The great thing about getting an iPod Touch will be that from day one there will be a whole raft of applications ready to install on it courtesy of all the iPhone hackers out there. It is by no means a certainty but the belief is that there should be little if any difficulty applying the current iPhone applications and hacks to the iPod Touch due the underlying hardware and software on both devices being virtually identical. Obviously the iPhone apps that make use of the phone and camera functionality will be of no use to Touch owners but everything else should be fine.

I thought it would be interesting to see what apps might be of interest to iPod Touch owners and have started to compile a list of likely looking candidates.

Stumbler - This is a WiFi Scanner for the iPhone ala NetStumbler and will certainly be a useful utility for iPod owners looking for a free Hotspot to hook up to.

Dot.Tunes - Dot.Tunes is a Mac OSX ( or Windows ) application that allows you to stream music from your iTunes music library to a web browser ( in this case Safari on the iPhone/iPod ) via the Internet. This application, which is now Free to download, will make an ideal companion to iPhone and iPod owners who want access to more than 8 or 16Gb of music at any one time.

Meebo - Again not an App for the iPhone but a web based chat service that is compatible with all the major chat services such as AIM, MSN, GTalk, Yahoo etc and allows iPhone owners to chat online properly ( ie without resorting to SMS messaging ! )

There are already a raft of web sites dedicated to providing categorised lists of iPhone apps and it goes without saying that most of these will be rebranded as iPhone/iPod Touch sites come the 1st October. UkMac is currently compiling a list of the better iPhone sites and will post them with a short review very soon.

In the mean time what do you think the killer app for the iPhone will be ? If Bluetooth is built in to the Touch as is widely rumoured and it can be enabled and hacked the obvious next step would be a Skype client, though it does seem that this might be a step too close to the iPhones market so it may well be that Apple have taken measures to either remove Bluetooth from the iPod or at least permanently disabled it.

Personally I think the big market for iPod Touch apps will be in games. The form factor is right, the screen quality is second to none and with the right design it could support some really innovative and original games. If one or two killer games appear for the Touch it will instantly go to the top of most teenagers Xmas wish list this year, if it isn’t there already !

[tags]Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch[/tags]