App Picks of the Week: Kinetik, Gowalla, Fav.tv

Every week, iDB picks interesting iPhone and iPad apps to show you. While we tend to choose apps from the App Store, we occasionally throw in a web or jailbreak app as well.

This week, we’ve got two awesome App Store apps and one web app for you to check out. We hope you enjoy this week’s picks!

Kinetik

Kinetik is an interesting approach to a social network for your favorite App Store apps. With Kinetik, you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest apps, see recommendations from your friends, and see “trending” apps — much like the App Store’s “What’s Hot” section.

The design of Kinetik is fantastic, and the developers really have a neat idea going with the almost Instagram-ish approach to an app-based social network. The app lets you integrate with Twitter and Facebook to share your discoveries with friends on other social networks, too.

After only using the app for a little while, I’ve already found several cool apps via Kinetik. This app is probably the best app sharing platform I’ve seen on the iPhone, and it’s available for free in the App Store. Give it a try.

Gowalla

Many of you may have already heard of the popular check-in service called Gowalla, but what you may not know is that the app received a major update last week. Gowalla 4 for iPhone includes a completely “re-imagined” interface with local travel guides and improved sharing features.

With version 4.0, Gowalla has become more than just a check-in service. The app is truly a travel companion now. With comprehensive, beautiful travel guides for 60 major US cities off the bat, Gowalla has a good thing going in the travel department.

You can also “love” a place you visit on Gowalla to share your favorite places with people that follow you on the social network. The experience of seeing places that others have visited around you has also been improved.

Gowalla is a gorgeous app that’s only been made better with version 4.0. You can download the app for free in the App Store. I wonder if people will continue to heavily use foursquare for check-ins instead of Gowalla. Only time will tell.

Fav.tv

Fav.tv is a beautiful web app for iOS that lets you browse and keep track of your favorite TV shows. The Fall TV season is upon us, and avid watchers can easily lose track of their favorite show schedules and announcements without an app like Fav.tv.

The web app also blends in social networking aspects to make your TV viewing experience better. Like Facebook, you can become friends with other Fav.tv users and share status updates about what you’re watching. You can even send messages back and forth between friends on the network from the web app. You can see what others are watching and follow shows to stay on top of episode releases.

For a web app, Fav.tv is incredibly full-featured. Smoking Apples notes that you can set up reminders to be sent to you via SMS or email. The app has a cool way of displaying notifications on the left of the main screen. The “My Shows” page shows you what episodes are airing on a given day. There’s also a calendar view to see your TV schedule for the month.

My recommendation is to visit Fav.tv on your desktop computer to set up your profile, and then use the iOS interface as a companion app. Add it to your home screen, and you’ll be good to go.

Update: Fav.tv informed us that it also has a free app in the App Store. So check that out, too.

That’s it for this week’s app picks! Let us know what you think of these apps in the comments below.