Angry Birds has to be one of the most popular mobile games at the moment with all of its releases topping the Apple iTunes App Store charts as soon as they are released.

Last week Rio the makers of Angry Birds released the latest installment of their popular mobile game, Angry Birds Rio.

Angry Birds Rio adds a whole new twist to the game, and they also upped the graphics a bit. With Angry Birds Rio, there are no more pigs, instead all the birds have been kidnapped and shipped to Rio headquarters and you have to free them. The new Angry Birds Rio takes place inside a warehouse and there are also new obstacles like hanging chains with fruit that can obstruct your shooting.

Up until now the only way Android users could get access to Angry Birds Rio was through the new Amazon App Store, but unfortunately this is only open to US users. Good news for international Android users is that Rio will be releasing Angry Birds Rio on the Android Market sometime this week. The game will be free on the Android Market and will be supported by Ads.

Flipboard the social magazine for the iPad has just released a new version in time for the release of the iPad 2.

The new Flipboard now features support for iPhone photo sharing service Instagram, allowing you to view and interact with your Instagram feed straight from you iPad.

In addition to Instagram support, Flipboard also added a new social search functionality, a first of its kind, that allows you to search across all your social networks and blogs straight from the Flipboard app.

Flipboard also added some speed enhancements to the app, with content now loading up twice as fast as before. They have also added a new reload button at the top of the app that allows you to reload your content when you want to.

Asked in an interview with Robert Scoble whether Flipboard are looking into other tablets, CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue responded that they are currently just focusing on the iPad and there are just so much stuff they would like to do before going to other platforms.

Go check out the new Flipboard app available in the Apple iTunes App Store.

Yes the owner of the browser that is every web developers greatest nightmare want to kill it, or at least bring its usage down to a mere 1% world wide.

The company has decided to move on and in an attempt to get people to upgrade their browsers, have introduced a new campaign called IE6 Countdown. The IE6 Countdown website states that “10 years ago a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye“.

The website’s aim is to encourage people to spread the word and help them upgrade their browsers to the latest standards compliance browsers available on the market, obviously they are pushing for users to upgrade to IE9 but I guess its still better than to deal with IE6.

The IE6 Countdown site display statistics about world wide IE6 usage that currently amounts to 12% of all browsers being used online. Out of that 12% world wide IE6 usage, South Africa contributes 8.4% of the total IE6 usages online.

For more information regarding the IE6 Countdown campaign visit http://ie6countdown.com and help spread the word, there are some tips to help you educate friends and acquaintances regarding not using IE6.

At an even last night in Mountain View, Google announced the long awaited Android Market website http://market.android.com

For long the only way Android users could explore the Android Market was through the Market app on their mobile phones, which was frustrating and compared to other App Stores, like the Apple App Store, a bit disappointing.

The new Android Market Website is set to change that by allowing Android users to browse through all the apps in the Android Market by category or introduce them to the latest top free and featured apps.

Android users also have the ability to search, something that was previously missing from the old App Marketplace. But for me the greatest feature has to be the auto app download to your phone, with a simple click on the Android Market Website you can request the selected application to download to your phone and install without you needing to touch your phone.

The Android Market Website is clean, fast and easy to browse its easy to see that this will be a hit amongst Android users.

What do you think about the new Android Market Website?

Photo sharing and effect apps seem to be the latest craze now a days, specially amongst iPhone users who all adore an app called Instagram, however us Android counterparts did not really have an app that offered the same functionality such as Instagram.

Thing are however about to change with the introduction of a new service called picplz. picplz offers not only Android users, but also iPhone users with a simple way to take photos and upload them in just a few clicks.

You can add great looking photo effects, captions, tag your location and check in all from one app and then share it with your Twitter or Facebook friends.

Another great feature of picplz is that you can set it up to automatically upload photos you take to Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare or even your Dropbox account.

Registration is done through either logging in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts, making it really easy to get started using the service.

Apple recently started a countdown to the 10 Billion’th App download and even launched a contest to give away a very generous $10000 iTunes Gift Voucher to the person who download the 10 Billion’th app.

By the end of January 2010 the Apple iTunes App store stood at 3 Billion downloaded Apps, and a year later, today, it has surpassed the 10 Billion download mark.

It just shows how popular Apps have become amongst smartphone users, and with Apple that has launched the Mac App Store recently figures might just double during the year to come.

Apple has released no word yet on who the person is who won the $10000 iTunes Gift Card Vouchers, but I sure hope its me! In the mean time, if you are based in South Africa and would like to get your hands on all the wonderful games, movies, series, music and apps the US iTunes store has to offer, check out this tutorial on opening a US iTunes Account and then check out where are the cheapest places to buy iTunes Gift Cards.

