navigator include spoken turn-by-turn directions (including street names), quick route recalculation (in case you don’t exactly follow directions), traffic-based route calculation (where available), over 16 million POIs, Contacts integration, automatic resume of navigation after ending a phone call and more.

We think this app is worth a full review, so we’ll take it out for an in-depth spin and give you the full report next week.

View/Download MapQuest Navigator (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

Finding a USPS public mailbox (one of the blue ones) can sometimes be a challenge, particularly if you’re away from a familiar area, but it’s also a challenge Brian Gillet’s MailBox Find [iTunes Link] iPhone app is very much up to.

MailBox Find is GPS aware (3G/3GS), so it can quickly show you the USPS mailboxes in your area on a map.  You can also manually enter your ZIP code if necessary. 

In addition to finding public USPS mailboxes, MailBox Find also locates Post Offices, UPS Stores and FedEx locations; you can limit your search to just one type of location, a specific set or all in the Settings menu.

View/Download MailBox Find (Opens in iTunes)

View Recent iPhone App du Jour Selections

Assigning specific sound notifications to incoming mail, either from a specific contact or with a particular subject line; why doesn’t the iPhone do this already?

If this is a feature you’d like, try MailTones [iTunes Link]. This $2.99 app allows you to assign ringtones to contacts, subject words and domains (@workplace.com, etc.).

How does the app work?

“When you run MailTones, we’ll give you a special email address @mailtones.net – forward a copy of your email to that address and any mail you receive will make your iPhone beep with your chosen tone. You can choose to copy all your email to mailtones.net, or use filters on your original email to just forward some messages. Whenever mail for you arrives at our server, we send a Push message to your iPhone – causing it to beep, whistle, ring or croak!”

So, in order to use MailTones as intended, you need an email account that supports email forwarding based on specific filters.  If you use Gmail or MobileMe, you’re set.

View/Download MailTones (Opens in iTunes)

Learn How to Make Your Own iPhone Ringtones