For non-musicians unfamiliar with the ways music is made today, here’s a clue: It’s no longer necessary to play an instrument to create a musical composition. Another option it to piece together snippets of pre-recorded digital audio. This technique underlies a lot of what modern DJs and producers do. Sound Trends brings apps to iOS devices that allow you to do this kind of thing on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Its iPad effort is the $15 Looptastic HD, and true to its name, it’s a fairly “tastic” effort, allowing you to very easily piece together and mix tracks from a handful of audio loops.

With a title like "SlasherDerby," you'd probably expect a game involving a combination of bladed weapons and rundown cars. But instead of being a strange Mad Max ripoff, SlasherDerby, by Centerus, is a rather straightforward and unexciting boxing title.

If you’ve been paying a lot of attention to Danielle, Earl, and Fiona lately— no, you won’t find pics of them on TMZ.com—then a hurricane-tracking app, built specifically for your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, may help feed your curiosity about storms. A variety of inexpensive apps are available for both devices. Of the handful reviewed here, one is a universal app, and two have separate—but nearly identical—versions for the iPhone and the iPad.

The iPhone to-do app HoneyDo takes its name from a familiar phrase most of us hear on Saturday afternoons while working around the house: “Honey, can you do…” Offered by High Five Labs, HoneyDo stands out from an already crowded field of to-do apps because of its sharing capabilities. The $5 app lets couples, families, and groups share to-dos.

Koduco Game’s PongVaders: Episode 1 for the iPad is a cross between two classic games: Pong and Space Invaders. Instead of dueling it out on a simulated tennis court or playing as a land-based tank, however, you and a friend battle in space. Aliens have taken over the center of your screen and are intent on destroying Earth. Using your square, tennis-like paddles, you and a partner (the game is multiplayer only) must work together to deflect any missiles the aliens throw at our beloved world.

City Interactive’s Chronicles of Mystery for the iPhone or iPod Touch is a hidden picture mystery game that is riddled with software bugs, a complicated plot, dull character dialogue and repetitive gameplay.

Think of Appigo’s Corkulous as a corkboard for your iPad. Corkulous tries to make it easy to organize thoughts for everything from remodeling a room to planning a birthday or coming vacation—or practically anything else you’d like to brainstorm.

Hack. Slash. Brawl. Whatever you call it, the object in beat-em-ups is the same: defeat your enemies. In Knight's Rush, you embark on a medieval fantasy adventure chock full of enemies just looking for a good smiting.

Whether you need the free Audible app for your iPhone or iPod touch boils down to a simple question: Do you just want to listen to your audiobooks? Or do you want to engage them?

RSS aggregators—apps that periodically collect new content from any Website that provides an RSS feed—are a great way to keep up with updates to your favorite blogs and news sites. But most of them aren’t likely to win any beauty contests. Their interfaces tend toward drab, utilitarian lists of headlines that are a far cry from the shiny presentation to which iPad users are accustomed.