With out a doubt one can easily say that 2010 was the year of the mobile App, with just about everybody jumping on board and releasing their own iOS, Android and Blackberry Apps, but what changed the way we consume mobile media even more was the release of the Apple iPad. Suddenly app makers had so much more screen real-estate, power and features to work with.

Every year Apple releases its annual iTunes Rewind feature where it names all the apps that are worth owning, and good for them cause with more than 300 000 apps in the Apple iTunes App Store, choosing the right one can sometimes be a bit difficult.

Its no surprise that Flipboard has taken the number one spot as the Apple iPad App of the year, this is definitely my favorite App for the iPad too.

Now if I were to choose the iPad game of the year I would give it hands down to Angry Birds, Angry Birds is in almost all of the iOS top 10 App categories for this year and rightfully so. The addictive game where you catapult birds has been a huge success with just about every iOS user this year, and its fame does not stop at the iOS platform. Unfortunately iPad game of the year went to Osmos for iPad.

Top iPad Apps of 2010

Top 10 Free iPad Apps

1. iBooks
2. Pandora Radio
3. Netflix
4. Google Mobile App
5. Solitaire
6. Movies by Flixster–with Rotten Tomatoes
7. IMDb Movies & TV
8. Kindle
9. Google Earth
10. Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD

Top 10 Paid iPad Apps

1. Pages
2. GoodReader for iPad
3. Numbers
4. Angry Birds HD
5. Keynote
6. Glee Karaoke
7. WolframAlpha
8. Pinball HD
9. Friendly Plus for Facebook
10. Star Walk for iPad

What is your favorite iPad App of 2010?

The much anticipated iPhone OS 4.2 has finally arrived for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch bringing much anticipated features like multitasking support on the iPad.

iPhone and iPod Touch models have been enjoying multitasking since the release of iPhone OS 4.0 earlier this year, but the iPhone OS 4.2 update marks the first time that iPad users get to experience switching back and forth between applications that runs in the background.

Apart from multitasking support the new iPhone OS 4.2 update also brings an array of new features to the iPhone, iPad and iPod such as AirPlay, a way to easily stream media from your iOS devices to the Apple TV, and AirPrint that enables you to print wirelessly straight from your iOS device.

Its clear that the iPad benefits the most from this iOS 4.2 update since iPad users were stuck on iOS 3.2.2 since the release. Who know, maybe now that the iPad has got all that extra features it may just be more appealing to buy it as a Christmas gift.

Since WordPress launched its first mobile application for the iPhone in 2008, the popular blogging platform has also released apps for Blackberry and the Android platforms. Now two years in WordPress has officially reached 1 Million users making use of their mobile applications.

With cellphones becoming the new personal computer this is not just for huge landmark for WordPress but for blogging also. The WordPress mobile apps allows you to express yourself no matter where you are, saw something worth sharing with the world just snap a picture with your phone and blog it right there and then.

To celebrate this huge milestone WordPress has released an app for one of two new platforms in its scope, WordPress for Nokia is the latest platform to get the WordPress mobile app.

You can, of course, write and edit posts and pages, manage your comments queue and keep an eye on your blog’s statistics while on the move. If a seagull just snatched your hot dog and is making a run for it, you can snap a picture of the commotion or even record a video describing how it felt and how much you’re suing for. All from within the app.

There are two version available for WordPress for Nokia, one for new Symbian^3 devices like the Nokia N8 and then another version for older phones like the X6-00, C6-00, N97, and 5800 XpressMusic.

You can grab your copy of WordPress for Nokia here or from the Nokia OVI Store.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the planet, in fact it is not just popular for blogging but many developers use it for so much more than a blogging platform.

One nice thing about WordPress is the fact that there are mobile applications available for it, but up until now it was limited to Android, iPhone and Blackberry users.

A while ago I helped the guys over at RLabs set up a WordPress blog to enable the authors to blog from their mobile phones, unfortunately I had to go the email route and later on the MXit to WordPress application was born due to the fact that the authors was not holders of smartphones but mostly low end Nokia phones.

WordPress has now released the beta version of WordPress for Nokia. WordPress for Nokia allows you to post new posts and pages, edit existing content on your blog, manage comments, check stats and more on the go for your WordPress.com or self hosted WordPress 2.7 or higher blogs.

WordPress for Nokia is currently supported by S60 or Maemo powered Nokia devices and is Open Source allowing developers to be able to modify the application.

For more information or to download WordPress for Nokia head over to the OVI Store or visit the WordPress for Nokia page.