Summer’s a comin’, and even torrential rain-stricken Blighty is beginning to feel optimistic about the forthcoming season – probably because many Brits are planning on hot-footing it abroad. In the spirit of the summer vacation, then, we look at the must-have apps for the keen traveler.

Astounding new figures from Apple reveal that 255,922 apps were launched last year in the UK’s app store. That’s an average of 21,326 per month, or a whopping 701 a day. To sort the wheat from the chaff, then, here’s the first of a new fortnightly column reviewing social apps that show promise, innovation, or are just plain fun.

Billed as an ‘Instagram for shoppers’, new social commerce iPhone app Snapette is proving a huge success with fashionistas around the world.

As tech developers continue with their seemingly relentless crusade to turn us all into amoebic, sofa-dwelling blobs mashing at touch screens to sate our every whim and desire, Domino’s Pizza have launched an iPad app on the UK market.

Remember all those predictions last decade that we’d be able to use our mobile phone to buy petrol or cab fare, or pizza? Alas, those soothesayers forgot to mention it would be a feature of everyday life in Scandinavia or South Korea, but for the rest of us – too bad. Well, we’re getting a bit closer to this day now that PizzaExpress has teamed with PayPal UK on a new iPhone app that allows you to go one better: you can pay your bill and book a table at a nearby location.

Part of Apple’s phenomenal growth story over the last decade can be seen here in Europe. A decade ago, Euro Mac addicts were hard to spot. Now they seem to be everywhere. Fittingly, it’s Apple gadgets like iPhone, iPod and iPad leading the charge with mobile-mad Europeans.

Color is a new (launched March 23) photo-sharing social network for the smartphone crowd. The network is novel in that it has no privacy settings or friending capabilities, but instead organizes and presents user photos based on relevancy, location and interests.

Rovio has recently been crowned the leading mobile game apps developer, popular (or soon to be) on all mobile platforms [More...] – iPhone, Android, Microsoft and Nokia. Its most famous production, Angry Birds, was downloaded 50 million times across a handful of mobile platforms, making it one of the most popular mobile games of 2010.

That’s the conclusion we draw from the latest Burson-Marsteller research into how companies are adapting to the mobile web. Despite the explosion in smart phone usage and the innovative mobile apps that are transforming industry sectors, many of the world’s largest companies are sitting on the sidelines.

‘Tis the season for launching new mobile retail applications. Here is the second installment of our shopping apps review, a look at some of the latest entries that are trying to change the way you tackle your holiday splurge.