PLANET OF THE APPS: 16TH AUGUST 2011

It's a Tuesday, which means tech guide Stuart Dredge esq is back on the show for a rummage around in the apps world.

NEWS:

Angry Birds goes merchandise mad

There's now an Angry Birds cookbook available to pre-order called Bad Piggies' Egg Recipes. It went on sale last week, alongside a new range of Angry Birds baby items - swaddling blankets, baby burpies and sleeping sacks. The official site also has flip-flops, school satchels, with ties and socks to come.

Facebook is doing a messaging app

It's not in the UK yet, but last week Facebook launched its new big thing on mobile: Facebook Messaging. Using the App, you can 'ping' friends directly and see their reply on-screen - with group messaging too. It's competing against BBM on BlackBerry and Apple's soon-to-launch iMessage.

The X Factor app aims to get people virtually clapping

This year's X Factor is going to have its own iPhone app with a 'Tap to Clap' feature - you tap the screen to signify your appreciation of a performance, a judge's comment or a result, and then that gets put on Twitter and Facebook.

REVIEWS:

V Festival 2011

It's coming up this weekend, and the V Festival has its own app for iPhone, Android, Nokia and BlackBerry. It's standard stuff - news, stage times, site map. But there's also a feature to find your Facebook friends on-site - sign in to Facebook and it lets you know where they are.

Chill

This is a Facebook app rather than a mobile app, but it's very cool indeed. It's all about social VJing - you have your own virtual room that you invite friends to, and then you basically play YouTube videos to one another. It follows on from the success of Turntable.fm, which did the same thing just for music.

Say What?!

This iPhone music game focuses as much on the lyrics as the music. It's a Generation Game-style scrolling treadmill with little pictures that correspond to words in the song - you tap them in time. Kasabian, Calvin Harris are all in it.