Starting today, the additional category takes off, offering steep discounts to hotel rooms around in about 30 locations.

The launch of Overstock’s vacation category–its fifth new category since 1999–marks a substantial investment for the publicly held company.

The decision to pick travel is in line with what Gilt Groupe’s Jetsetter and LivingSocial.com’s Escapes are doing in terms of offering occasional deals to certain locations. With all of them, the focus is on price, not selection.

But rather than Gilt’s high-end affluent niche and LivingSocial’s curated-packaged approach, Overstock’s inventory is more for the masses–something you’d expect from Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline or Travelocity.

On day one, the choices will vary.

Three nights at the Crowne Plaza London at Heathrow costs $207.85 per person during May. In June, the four-star Renaissance New Orleans Marquette Hotel will run $238.14 per person for three nights. A perfectly decent hotel in Honolulu, which is a little drab and is across the street from the beach, will cost $351.25 per person for seven nights.

But how much you are saving is not exactly obvious.

“We’d love to put the rack rates up there, and if you go to other travel sites, you’ll see these are slick deals, but at the moment we aren’t putting up the rack rate,” said Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne. “The suppliers would like to make it not so transparent.”

The Vacations tab will be featured prominently at the top of the web site, along with the other categories of Shopping, Cars, Real Estate and Auctions.

The addition follows other recent launches by Overstock, including Eziba.com, which focuses on selling a small number of items, ranging from furniture to jewelry, at heavily discounted prices via a daily email.

As for the Vacations business, Byrne said they’ve hired a dedicated sales team to source the deals. “We have been working on it for about a year, and we believe we can expand the cities and inventory very quickly.”

The deals are colorfully laid out on the page to highlight the scenery in each location. They can sell out, or at least that’s the hope.

“This is the equivalent of a private shopping site. They will sell out and quickly. Or, at least we hope so, and then we’ll go get more,” Byrne said.

In doing so, it moves from an independent third-party aggregator to a competitor of the hundreds of travel sites it compares on a regular basis, such as Hotels.com, Hotwire, Priceline and Expedia.

The feature was released today in a limited beta, and will be fully functional in a few weeks, both online and on its iPhone application.

Since Kayak was founded seven years ago, it has been aggregating airline and hotel listings from hundreds of sources to give visitors the best options and price. But it was not known for selling directly to the consumer.

The company, which has filed for an initial public offering, traditionally has earned revenue from sending referral traffic to companies like Expedia and Orbitz. In fact, Expedia accounted for 25 percent of its revenues in the first nine months of 2010, and Orbitz made up 19 percent of its revenues.

In that period, it generated $128 million in revenue and processed more than 469 million user queries for travel information.

Now, the Norwalk, Conn.-based company has decided to go head-to-head with some of its biggest customers.

To do so, the company is partnering with the Travelocity Partner Network, which will be processing the transactions and providing customer service to anyone who books directly on Kayak.

In an interview, Paul English, Kayak’s co-founder and CTO, told us he believes the two businesses can co-exist because they still provide an extremely low-cost lead generator for all of their partners.

While the feature is being rolled out online and on mobile, he said the decision to start booking directly had more to do with the consumer’s experience on the mobile phone.

In a statement, Steve Hafner, Kayak’s CEO and Cofounder, said: “Our users value that we give them choices on where to book, though some people would prefer to complete their purchases without leaving KAYAK…For people who use KAYAK’s mobile app in particular, this will make booking much easier.”

Currently, if a customer is searching for a hotel and wants to book something, they will be kicked out of the app and redirected to another company’s web site in the browser in order to pay for it.

The poor experience causes many people to drop off, and conversion rates are low.

If the transaction can be completed inside the application, a user’s payment options can be stored, and it can be completed in a couple of clicks.

English would not say how much traffic its mobile application is getting, however, as one of the more popular travel apps on the iPhone, it makes up a notable number of its three million daily searches, he said.

So far, its mobile applications have been downloaded more than five million times, and he said there are some users who only search Kayak from the phone.

A new feature called “Price Predictor” auto-suggests flights and prices right from the search box, according to a Bing blog post today.

As soon as you start typing “Seattle to JFK,” a menu drops down, telling you the best price, and if you should buy now because prices are going up, or if you can hold off for a better fare.

The menu drops down before you ever hit the enter key. The results are for the best flight price over the next 90 days.

