One year, 56,000 apps, and over a billion downloads later, Apple’s iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch celebrates its first birthday.

To mark the occasion, we’re taking our Picks of the Week, where a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful apps, and giant-sizing it to cover the whole year.

And what’s more — the editors from SPE network join us in picking their favorite iPhone and iPod touch apps of the year as well. Love. Up.

So what are our picks of the year? Find out after the break!

TiPb Staff Picks of the Year

Chad’s Pick: BeejiveIM

There are a lot of apps I could have chosen for this, but I think one of the biggest has to be Beejive. With the advent of Apple’s Push Notification service and the SPEED of the iPhone 3Gs, Multi-tasking Instant Messaging has become a thing of the past. This application is robust and very configurable. If you aren’t using software 3.0 you can even have Beejive send you emails when someone replies. You can also add custom backgrounds, colors and more. Oh, and it supports many services as well from AIM to Facebook. [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Chris’ Pick: MLB.com At Bat 2009

I mentioned this app in the podcast, and truthfully, this app gets used on almost a daily basis. For any baseball fan, it is a must have. Aside from a few missing features (like not listing league leaders, or more detailed stats pages) this app allows you to follow live audio broadcasts for any game, and even features live streaming video for a couple of games each day! For people who are not in the same market at their favorite team, this app is a must. Follow the game live, listen to it live, and watch video highlights. They have also begun offering a new feature - a quick (10 minutes or so) recap of the game with video highlights. [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Runners up: Flight Control [$0.99 - iTunes link], Texas Hold’em [$4.99 - iTunes link]

James’ Pick: Twittelator Pro

Twitter on the iPhone is like Peanut Butter and Jelly…they just work very well together. Twittelator Pro has all the features I need and them some. [ iTunes link]

Runners up: Peggle [$4.99 - iTunes link] and iTunes App Store App. [iTunes link]

Jeremy’s Pick: Pocket Tunes

Pocket Tunes gives you a ton of free radio and you have the ability to listen to everything Sirius XM has to offer including Howard Stern (with subscription) - unlike the watered down Sirius XM application. [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Runners up: BeejiveIM [$9.99 - iTunes link] and iTunes App Store App. [iTunes link]

Justin’s Pick: Shazam

One app I always have on my phone no matter what. It’s also led to me listening to music, tagging it, and buying it all on my iPhone! [Free - iTunes link]

Runner up: BeejiveIM [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Matt’s Pick: Brothers In Arms: Hour of Heroes

I know not everyone uses games, but this game is incredibly unique. I chose BIA mainly because I think it was the first application that showed what the iPhone was capable of processing. It also seemed to me that the controls are somewhat close to that of other FPS games. The uniques use of vocal narration accompanied by a significant amount of sound effects and multiple roles help make the user become fully immersed in the game. [$4.99 iTunes link]

Runners up: G-Map [$34.99 - iTunes link], MyWeather Mobile [$4.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: Google Mobile App

Your bring it up to your ear, it activates, you speak, and it gives you results based not only on what you want, but where you are. There are glitzier apps in the store to be sure, more popular no doubt, but this was the first app that made me think it was time for Star Trek to start being jealous of us. “Computer!” indeed. [Free - iTunes link]

Runners up: Apple Remote [Free - iTunes link], Twitterrific 1.0 [Has been replaced by v2.0 - $3.99 - iTunes link]

Special Birthday Bonus: SPE Editor Picks of the Year

AndroidCentral.com Casey Chan’s Pick: Yelp.

You can always find a great place to eat or see the coolest places around you with yelp. Especially when you’re hungry and wandering the streets of San Francisco after Macworld =) [Free - iTunes link]

CrackBerry.com Kevin Michaluk’s Pick: F1 Timing - 2009 Starter Pass

It’s effing awesome. I actually hold my iPhone in my hand while watching the races on TV. we need this for BlackBerry! [$2.99 - iTunes link]

NokiaExpert.com Matt Miller’s Pick: Evernote

Evernote gives me a global tool (across all my devices, Mac, and PC) to capture all my thoughts. The recognition is absolutely amazing and you can take photos of all those post-its and find everything later. [Free - iTunes link]

Runners up: Pandora [Free - iTunes link] and AT&T Navigator [Free + subscription - iTunes link]

PreCentral.net/SPE Editor-in-Chief Dieter Bohn’s Pick: BeejiveIM

Stupendous IM support on multiple platforms, push notifications through an elegant workaround before push notifications were official, and not afraid to charge what the app is actually worth. [$9.99 - iTunes link]

Runner up: iTunes App Store App. [iTunes link]

WMExperts.com Phil Nickinson’s Pick: Tweetie

Most used for me. [$2.99 - iTunes link] [Phil totally broke format and actually listed a half dozen #1s, including Paper Toss. Wheels on the Bus. Koi Pond. Scribble - Rene] [Gimme a break. I've got a 3-year-old! - Phil]

Runners up: Facebook [Free - iTunes link]. Pocket Tanks [Free - iTunes link]

TheiPhoneblog.com Rene Ritchie’s Pick: App Store

No, I don’t really get a second pick at the app store, but in summation — and on behalf of everyone here at TiPb and the smartphone app ecosystem as a whole — I’d like to wish the iTunes App Store an APPY ANNIVERSARY. May you continue to grow in quality as you do in quantity, and may this year bring more changes to make all of our experience, developer and user, better and brighter.

Hopefully we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your Pick of the Year?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb App Store Picks of the Year

For some, even the newly expanded 11 Home Screen, 180 (including 4 fixed dock) app slots under iPhone 3.0 isn’t enough. It’s not about need — it’s about want. Luckily, iPhone 3.0 offers another handy, theoretically unlimited way to access apps: Spotlight. According to David Pogue:

You can install UNLIMITED APPS! Only 180 show up as icons—but Spotlight can find and open all of them! (And yes, we tried. Stopped at 250!)

So, check off every single one of your 56,000 (maybe?!) apps and sync them over. Then, instead of swiping right through 11 pages only to find the excess unaccessible, swipe LEFT to go to the Spotlight Search screen (or just press the home button again to get there super quick).

Next, start typing the name of the app, hidden or otherwise, you want to access, and as soon as it appears in the results, tap it to launch.

Boom. App pack rat bliss.

Note: Spotlight also shows WebClip icons you’ve bookmarked from MobileSafari to your Home Screen, so you can go crazy with quick access to your favorite websites as well.

And for those who prefer not to fill up their iPhone with apps, remember you can delete an app when not using it and download it again via the on-board App Store app, without any duplicate charges, any time. Cloud management is a reality, and a second option.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 101: How to Access More Than 180 Apps or WebClips via Spotlight on iPhone 3.0