Charlottesville, Virginia – Travis Allen, founder of iSchool Initiative and its president and CEO, knew the second hardest thing to creating a new company was successfully funding that company. The current economic situation made the dependence on donations an uncertain proposition, yet as a non-profit, iSchool Initiative must find ways to fund operations. Even if difficult to do, the need for an education-focused mobile app community is too much to ignore.

Luxembourg, Europe – Houdah Software today is pleased to announce the release of ACTGratuity 2.1, its full-featured tip calculator for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. ACTGratuity was first released the day the iTunes AppStore opened its doors. ACTGratuity aims to impress with its feature set, ease of use and undeniable cuteness.

Burolo, Italy – Mac applications publisher Hyperbolic Software today is pleased to announce the release of Tidy Up! 2.2.0, the latest version of the company’s award-winning duplicate finder and disk tidying utility. Continues the discount of the 23%, buy it now and pay only $30 instead of $39.

Central, Hong Kong – Cocoamug Software, developers and publishers of great Mac software, today is pleased to announced the latest release of CosmoPod. CosmoPod 4.2.1 is an intuitive Safari extension that lets you download Flash videos from all popular websites like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc. CosmoPod can automatically convert downloaded files to an Apple device friendly format, tag them and add them to iTunes so it’s all there ready format your next sync. Best of all, it’s one-click simple!

Chandler, Arizona – MF Software today is proud to introduce Top Rated Apps (Free), the free version of the popular productivity title for the iPhone and iPod touch. It allows you to browse only the highest-rated apps on the iTunes App Store (instead of having to sort through many low-rated apps), and store favorites for future purchase/reference. It also lets you browse apps offline, unlike the iTunes App Store – perfect if you have an iPod touch or are on an airplane.

New York, NY – Yes, there’s money to be made in the App Store and everyone wants in on the action. More than 40 million iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded more than 1 billion apps through Apple’s iTunes App Store. With stats like that, it’s easier than ever to make money in the App Store, right? Think again.

Mansfield, MA – Weiner Family Studios today announced they are donating all proceeds from its well-received iPhone application, “A Family Matters” ™ to a Chile relief fund this week.

According to the developer, Scott Weiner, “A few weeks back we raised funds for Haiti and it was a success. Now we hope to do the same for Chile. What has happened their is terrible and we want to dour small part to help.”

Brooklyn, New York – Opetopic has just reduced the price and released a huge update for IsoWords, the first word search game on a three dimensional cube! While IsoWords pays homage to many of the basic principles of the word search genre, Opetopic has made it their big, hairy, audacious goal to quite literally add some dimensions of their own (pun intended!). With additions like global leaderboards, 3 local multiplayer modes, and daily challenges, Opetopic is celebrating the update by bringing the price of IsoWords to $0.99 for a limited time on the iTunes App Store!

Philippsburg, Germany – Independent software developer Christian Kienle today announced Ebbinghaus 3.2 for Mac OS X. Ebbinghaus is an easy-to-use flash card application with a beautiful iTunes-like user interface. Organize your cards in decks, folders and smart decks. When selecting a deck, its cards will be shown in a table. Each card has a progress indicator so that you see your overall performance at a glance. Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist, who invented the learning curve.

Burnaby, Canada – Stinger Games today is proud to announce the release of Stinger Table Hockey 1.1 now out on the iTunes App Store. A full 3D recreation of table hockey, also known as bubble hockey and rod hockey. Developed independently by Stinger Games for the Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch. Featuring fantastic 3D graphics combined with Bullet Physics to provide a realistic and fun game of table hockey.

Seattle, WA – Cartoonist Jeff Swenson has teamed up with Unicorn Multimedia to release “Sex and Violence Cartoons”, a gratuitous collection of cartoons too outrageous for newspaper outlets. It’s the perfect boredom-killer app, only be careful where you read it. You may find yourself in trouble for laughing, gasping or making a face in front of your teacher, or worse yet–your boss!

Chicago, Illinois – Renkara Media Group has announced the release of AccelaStudy Hebrew for iPhone and iPod touch. With the addition of Hebrew, AccelaStudy is now available in 18 languages. Using AccelaStudy’s award-winning language study tools, students will quickly master Hebrew vocabulary and pronunciation with ease.

Features of AccelaStudy Hebrew include:

* A comprehensive 2,300 word vocabulary list divided into more than 60 subject areas, including travel, food, occupational, health and body, and even advanced topics such as economics, investment banking, and finance.

London, United Kingdom – Herp Games today is pleased to announce the launch of Doodle Wars: Ship vs. Stick 1.0, a finger flicking action packed shooter game in a cartoon style made exclusively for iPhone and iPod touch. Doodle Wars: Ship vs. Stick is the fifth Herp Games title for the iPhone and is now available for download at Apple’s iTunes App Store.

Los Angeles, CA – PixelMags is the leading portal for worldwide mobile digital magazine distribution. Publications Powered by PixelMags release as Top 25 Paid Book Apps all over the world. Consumers are paying for quality content and convenience using PixelMags’ In App Purchasing Feature to purchase new issues, back issues and subscriptions of their favorite magazines through the iTunes Store.

San Francisco, CA – In honor of the 2009 Best App Ever Awards announcement, the world’s largest iPhone app promo code contest to give away over 1,000 copies of iPhone applications and games has been launched. The contest, which is open to all users with US iTunes accounts, has launched to great interest from users and developers.