Other key words that will trigger the menu include: “Fly to Chicago,” or even “Chicago Flights.” Bing will immediately recognize where you are and instantaneously display the “Price Predictor” based on your location.

To cull this price information, Bing uses ITA Software’s data.

Google is currently in the process of trying to acquire ITA for $700 million, a process that is now being reviewed by the Justice Department for its antitrust ramifications.

ITA Software maintains a database of flight information, including fare comparisons and flight schedules for many major U.S. airlines, including American and United Airlines. Companies such as Microsoft and Kayak.com, which use the data, are opposing the merger because they claim it will stifle competition.

Others, such as Expedia.com, are also opposed to the deal even though they do not rely on data from ITA. The American Antitrust Institute also recently spoke out against it, calling it a “unregulatable monopoly.”

There are two main issues. First, the companies that do rely on the data are concerned Google will not honor its contracts over the long-term, and second, they are afraid Google might become a competitor, even though it promises not to get into the business of selling tickets.

For now, Google is not even licensing data from ITA.

When conducting a similar search of “Seattle to JFK” on Google, there’s no helpful information in the drop down menu. When you hit enter, there’s a widget that lets you choose dates for your travel and where you want results from, such as Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak and others.

But unlike Bing, there are no instant results on the best prices anywhere.

In a FAQ on Google’s site about the merger, it writes: “By combining ITA Software’s expertise with Google’s technology, we will be able to build new flight search tools for users that will make it easier for them to search for flights, compare flight options and prices, and get them quickly to sites where they can buy their tickets.”

Bloomberg reported today that agency staffers are preparing documents for use in a possible case against Google, but a decision on whether or not to bring a case hasn’t been made. Google–clearly eager to get the deal closed, as it has been six months since it first moved to acquire ITA in July–invoked a federal law that gives the government 30 days to rule thumbs up or thumbs down.

Since then numerous companies, as varied as Microsoft, Expedia and Travelocity, have opposed the deal and formed a coalition called Fairsearch.org to air concerns that Google could stop other companies that depend on ITA’s technology from using it, though Google has said it will continue to offer licenses after the deal closes. Orbitz Worldwide supports is neutral on the deal.

In an interesting move in the search space, Conduit–a fast-growing start-up that helps publishers make and distribute apps using Web browser toolbars–has entered a strategic partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search service.

In doing so, it is leaving its existing search deal with Google and will instead offer Bing to its network of 260,000 publishers and 200 million users.

It’s a solid win for Bing, which has more incentive to draw customers of its search products and services away from Google.

And every little bit helps as Microsoft strives to put even a chink in the overwhelming dominance of the search giant.

In a blog post today, Conduit said, in part (the rest is below):

“As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.”

More significantly, under the terms of the deal, Web publishers will be able to distribute apps directly in the organic search results on Bing.

Conduit President Adam Boyden said in an interview yesterday that the deal was struck to offer a better user experience for its customers with search, as well as the “long-term potential for app innovation with Microsoft.”

Conduit, which was founded in 2005 and has 190 employees, is profitable, Boyden said, from customers such as Groupon, eBay, Travelocity and Major League Baseball.

The San Mateo, Calif., company has raised close to $10 million, mostly from Benchmark Capital.

Of the shift to Bing, Boyden added, “There is more strategic potential for us with Bing,” he said. “And the same is true for them.”

Here is a blog post from Conduit today on the changeover, from founder and CEO Ronen Shilo and titled “Bing–It has a nice ring to it”:

Six years ago a small group of us founded Conduit with our own money and a vision of empowering the smaller Web publishers out there by giving them the tools to change the way they interact with their users. Many people were skeptical but we believed that we could truly make a difference.

Conduit redefined the toolbar, not as a search vehicle, but as a powerful engagement tool–the Community Toolbar. With so many publishers understanding this potential, Conduit inadvertently established a footprint for itself within the search market, comparable only to major classic search players.

Six years, 260,000 publishers, and 200 million users later, Conduit has proven to be one of the companies making a difference on the Web. Our product offering has greatly evolved and now includes apps, notifications, analytics and a marketplace. In the near future we will be creating new app distribution opportunities for our network of publishers, hastening the fulfillment of Conduit’s ambition to become an industry standard, to be used by all content publishers and available across all platforms.

