App Store free apps round-up – August 29, 2008

This week I was a little extra appreciative of developers who choose to offer a free, or lite version of their apps. This allows the potential buyers to get their fingers on the app and see if it’s really something that could work for them. And if the app is as awesome as the developer thinks it is, the paid version is just a few clicks away. So, here’s my list this week that consists of apps that have bigger paid brothers elsewhere on the App Store.

Cannon Challenge – This game comes from the Discovery channel, and puts you in charge of a “Non-Line-of-Sight” cannon. Destroy enemy targets by firing shots, taking into account velocity, distance, gravity, and even timing.

Dashbuster Free – Keep track of your Netflix or Blockbuster queue. You can view shipped, queued and saved movies. Reorganize the queue anytime you want, or even delete some junk. You can view details about said movies just like you’d expect, and search for more. But, if you want to add movies on the go, then you’ll have to pay.

Expando Free – This is kind of like jezzball, if you’ve ever played that, only completely different. Some balls are bouncing around inside of your screen, but instead of drawing lines and boxes to contain them, you touch the screen to grow smiley faces. The longer you hold your finger, the bigger the smiley face. But don’t let the ball touch the smiley while it’s being created. Fill up 2/3 of the screen to advance. Give it a try; if you like it, buy the full game.

iDoodle2 Lite – Create your masterpiece on the go with this great drawing app. It’s the free version of a paid app, but it still has a lot of features. You have access to many drawing tools, like a pen, a line tool, and some shapes. Best of all, you can save your work of art in your picture library to share with the world.

Spend Lite – Keep track of your various budgets right on your iPhone so you can always know where you’re money is running off to. As long as five daily or weekly budgets fits your spending style, then the free version has you covered. Data can be exported to a CSV file, where it can be useful in your standard spreadsheet program. It looks to be a pretty polished app.

Enjoy.