Instagram is a great little free app that lets you take pictures (or use photos already in your camera roll), apply fun filters that overlay things like Polaroid-esque 70s coloring or the distinct light leaks of a Lomo camera, and post them online. You can choose only to share in the Instagram app, or you can have it cross-post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or other social media services.

I loved the app right away but, like many apps I download, I used it only sporadically. That all changed when Shawn and I took a trip to Paris back in February. This was the trip of a lifetime for me–I had been dreaming of going to Paris for over half of my life, and even though we were only there for four days I wanted to capture every heart-fluttering moment I could.

My iPhone 4′s camera was the BEST on this trip–my trusty Canon point and shoot just wasn’t good in low-light environments like the Louvre where I couldn’t use the flash, and compared to the iPhone camera it felt slow and annoying to use. My iPhone, coupled with the Mophie Juice Pack Plus to make sure I didn’t run out of juice during long days away from the hotel, allowed me to snap away to my heart’s content. Instagram allowed me to apply filters that made the photos feel even more special, then easily post them to my social media channels at the end of the day via the hotel’s wireless to share with family and friends. It was such a fantastic way to share parts of our trip and the pictures turned my amateur photography into something absolutely beautiful. I even noticed that I was taking more care to frame up shots and capture interesting things that would look awesome once I “Instagram-ed” them.

Once I came back from our vacation, I had to dive right in to preparing for a huge work trip and didn’t get around to uploading the photos from my iPhone and Canon onto our Mac Mini until this weekend. However, I kept looking longingly through my Instagram stream at some of my beautiful Paris memories. I wanted to get them printed but I hadn’t had time to go through the process of pulling them off the iPhone, uploading them to Flickr and ordering prints. Plus, I wasn’t sure if any of the online services offered square prints.

Then I saw a great new app called PostalPix. It lets you take your Instagram, Hipstamatic or other digital photos on your iPhone, easily upload them and order prints. Bonus? They just started offering 4″ x 4″ prints! I quickly grabbed a 20% off code I found online and ordered a handful of my favorite pictures from my camera roll. They arrived this weekend and they look fantastic! I can’t wait to find some square frames, or do a custom mat for a triptych of Paris pictures.

If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to get prints from your iPhone camera roll, download PostalPix today! It’s free and easy to use, which are two of my favorite things. And if you’d like to add me as a friend on Instagram, you can find me there as jfritsche.

After that I tried Twittelator, Twinkle and TwitterFon, but none of them really did what I wanted them to do.  Twittelator flat out never worked on the iPhone no matter how many times I tried it.  The other two just didn’t really feel like they offered anything more than Twitteriffic did.

I hesitated on buying a Twitter app when Twitteriffic was perfectly functional and for the very reasonable price of free, but I decided that as much as I use my iPhone, I needed a more robust app to do my Twittering and Twitter reading.  I surfed around for a bit and did some custom searches, and decided that I would give Tweetie a try for 2.99.

Boy am I glad I did!  Tweetie has every feature I could have wanted–the ability to load as many tweets as you want, picture posting, location posting, DM and @ replies, retweets, auto-shrinking links, trend watch, custom searches, being able to follow or unfollow people right from the app, the ability to look at your followers and following screens, and MORE!  Plus, it was stable and speedy from the moment I installed it.  It’s been a day or so now and I’ve already used Tweetie more than any of the other Twitter apps I’ve tried.  I love it when an app turns out to be worth every cent of what I paid for it.

For more about Tweetie, visit http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/.