Smule, makers Ocarina app for iPhone aren’t content to have their app, which turns your iPhone into a musical instrument, be one of the most popular paid apps on the iTunes store. They want Ocarina-ists from all over to go head-to-head, pitting their mad musical skills against each other in that modern-day equivalent of the gladiator pit: YouTube. The big prize? Glory, for starts. And if that’s not enough, there’s also a grand total of $10,000 in prize money.

In year-end round-up of The Top 10 Everything of 2008, Time magazine has published list after list after list. Because God forbid you should read something on the web that wasn’t numbered—who knows what order those paragraphs go in!? Were Paul’s Letters the first blog post?

In addition to laying out the best Quotes, Scandals, and Awkward Moments, they also pick the Top Ten iPhone apps (what, no love for the Zune?), and while there’s not much on the list you haven’t heard of before, Time does make the rather shocking choice of picking a side in the bloodiest conflict since Mario vs. Sonic:

Ocarina Wars!

Unsurprisingly, the magazine comes down on the side of Smule’s Ocarina app…

In the heart-rending, brother-against-brother conflict that is Ocarina Wars, things just got more interesting. Because, while the Ocarina app from Smule lists itself as being incompatible with the iPod touch (since it uses the iPhone’s integrated mic), we’ve received confirmation that it works just fine and dandy with external mics for the touch, including the new Apple mic/remote headphones.

Apple has made their in-ear headphones, with mic and remote, available on the Apple Store for $79. The ‘phones feature three sizes of silicone plugs and a woofer and tweeter in each bud in order to give you something about sound which the weird guy who’s house they’re having the party in assures you is important when you were just trying to grab a Dorito, man.

Ahem.

The mic and remote “… are supported only by iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (120GB), and iPod touch (2nd generation),” according to Apple, though you can use them as headphones for any device that uses a miniplug.

The really important thing, of course, is that there’s now a microphone for the iPod Touch, which brings us back to the story of the year:

Ocarina Wars! As you may recall…

As you’ve no doubt noticed, we here at Appletell are big fans of the Ocarina for iPhone, produced by Smule. But we’re not the only ones: the app is, as of this writing, currently the #1 paid application in the iTunes Store.

But can it hold on to this spot, now that it is (gasp) no longer the only Ocarina app available? That’s right, kids, the moment we’ve all been waiting for is now upon us:

Ocarina Wars!