Canabalt - the most beautiful game in the App Store?

It started life as a free online Flash game, but Canabalt has now been lovingly ported to the iPhone by Semi Secret Software. It's really about the simplest game you will ever play - there is only one control: JUMP! - and it's entirely in black-and-white, but Canabalt manages to pack more tension and adrenalin in than any other iPhone game I have seen.

It's essentially a 2D side-scroller where you hurtle ever faster across the city skyline, barely managing to leap from building to building, and in the distance... and in the distance... well, I don't know what is going on in the distance, except that it is creepy as hell, and I don't blame you for running. One false move, one misstep, and you die. It's as simple as that.

Every aspect of this game is near-perfect... the speed, the control, the graphic design, the music, leaderboards, the instant replayability, the concept. It is all done with immense style. At $3, this absolutely unique game isn't the cheapest thing in the App Store, but it is, for my money, the most beautiful. An essential purchase.

Audiomark - audiobook and podcast bookmarking

It's a sad fact that iPhone and iTunes have a long-standing bug that affects all lovers of podcasts and audiobooks. The problem happens when you sync your phone with iTunes... the iPhone loses its place in all of your books and podcasts. VERY frustrating if you are somewhere in the middle of a 30-hour audiobook and are forced to fast-forward trying to figure out where you were.

There have been a few apps created that attempt to get around this problem, and I've tried them all, but there is one stand-out in terms of simplicity... AudioMark by Symfi. It's trivially easy to use. You have the choice to create your own annotated bookmarks (in case there's some particular point in a book that you want to be able to return to), or you can just use the automatically created "history" that the app creates as you listen to a book. In short, every time you pause playback while AudioMark is open, it saves your location. Then, whenever you want, you can click on the History tab and you will see all of the places you have paused in every book you have listened to, going back in time. Tap any item in the history, and AudioMark will instantly begin playback at that point.

It's very simple, no-frills stuff. As a bonus, there's a button to jump back 30 seconds, for those times when your attention has wandered.

A great little app for 99c, that will save you a great deal of frustration.