As some of you may have noticed, we ‘ve added a link to our top ‘nav bar ‘ several weeks back, titled ‘AppSearch ‘.

I think this a pretty cool new feature “ and I ‘m very glad the good folks at AppStoreHQ approached us and offered to provide this for our readers.

Hit the jump for a little detail on what this new feature does and why I think it ‘s cool

So once you click that AppSearch link in the nav bar, you ‘re taken to a JAiB badged area of the AppStoreHQ site.  As the link name would suggest, from there it is easy to search for and learn more about iPhone apps, and all the while stay within our site as well “ with the ability to click any of the top nav bar links to jump back to our home page, reviews section, tips & tricks area, and so on.

Right from the first page under AppSearch, you can browse apps by App Store categories, look over a few hot apps, or search for any app you ‘re interested in.

Once you ‘ve selected an individual app, you get presented with a wealth of information “ including the app ‘s price, release date, publisher, plus screenshots and description.  The best part though is that you also get a compiled set of reviews from specialist sites around the web, as well as user reviews.

So, for instance, if you looked for the cool Aardvark Mobile social Q&A app, you ‘d see that our own review, by Josh Gard, is one of the first listed.

And you don ‘t just have to take our word on things of course “ there are plenty of other review sources as well

You can also buy an app straight from its page within the AppSearch area “ and it will use the affiliate links for AppStoreHQ to take you over to the App Store.

There are still some teething pains with this, as is to be expected when implementing new functionality.  For instance,we are sometimes seeing it take a good few days before one of our reviews (or those of other sites) hit the description page for an app.  We ‘re working with the guys at AppStoreHQ on this, and it ‘s being continually improved.

Here is a little more about who AppStoreHQ are “ and why we ‘re happy to be collaborating with them:

AppStoreHQ is an independent web-based search and discovery platform
for iPhone apps. The company was just named Best Services Startup at
MobileBeat 2009, and was recently featured in the New York Times’
Gadgetwise blog.

Like Techmeme in news or The Hype Machine in music, AppStoreHQ
provides an authoritative and objective view of the most important
mobile applications by aggregating and analyzing the commentary of the
web ‘s most influential voices on the topic.

AppStoreHQ also offers a comprehensive directory of mobile application
developers, including their current portfolio of published
applications and the category(ies) of projects they specialize in.

I think the new AppSearch feature should prove quite useful “ a good resource for app reviews and information.  I hope some of you will end up agreeeing, and that you ‘ll let us know what you think of it even if you don ‘t.

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