Mobile applications discovery and sharing service provider Appsfire has just launched a new product called AppTrends, which essentially delivers near real-time rankings of iPhone apps based on the chatter on Twitter.

Rankings – currently limited to the top 20 apps on the website – are based on what Appsfire determines are noteworthy items in the App Store virtually in real-time. Appsfire crawls Twitter for links to iPhone apps, regardless of whether the iTunes URLs are shortened or not, and determines which apps are hot and which are not based on their popularity on the micro-sharing service.

To do so, Appsfire looks at the number of mentions of applications, all while filtering out bots, repeat tweets from the same users, updates from seemingly fake accounts and activity tweets such as leaderboard or points sharing. In addition, the startup looks at the influence of users talking about certain iPhone apps (based on Klout) to keep its rankings as relevant, clean and trustworthy as possible.

The company tells us it’s capable of also determining sentiment through automated analysis, but intentionally does not use that data for the rankings because it claims the large majority of tweets about apps are positive of tone, according to one month’s worth of research.

AppTrends gets updated on an hourly basis, and you can view evolution for the apps in the top list for the past hour, 12 hours or full day.

All in all, for power users this could be very useful, given how the rankings coming from Apple are relatively similar from day to day – with AppTrends users can spot up and coming apps more rapidly and this stay ahead of the curve when it comes to downloading and testing new apps. For non-power users, the added value is less clear.

If you’re an app developer or publisher, you can also use the service to track what’s being said on Twitter about your app – provided you made the top 20 list – in real-time via a sidebar.

Appsfire intends to go from a top 20 to a top 100 list in the near future, and also offer localized rankings per country/store. Also in the works: lists per vertical, access to rankings from the past and notification services for developers.

Coinciding with the launch of the new service, Appsfire has announced that a new investor joined the group of angels backing the company and brought an extension to its seed funding round. The new investor’s name is Lerer Ventures, the New York-based investment firm that has backed startups like (Twitter shareholder) Betaworks, GDGT and just recently, Seeing Interactive.

The icing on the cake: Appsfire has persuaded Jyri Engeström (formerly at Google after selling his startup Jaiku to the Internet giant) to join its board of advisors.

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Startup Bling Nation has landed a pretty major deal with PayPal, we’ve learned. Bling Nation’s payment systems addresses physical goods in merchant stores and will now allow consumers to use their payment chips to deduct funds from a PayPal account.

Here’s how Bling Nation works. The startup partners with banks, who then offer the consumers who use their services a Bling Nation and “Bank” branded chip that can be stuck onto any cell phone device. The chip will allow any user to make a payment directly out of their checking account similar to a debit payment. Bling Nation also partners with all of the local merchants in given town, to give them special “Bling Nation” credit card machines that will scan the chips.

The payment device will calculate the number of times a payee has made a transaction and as an added bonus, will automatically award the user with coupons, points or discounts, which the merchant determines. The device will read the chip and deduct the money for a purchase out of the payee’s bank account. Bling Nation even allows merchants to implement a security feature, in which upon purchase, the customer will have to enter a PIN code for larger transactions.

With the deal with PayPal, anyone will be use Bling Nation to link a PayPal account and receive tags that they can then stick to their cell phones. You may also be able to enroll during the checkout process as well. And Bling Nation in turn will equip merchants in given areas with payment devices that work with the chip.

This is a big win for Bling Nation’s system, which originally had ambitions of solely focusing on hyperlocal banks in small communities. The PayPal integration is currently being tested in Palo Alto and is steadily being rolled out nationally. Most of the work involves distributing the payments devices to local merchants.

Enrollment is limited for now, says co-founder Meyer Malka. Consumers can sign up for the service at participating merchants and eventually through the web. The deal also represents a way for consumers to start paying for physical goods, not just online purchases, with their PayPal accounts.

Bling Nation recently raised a whopping $20 million in funding to scale its system. Armed with a deal with PayPal, the startup is well on its way to making it into stores nationwide.

And PayPal is one step closer to fulfilling its futuristic vision for the payments platform, as shown in this video.

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

In early 2005, even after the launch of the Nintendo DS, Switched On critiqued pen computing, noting that it was too cumbersome and unnatural to become a mainstream input method. That column was validated by the launch of the iPhone, which banished the stylus to "blown it" status and popularized "finger-friendly" handset designs from all major smartphone OS developers.

Many have described the user interfaces of products such as the iPhone and Surface as ushering in the post-WIMP (windows-icon-mouse-pointer) era . Former Windows Magazine editor Mike Elgan has referred to the new paradigm as "MPG" (multitouch, physics, gestures) However, while these user interfaces feature streamlined designs and more direct manipulation, they still form a bridge with the graphical user interface. The main shift has been to more direct manipulation as the device processes more natural inputs.

The same can be said for Kinect . For a tidy sum and some untidiness, Kinect enables the kind of motion-sensing gameplay that has become the Wii's hallmark without having to strap the controller to various limbs (as with EA Active for Wii). In fact it eliminates the need to hold a controller entirely, just like the iPhone and iPad free users of mice and styluses. Beyond Soviet Russia, the input device uses you.

Continue reading Switched On: token gestures

Switched On: token gestures originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppleCare Protection Plan may cover certain types of damage, but it sure didn't stop up today's alleged leak -- if you pick an unlocked iPhone at the online Apple Store for Canada, Australia or the UK today and click the "Learn more" button on the AppleCare option, you'll be treated to this "iWork for iPhone" containing screen. Coupled with the "Open in Keynote" prompt we saw a few weeks back, we may picking up the crumbs of a real app here, even if productivity isn't the first thing that comes to mind when fondling that Retina Display.

iWork for iPhone revealed by AppleCare product description? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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