Today I’d like to announce the next step in our journey–we have entered into a partnership with Microsoft which we believe will significantly improve our offering to publishers, accelerating the growth of Conduit’s massive network. Both companies are highly driven by improving the user experience, and as such, see a strong alignment in our long-term strategies and are looking forward to a mutually successful partnership.

As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.

I would like to thank Google for four years of partnership, which greatly contributed to the growth of the company. I would also like to express my appreciation to Bing and the Conduit team, both of whom worked hard to bring this partnership about.

If you have questions, ideas, suggestions, we want to hear from you. Write to us at: contact_us@conduit.com.

Or, as one exec told me, “enough.”

Obviously, that’s tough to quantify. That said, the list of apps announced today is a good start, even if it does seem pretty short. On the mobile A/V front, there are Netflix (NFLX), IMDB, Slacker, I Heart Radio and MusixMatch. T-Mobile users will get T-Mobile TV, while AT&T (T) users will get U-verse. For the moment, WP7′s big social media app will be Twitter, though I imagine there’s a Facebook app on the way. For e-commerce, there’s eBay (EBAY), Fandango and Travelocity. And finally, there’s a growing list of games (60+ at last count) that includes Monopoly, Need for Speed Undercover, Tetris, The Sims 3, Star Wars, Bejeweled, Assassin’s Creed, Fast & Furious 7, Guitar Hero 5 and Halo Waypoint.

Add to that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing search engine and an Office Hub that provides mobile versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as SharePoint integration, and you’ve got the beginnings of a decent ecosystem. Remember, when Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store first launched it had about 500 third-party applications. Today it boasts more than 250,000.

Which is not to say that the development of the WP7 app ecosystem will be as quick or tremendous. Clearly, there’s much ramping-up yet to be done. But there will be enough marquee apps available at launch that the device certainly won’t seem lacking, as some other mobile operating systems did when they debuted. Netflix, Twitter, eBay, a groaning board of games and a mobile office productivity suite is enough to get anyone started, particularly if they’ve only just decided to trade up from a feature phone to a smartphone.

FURTHER COVERAGE:

• “Delightful” Windows Phone 7 Coming November 8
• Windows Phone 7: It’s Now or Never

Last night, Trulia sent me a small pile of information about the fast-growth year the real estate search and information site had in 2009, despite the near-complete collapse of the U.S. housing market.

You can read all the stats below in Trulia’s press release–62.3 million unique monthly visitors, visits up 45 percent, page views up 105 percent and one million inquiries sent by home buyers to real estate agents via the San Francisco start-up, which was founded in 2005 by CEO Pete Flint and COO Sami Inkinen.

BoomTown also had a short chit-chat interview about the site’s prospects for the coming year with Flint, whose last success was as part of the team that sold travel site lastminute.com to Travelocity for $1.1 billion in 2005.

“We want to be the first billion-dollar real estate site,” he said, referring to Trulia’s valuation and not its annual revenue.

Currently, Trulia seems to be valued at about $150 million, having raised $33 million overall, with investors that include high-profile Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital.

Getting from here to there is definitely going to be a long slog, but Flint said that the “mass of confusion about real estate” will be a key factor in growing the site’s traffic and engagement over time.

Trulia allows people to search for a range of data about homes for sale in particular zip codes or cities nationwide. Its business and that of its competitors are largely based on advertising, selling subscription services and lead generation.

Flint (pictured here) said Trulia execs started focusing on revenue about 18 months ago and should achieve profitability by the middle of this year, after which the company is “poised for significant profitability.”

To goose that in 2010, Flint said the site would focus on three key areas: Expanding local content, such as blogs and information about the local community; mobile apps; and perhaps most importantly, launching a rentals offering.

“We are not about checking out what a neighbor’s house looks like, but on buyer intent and monetization,” said Flint, taking a not-so-veiled swipe at Trulia’s clearest competitor–the larger and better funded Zillow, located in Seattle.

Still, while he predicted that the overall real estate market would remain flat over the next few years, he noted that it was probably a winners-take-all game for the big and innovative niche sites like Trulia and Zillow.

Flint added that he doubts big Internet giants could easily compete, since their focus is so dispersed.

Thus, he would not comment on my recent report that Google (GOOG) and Trulia have been “in on-again, off-again acquisition talks…rumors about Google’s interest in the real estate search market–and specifically in Trulia–have been rebounding around Silicon Valley for the last year.”

“We are going to focus on being a big independent company,” said Flint.

