One the gripes I’ve had with the Apple “App” store is that it can be hard to search such a large index of applications to find what you’re looking for. Looks like it’s Google to the rescue as they seem to be adding (it’s still not perfect!) the ability to search the iPhone/iPad store as well as the Android store. Great news for both platforms. Not only does this addition benefit the consumer, this will make life easier for developers as well. Now there is a bit of method to the madness and the chances are higher of connecting developers and consumers together in app purchasing harmony!

Did you know you can pause any application download or update on the iPhone and iPod Touch? This is great when you’re in a bandwidth bind or have low bars of reception.

* Pause the download/update by just tapping on the app’s icon while the download is going
* You’ll know the download is paused because the name will change to ‘Paused’ (see screenshot)
* Tap the icon again to resume the download or update

You learn something new everyday! I’ll bet this tip works for the iPad too, but since they aren’t in the wild yet we don’t know for sure.

[ screenshot and tip via MacObserver ]

Appropriately named App Store Expense Monitor does exactly what it’s name implies, it tallies up your App Store spending on iPhone/iPod Touch apps and gives you a grand total. The app works by reading your iPhone App information from the iTunes folder on your Mac and then it just tallies up the prices, but it does allow you to edit price information in case you got an app for free or at a reduced cost.

All of those little $0.99 purchases can sure add up!

App Store Expense Monitor
Download now

There is now a Photoshop app for the iPhone / iPod Touch and it’s called… Photoshop.com Mobile. The best part? It’s free! Free Photoshop?? For the iPhone?? Well, don’t go expecting a full version of Photoshop on your iPhone, it’s a relatively limited and simple image editor, but for quick photo edits on the go, it works just fine and has a nice clean interface. I imagine over time the functionality will increase and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a feature rich paid option either, but until then here’s what you’ll get with the free iPhone version of Photoshop Mobile:

Image editing features of iPhone Photoshop include:
* Crop, Rotate, Flip
* Adjust Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black & White
* Simple Filters including Sketch & Soft Focus
* Effects include: Vibrant, Pop (Andy Warhol style), Border, Vignette Blur, Warm Vintage, Rainbow, White Glow, Soft Black & White

There are some additional publishing features so that you can easily share and upload images to Photoshop.com after you have signed up for an account, but you’ll need to sign up for that login outside of the app itself which is kind of annoying. Instead of signing up for yet another photo sharing service, I’ll just stick to saving images to my iPhone Photo Gallery so I can share them myself via Flickr or Facebook.

I’ve been playing around with Photoshop on my iPhone 3G and it’s not the quickest app in the world (a friend with an iPhone 3GS reports it’s a lot faster on the 3GS model) but it definitely does what it advertises, and it’s more than adequate for the simple functions it includes.

It’s definitely nice to finally have Photoshop on the iPhone, although I’m not sure if this app warrants the “Adobe Photoshop” name, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction!

iTunes link