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The original Buddha Machine is a $23 transistor radio-size audio player that offers tranquil loops of eastern chants and songs. Now the Buddha Machine has made the jump to the iPhone with this less expensive version.

As wonderfully odd as the original player is, there's even more to love with this app. For one, you can view the player in any of the seven original colors. Just give your iPhone a shake to change the look. The nine included music loops are in high-res audio, so they sound even better. Plus, you'll always have it with you when you need a little Zen.

We love the calm that this app brings, and have it on whenever we're working or resting. Download the Buddha Machine ($3.99, available here) and bring some serenity to your busy life.

The new year is a great time for new goals, and if you'd like to lose a few pounds you'll love this free food guide. This is by far the most helpful diet guide we've seen.

Start by creating a daily calorie budget that will help you shed the weight you want to lose. Then, each time you eat you record your meals. You can also input your exercise routines, so that you can see how many calories you're burning and understand how that helps your progress.

This is a great app for anyone trying to eat healthy, but we think it's a godsend for people who don't understand the basics. Lose It! (available here) gives you a simple way to track your calories so that you understand how to budget meals, and breaks down what you're eating so that you understand how fats, carbs, and proteins make up your foods.

If you think keeping track of your calories has to be a chore, download this app and find out how simple it can be.

We couldn't resist the temptation to look back on the best apps of the year (or half-year, since the App Store hasn't been around that long), but we wanted to give you something you could use. These aren't the flashiest or most novel apps that came out; instead, these are the ten we find ourselves using the most.

New iPhone owners, take note: these are the ten workhorses we couldn't live without.

AP Mobile News Network (free, available here): We love to read news on the go, and this app offers quick headlines. It's much faster than the New York Times news app, and delivers even more results.

Camera Bag ($2.99, available here): Not only is this photo app fun to use, but it lets you make artistic creations in seconds. We like the Helga filter the best. It give a moody, washed-out look to any setting. 

Wi-Fi for AT&T ($.99, available here): Going online at an AT&T hotspot, such as those found in Starbucks, is a snap with this app. It takes the hassle out of logging on.

Google Mobile App (free, available here): Start your searches here. Google helps you find results quickly, and even includes an audio search so that you don't have to type.

Listomni Lists ($6.99, available here): The best list-making app on the iPhone, Listomni is incredibly helpful for remembering tasks you need to do or items you need to buy.

Midomi (free, available here): What's that song? Midomi will tell you. Use it to identify a song on the radio or input lyrics from a song running through your head.

Pandora (free, available here): When we want to hear streaming music, we find ourselves turning to Pandora every time. This app lets you create custom stations, so that you can hear the songs you like best.

Remote (free, available here): Remote was the missing link in our home stereo system. Now we can doze on the couch while easily controlling the music playing on our computer.

Shovel (free, available here): Stay in touch with what's getting dug on Digg.com with Shovel, an excellent reader for the site. It lets you view all the comments on a post, and is much more stable since its recent update.

Where (free, available here): There are many GPS-enabled apps for the iPhone, but Where is our favorite. We use it to find nearby gas stations, events, movies, and Starbucks locations.

Apple has been calling the iPhone a gaming platform lately, and a few more apps like I Love Katamari ($7.99, available here) could make believers out of us.

This is an iPhone version of a hugely popular bizarre PlayStation game from Japan. You play as a small prince, son of the King of All Cosmos, whose job it is to roll a small sticky ball (a katamari) around so that things will attach to it. As the ball grows, you can collect larger and larger items.

You play by tilting the iPhone in any direction, and the game is surprisingly responsive. Choose from one of four mode: story mode (roll up requested items), time attack mode (roll up as much as possible in the time limit), exact size challenge mode (get your ball to match a given size), and eternal mode (work at your own pace, without any limits).

We love the silliness of the game, and dig the pop Japanese score that goes with it. While it's one of the oddest premises ever for a video game, I Love Katamari is a crazy good time.