Guess those talks are off again.

In the meantime, here is the Trulia press release:

SMARTER SEARCH AND PERSONALIZATION KEY TO TRULIA’S OUTSTANDING GROWTH AND INCREASED MOMENTUM IN 2009

Mobile and Rich Property & Local Data Provides Enhanced Consumer Experience

SAN FRANCISCO, January 6, 2010–Trulia.com (www.trulia.com ), smart real estate search to help you make better decisions, focused 2009 on providing users with the most relevant and consumer centric experience. As a result, Trulia grew to become one of the Top 5 Real Estate sites on the web according to Hitwise Rankings (November 2009). Last year was Trulia’s largest ever with a total of 62.3 million unique monthly visitors searching for homes, market insights and participating on Trulia Voices.

During the past year, millions of consumers came to Trulia to make sense of the real estate market, spending more time than ever looking at properties and price trend information. Consumer engagement reached record levels: visits grew by more than 45%, total page views grew by 105% and property views grew by more than 130%, according to internal data. On Trulia Voices, consumer questions doubled year over year. Along with increased engagement on Trulia, consumer interest in homes exploded, with nearly 1 million home buyer inquiries sent to real estate agents in 2009.

During the past year, Trulia focused on four key areas for product innovation and enhancements: smarter search, personalization, rich property & local data and mobile. Here is a recap of the key initiatives and highlights from the past 12 months.

SMARTER SEARCH

Price Reduction–A search tool that allows home buyers, sellers, agents, investors and real estate junkies to search for price reductions on Trulia. Users have the ability to receive real-time email updates when homes in their search area have been reduced, or filter their search by the percentage reduced or date of the price reduction.

Compare It!–Allows consumers to compare up to five different properties side-by-side. Users can see all the key attributes of each listing and then eliminate the properties they don’t like and save the ones they do like for future reference. Users can compare key attributes, like price per square foot to the size of the lot, and make educated decisions on what property suits them best.

PERSONALIZATION

MyTrulia–significant enhancements have been added to MyTrulia to make home searches more relevant for every individual home buyer. From saved searches to email alerts, Trulia will immediately notify users if a property they are interested in changes price or is sold. If a similar property comes on the market, Trulia will also notify users of the new home. Trulia also introduced “checklist” to help keep track of all things related to your home buying process and helps you make sense of the entire process.

Local Newsfeed–Trulia’s homepage provide consumers with a snapshot of activity in the neighborhoods they are most interested in tracking with a quick-glance. When a user comes to Trulia, the homepage is updated with price reductions, upcoming open houses, new homes on the market and market data such as average list prices, sales data, foreclosure information and more–only in the areas relevant to that user.

RICH PROPERTY DATA AND DETAILS

Home Price History & Data–Trulia’s product detail pages now includes each homes price history, including sold transactions, listing prices and price reductions. Trulia also added school information and rankings, crime data, competitive mortgage offerings; with a click of a button you can also see all the restaurants, grocery stores, banks and gas stations nearby any individual home.

Neighborhood Coverage–Trulia increased its neighborhood coverage by more than 300%. The expanded coverage improves property search and map displays to help consumers search for and compare neighborhoods, view and track neighborhood market trends, receive advice from local market experts through blogs and Q&A, and find local real estate professionals.

MOBILE

iPhone and iPod touch–the updated Trulia application offers more than 3.5 million homes for sale and has been downloaded more than 300,000 times by real estate enthusiasts, engaged buyers and sellers and real estate agents. The update adds significant new features:

Dynamic Maps–Visual searchers can toggle the map to find homes in areas they most desire. Once the area is defined in the map, a new set of homes that match their criteria is delivered.

Price Reduction Search–With a touch of a button, users can now search for all price reduced homes in their area.

Bigger, Unlimited Pictures–Taking advantage of the fantastic screens on the iPhone and iPod touch, the bigger photos provide searchers with a realistic view of the property.

Augmented Reality Browser Integration–Trulia has integrated with the Layar Mobile Augmented Reality Browser to overlay listings on top of the mobile phone’s camera view. The app allows you to scan all the properties available around you while you look at the actual buildings through your screen.

Trulia for all smartphones–Trulia has also launched a mobile version of its website, m.trulia.com, which delivers all the power and functionality of the web site in a format optimized for mobile handsets. The mobile website works on all mobile handsets from the Blackberry to the Plam Pre and all devices with a web browser, including the iPhone and iPod Touch. Users can search homes for sale, view extensive property details, find price reductions or upcoming open houses, utilize their MyTrulia account, and the Trulia Voices community.

