Why should you put a dent in your wallet when there are so many great free applications out there for the iPhone and iPod Touch?  There are tons of games for the devices, but the vast majority of them cost money, so we’ve sorted through and located 12 totally free ones for you to throw on your gadgets and entertain yourself throughout the day.

Unlike with Firefox or WordPress addons, where we always tell you not to load everything we list, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with loading lots of iPhone or iPod Touch apps.  Just make sure you have enough memory for the programs and you can easily load all 12 of these on your device.

Originally this list included Tris, but with yesterday’s news that it would be removed we took it off the list.  It’s really too bad as it was a great port of the game.

Blanks - A simple word game that gives you a definition and four choices as to what the word may be.  Fun and educational all at once.

Cannon Challenge - Made by the Discovery Channel, Cannon Challenge is based on their show Future Weapons, and firing a Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) cannon at targets of varying distance.  Equal parts addicting and challenging.  As you can tell from the screenshot, the game is played entirely in the horizontal position.

Crash Landing - This game uses the iPhone and iPod Touch accelerometer to control the descent of a starship, aiming to land on the platform on the moon.  If you have as much luck as I did, you’ll see the message in the above screenshot a lot.

Cube Runner - You use the accelerometer to pilot a ship through a landscape littered with mysterious polygonal cubes that have appeared.  Though the ship lacks any sort of gun, it feels a bit like the classic Starfox game from the Super Nintendo system.  New maps can be designed and shared with friends.

Dactyl - A fast-paced game of bomb diffusing that helps you practice your dexterity and frazzles your nerves as bombs explode.

Fire Drop - A puzzle game that tries to test your speed and your willingness to see how far you can push your luck.  The more cauldrons you burn at once, the higher the score, but make sure you don’t fill the entire screen!

Fit2Vote - Politics come to iPhone gaming with Fit2Vote.  You will be asked to name who said the quote, Obama or McCain, and tilt your phone to the left for the Democrat and to the right for the Republican.  Once you have gotten 50 correct, you are deemed “Fit2Vote.”

Frotz - An interface for playing text-based adventure games that harken back to games like Zork, Bard’s Tale and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy from the 1980’s.

Othello - Also known by the name “Reversi” on just about every Windows computer sold for years, it is the familiar game played on an 8 X 8 grid with the object of controlling the majority of the board at the end of the game.

SimStapler - Why risk dangerous stapler injuries by using a real stapler?  SimStapler provides you with all the fun and excitement of real stapling in a fun, safe, manner.  App has an old school Mac look, and with it being a red Swingline stapler, you can feel free to make Office Space jokes.

Tap Tap Revenge - The perfect free game for all of the Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution fans who need a fix whenever they are away from home.  A bit difficult to play on the iPod Touch as it lacks an external speaker, but works fine with headphones.

Warcraft Characters - Not so much a game in and of itself, but a way for you to look up World of Warcraft characters on the go and see their stats, skills and equipment no matter where you are.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Knibble Offers Free Games for iPhoneBejeweled Optimized for the iPhoneGreystripe iPhone 3G API Lets Game Developers Earn Ad RevenueStill No iPhone? Adopt a Virtual One.iPhone Opening to Third-Party Apps; Not Other NetworksMundu Optimizes Multi-Client Chat Tool for the iPhoneGreystripe Offers Hands-On Mobile Games for Free

Source:Mashable!

Lifestreaming service FriendFeed has launched a variety of widgets (available here) for showing off your activities on your own blog or website. The two most significant widgets are the Badge, which shows off all of the different services you’ve synced with the site, and the Feed Widget, which displays your most recent activities.

Personally I’m a big fan of the Badge concept (which has been tried previously by others), as it should make it super easy for people to connect with me on the various services I frequent, minus Facebook of course (unfortunately, it seems to break when I embed it here, but you can see it on the right or add me on friendfeed here).

There’s also a widget for showing your most recent status update (via Twitter or an alternative status service), a chiclet that simply links to your profile, and a “Share on FriendFeed” link you can use to encourage your readers to distribute your content on the aggregator.