If $9.99 for Zagat to Go sounds like $10 too much to you, download this free alternative, instead. Mobile by Citysearch offers tons of local listings for restaurants, hotels, bars, spas, and stores. Nearly every listing gets a star rating (at voted by users) and many have reviews.

If you don't want a list view, Citysearch will also map out its results. There's also a search feature that lets you look for a particular name or term, or search in a different location.

We like the convenience and price of this app, but we'd also like the developers to add a few improvements.

As is, Citysearch will find the 10 places nearest you for any category, but there's no way to get additional results if you don't like those 10. There's also no way to filter restaurants by cuisine, which seems like a huge oversight.

Finally, we wish the summary pages showed which listings have user reviews. You need to select an listing to see if anyone has written a comment for that location.Since the user comments are fun to read, we'd like to be able to find them easier.

Since the iPhone doesn't have a to-do list of its own (pretty please, Apple?), we've been on the lookout for a feature-rich app that does the job. The best we've found is Listomni Lists ($6.99, available here). This app stores several to-do lists for different categories, such as groceries, general to-dos, gifts to buy, music to buy, and movies to see.

You're free to make up your own lists, as needed. For example, we made one called Hardware, because we can never remember what we need to buy at the hardware store.

When you've finished with an item on one of your lists, you can tap to check it off. That's essential—the buzz that list addicts feel when we check off an item is what keeps us going. The app also includes a lock, in case you want to keep your lists private. The only thing we could want is a desktop app that syncs with it.

This is the best list app we've found so far, but if you have a different favorite let us know in the comments.

The iPhone is a bargain-hunter's delight, and nothing makes saving money easier that Fresh Deals, available here. This app shows you the best sales going from a variety of savvy shopping sites. You can view all the deals on one page, or select the category you want to see, such as Baby, Computer, or Electronics.

The interface can be a little tricky, so let us show you around:

Even though every page shows only four products, you can scroll the line of pictures to the left to see more deals in that category. It took us a while to figure that out. Not every deal has a picture, and we'd like to see that fixed. Below the line of pictures you'll see a description of the highlighted deal, and below that is a bar that shows how new or old the deal is.

When you've found something that interests you, you can e-mail it to yourself or to someone who you think would be interested. We think it's a great all-in-one tool for finding the Internet's biggest bargains.

We're new to "tower defense" games, but that hasn't stopped us from loving this well-created strategy game. In Tap Defense (available here), creatures from Hell are invading Heaven, and you need to fight them off. You do this by building towers that have unique offensive abilities. You earn points after conquering each wave of attackers, which you use to build more towers or reinforce the ones you have. It's simple and completely addicting.

Zuma was one of our favorite games on the classic iPod, and we've been disappointed that there's no iPhone version. Now our wait has been rewarded with Blackbeard's Assault ($.99, available here), which takes the same premise and gives it a pirate flair. Arrgh!

In this fast action game, trails of colored balls advance on you, and you remove them from the board by shooting other balls from your canon. We like that there are multiple canons on each screen, so that we can select the one that has the best shot. When the advancing balls get too close, there are power-up shots you can use to mow them down.

This game has 20 different levels and 3 difficulty modes. It automatically saves your progress, so if you need to switch out to take a call or duck the boss, you can finish your game later.

Thank Jobs an app like this finally came along. We love that AT&T offers free hotspot access for iPhone customers, but we loathe the tedious sign in procedure, which requires you to visit a Web site, enter your phone number, receive a text message, and then click on a link in order to get the free time.

That bother is over now that we have Easy WiFi for AT&T, available here. This app makes signing in to AT&T hotspots a one-step operation. You'll need to create an account on it first, doing so when you have an open WiFi connection. After that, you can simply tap the app to get access to AT&T hotspots. In our testing, it sometimes took tens of seconds to work and sometimes worked almost instantly, but it always worked.