“We dedicated 2009 to delivering a great consumer experience. Looking back on the engagement data makes me believe we are delivering on what the consumer wants. Consumers have told us over and over that they are looking for a real estate site that can deliver relevant and personalized results,” said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder Trulia.com. “Mobile and local information will be two areas of focus for the coming year. The world is becoming more mobile and real estate information on the go is a very natural combination. On the weekends, 5 to 10 percent of our overall traffic comes from mobile handsets. Deep local information, data and insights is also key to consumers interested in real estate and we will introduce more data and local knowledge during the next year.”

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

But the cascade of companies opening up has created a new question for cash-conscious start-ups: which ones do you build for and which ones do you build for first?

“A lot of start-ups are wrestling with prioritizing their relatively scarce resources,” said Jim Hornthal, a partner at CMEA Capital and chairman of Triporati, a travel destination discovery service.

In the “not-too-distant past” companies could justify tackling most available platforms, said Hornthal, who founded online travel company Preview Travel, which Travelocity bought in 2000. “More likely today, the answer is something less than that,” he said. The decision often boils down to which ones a company “can’t afford not to support.”

Read the rest of this post

Scrabble is just one of the many ‘apps’ available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In just the first 10 days since the new iPhone and the App Store launched on July 11, more than 900 programs — applications, or “apps,” in tech jargon — have been introduced by numerous developers. Over 90% cost less than $10 or are free.

Even more noteworthy: iPhone and Touch users have downloaded 25 million copies of these programs, ranging from silly sound effects to challenging games; from news readers to restaurant locators; from social-networking programs to business applications.

We have been furiously downloading and trying out scores of these programs, using a new iPhone 3G, an original iPhone and an iPod Touch, and in general, we are very impressed. We found the process of choosing and downloading apps to be easy and quick, and most of the programs to be useful or entertaining. The vast majority are nicely designed, with great graphics and effective, simple user interfaces.

The easy availability of so many programs written by developers beyond Apple (AAPL) itself makes the iPhone a true computing platform, like a pocket-sized Windows or Macintosh PC. With so many programs already available, and many more in the pipeline, iPhone and Touch owners can have a device with fresh, different capabilities every day.

But the process isn’t perfect. For one thing, it is controlled by Apple, which can theoretically bar a program from distribution or take its time making one available.

There are also some glitches. If you download a lot of apps in a short period, it can slow the phone’s next synchronization with iTunes to a crawl, while iTunes tries to back up all the new programs, each of which can contain numerous hidden files. And there’s a bug in the new iPhone operating system that causes apps to crash, and can even force the iPhone or Touch to reboot, if you use a large number of the new apps in quick succession. Apple says it is working on fixing the latter problem.

Also, Apple’s claim of over 900 programs is somewhat misleading, because more than 100 of those are individual books you can read on the phone.

Apple’s baby isn’t the first smart phone that has attracted developers. Thousands of third-party programs already exist for Nokia (NOK) phones, BlackBerrys, and phones running the Palm (PALM) and Windows Mobile operating systems. But, compared with the graphically rich, snappy iPhone apps — many of which fetch data from the Internet at high speed — the typical program on these older platforms looks positively primitive.

AOL’s AIM program

The App Store can be accessed either from the device itself or from Apple’s iTunes software on a Windows or Mac computer, which then transfers the app to the iPhone or Touch. The programs cover a wide range.

Some fill in obvious holes in Apple’s original complement of iPhone software, things the iPhone has lacked that other phones have. These include AOL (TWX) Instant Messenger, a variety of task and to-do lists, sophisticated note takers and a voice dialer. There are numerous versions of popular board, card and word games, like solitaire, mahjong, Scrabble and Sudoku. There are also eye-popping iPhone versions of popular video games, some controlled by the phone’s motion detectors, which allow you to move cars and characters by just tilting the phone.

Numerous programs let you perform Internet functions without using the Web browser on the iPhone or iPod Touch. These include news readers, Internet radio players, sports-information apps, and programs that let you blog or use Google (GOOG) or Facebook or MySpace.

There are business programs from Oracle (ORCL), Salesforce.com and Bloomberg. And there’s a clutch of Bible programs.