While you could already do some of this on your own by using the RSS feeds that FriendFeed provides, the widgets are simply copy and paste embed code. If they prove popular, it will certainly get FriendFeed in front of a lot more eyeballs, giving the site an opportunity to gain all of those mainstream users that tech bloggers love to wax poetic about. For Facebook users, Friendfeed already has an application for showing off your activities, but its growth may be inhibited by the fact that Facebook now offers a comparable set of features.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Mashable Rocks: Connect with us on FriendFeedFriendFeed Launches SearchFriendFeed Recommendations? Who Are You Likely to Like?FriendFeed Gets $5M, Launches to the PublicFormer Googlers Team Up to Launch FriendFeedFriendFeed Brings Twitter BackFriendFeed Launches Rooms. Moving Towards Semantic Web?

Regator, the feed reader and blog search engine that has been in private beta for about a month now, is launching its public beta, which a lot of people can be happy about. Mashable’s Paul Glazowski sang Regator’s praises with his review of its private beta early last month, and after trying out Regator for myself, I can easily see why.

Straddling the search engine and feed reader demographics, Regator attacks the simple concept of helping you find great Web content with one fatal swoop, presenting a tool that’s very attractive to both the average Web surfer and the early adopter crowd. Regator’s highly customizable capabilities for content you find through the site or add yourself means that it presents itself as a customizable feed reader for any type of user with a wide array of interests.

As a starting point for someone that may be entirely new to the blogosphere or simply doesn’t know where to start for a new topic of interest, Regator’s search and recommendation engine works quite well. The user interface is also very easy to use and makes customization of content while surfing simple as well.

With additional exporting options via RSS for things like your Favorite blogs you’ve saved on Regator or a given keyword, you’re able to leverage Regator’s service even if you’re not on its site. I imagine even more direct exporting options will be provided some time in the future, as Regator already offers Twitter, Facebook and email sharing options for content featured on its site. With more integrated direct export options Regator will be able to offer even more customization on a cross-network basis. Lastly, as a collaborative or group tool for shared content within a team or organization, Regator could do a great deal of growth in this direction if it ever sees fit, for both consumer and business applications.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Regator Simplifies Media Consumption [Invites]Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good EnoughStitcher Prepares To Go Public With Its BetaGoogle’s Urchin Software Released As Public BetaFlock Public Beta Now LivePownce To Launch Public APIMoFuse’s Public Beta Launches this Week

Source:Mashable!

Video search and aggregation tool Magnify has an update today, which is something we haven’t seen explicitly from the company in a while–it’s been busy launching completely new features and spin-off services.

There are two major prongs to Magnify’s release today: one addresses the need for additional video sources that it aggregates from, and the other concerns the search capabilities of its service. With the added support for video sites including MySpace, Hulu, Vimeo, College Humor, Howcast and MTV Overdrive, Magnify is broadening the Web content from which it pulls, so that you can have a bigger pool in which to cast your net.

This particular upgrade seems like a no-brainer, but it also reminds us that there’s a growing number of sites where video content can be found, and that there’s an added value in supporting more than just YouTube and a handful of other video-sharing sites for its aggregation purposes.

And as expected, Magnify has tweaked its search tools, which goes hand in hand with the added support for the handful of new video services. Magnify has more than doubled the speed of its Automatic Video Discovery service, which means you’ll be able to search all of its supported sites very quickly. It also allows Magnify to reportedly increase its potential for new videos added, from 100,000 daily to 1 million per week.

Speed isn’t the only factor that Magnify improved for its search capabilities. Its search has been enhanced with new channel options allowing users to search by other users, date, and review scores. Search results can then be exported via RSS as well.

What’s particularly beneficial to Magnify’s upgrades is the fact that the company has spent so much time building out its feature set, to include certain webcam support, social network features, and an integrated search tool for bloggers. Given Magnify’s growing platform, the addition of new sites, improved search and filter and sharing capabilities means that Magnify already has an established set of services that will immediately be improved as a result of this new roll-out, affecting its entire user base, regardless of the type of user that employs a certain Magnify service.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Magnify Yourself with Network’s Upcoming Webcam ToolsMagnify Releases Ad Share Platform & New FeaturesRemember 9/11: A Tribute from Magnify.Magnify’s Custom Options Increase for Video-Sharing ChannelsMagnify.net Reports Big Growth, Eyes the Upper Tier of Video SitesMagnify’s Public Launch Of Webcam Vlogging NetworkMagnify.net Growing Fast with 1.2M Videos