Some are simply goofy, like a virtual Star Wars-like lightsaber, a rotary-phone dialer and a virtual “stapler.” And several programs turn the phone into a flashlight for emergencies.

There are way too many interesting apps to review here, but these are some we liked, in no particular order.

AOL Radio

AIM: free

This version of AOL’s popular instant-messaging program does a competent job with text chat, though it can’t yet do video or audio chats, or transfer files. Because Apple isn’t allowing third-party programs to run constantly in the background, you can’t receive new messages in AIM while doing other things. This will supposedly be fixed by new Apple technology due later this year.

AOL Radio: free

While the iPhone and Touch contain full, terrific iPod capabilities, they don’t come with Internet radio players like this one. It can stream music and talk from a wide variety of online sources, including the Internet versions of broadcast radio stations.

Evernote: free

This is an elegant note-taker that has been on computers for a while. You can jot down text notes, store photos or dictate audio memos. And it synchronizes with your Evernote account on Windows or Mac PCs or the Web.

Instapaper: free

A handy way to store Web pages on your iPhone or Touch for reading when you’re offline. While on your computer, an Instapaper button added to the Web browser can snag Web pages for your personal Instapaper database. Then, when your iPhone or iPod Touch is online, it synchronizes with the Web-based Instapaper database. Later, when you’re offline, the pages are still there on the device, ready to read.

Travelocity TravelTools: free

You can use this to check flight schedules, gate assignments and security waiting times. While you can’t book flights through this app, there’s a button that automatically calls Travelocity’s toll-free booking line.

More Cowbell!: free

This is inspired by the Christopher Walken/Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live skit, which made the lowly cowbell a cult musical instrument. Whenever you tap the on-screen cowbell, it makes the recognizable, hollow sound heard in songs like “Down on the Corner,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. You can play along with any song you choose on the iPod Touch or iPhone.

Touch Tarot: $0.99

Touch Tarot

Touch Tarot is a digital tarot-card reading that takes place on your iPod Touch or iPhone, instead of at a table inside an incense-scented tent at the county fair. Phrasing above each card tells its general category, and below each card is a brief explanation of its meaning. For example, we turned over the Wheel of Fortune card in one card reading, and it said, “Advancement for good or ill. The unexpected may occur. Good fortune.”

iWant: free

The iWant app displays 12 black-and-white icons on your device’s screen, each representing a different category of something you might be looking for — including restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, drugstores, banks, car rentals and movies, among others. The device identifies your location, and each category can be tweaked to search by distance or highest rankings from Yelp, a user-written rating service.

Urbanspoon: free

Urbanspoon resembles a slot machine: From left to right, columns show the location, cuisine and cost of nearby restaurants. Instead of pulling a lever to start the slot machine, you simply shake your iPhone or iPod Touch whenever you want to find a restaurant. When it stops, you see the name of a restaurant near you and its classification in each category. (You can also specify what location, cuisine or cost you’re looking for.)

Air Hockey: $0.99

Air hockey works like the game you used to play in your best friend’s basement. You play against the computer, using a fingertip to push red or blue mallets that move a puck around the screen-turned-table and trying to sneak the puck past your computer opponent to score a goal.

MotionX Poker: $4.99

MotionX Poker

This is an addictive poker game, played with realistic, beautifully rendered dice instead of cards. The cool thing is that you roll the dice by simply shaking the iPhone or iPod Touch; convincing sound effects accompany each roll of the dice.

MLB.com At Bat: $4.99

There are lots of cellphone apps and services that can give you live updates on baseball games. What’s special about this one is that it adds video clips of key plays that you can view while the games are still in progress, using the full power of the gorgeous screen and video player on the iPhone and the Touch.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D: $9.99

This is a rollicking, fun iPhone and iPod Touch rendition of the classic video racing game, where you control your car by tilting the phone. The graphics are good, and the game-play is responsive.

Truphone: free

This is the first app for the iPhone that allows you to make cheap phone calls over the Internet instead of using the built-in cellphone capability, which can be much costlier, especially for international calls. In our tests, we had some trouble at first, but after we removed and re-installed the program, it worked fine. Calls to 40 countries are six cents a minute to landlines and 30 cents a minute to cellphones. The iPod Touch lacks a microphone, so this app works only on the iPhone.

Write to Walt and Katie at mossbergsolution@wsj.com