Say you want to take a photo of yourself and your 4-year-old then swap your mugs, putting her teeny face on your giant head and your giant face on her teeny head. There's an app for that.

Say you want each of your daily achievements to be immediately followed by a glorious chorus of "HAAAAAAA-leluiah."

There's an app for that, too.

Or say you want to fill the room with 16 varieties of obscene bodily noises, just by touching a button.

Unfortunately - delightfully - there's an app for that, too.

Even if you don't have an iPhone, you have undoubtedly seen one of those catchy television commercials touting the awesomeness of iPhone apps.

For the uninitiated, "apps" is short for applications, which are little programs that when downloaded perform amazing tricks on iPhones.

They're one of the perks that make iPhone ownership so fulfilling. Making phone calls, texting friends and e-mailing from the car is fun for a while. But when you own a powerful little handheld computer like an iPhone, you start to yearn for more.

During my seven months of blissful iPhone ownership, I've downloaded about 30 different apps, which range in price from totally free to $100 and more. (Although most fall in the $5 and less category.)

Downloading apps is simple - you just press the "App Store" button on your phone and start shopping.

Some apps are downright useful. I use the Weather Channel app every day, which offers not only the current temperature but also a 10-day and hour-to-hour forecast.

And my Amazon Kindle app allowed me last week to download my book club's current selection straight to my iPhone for half the cost of buying the actual book.

But the best apps are the ones that serve no purpose whatsoever, other than to entertain or impress your friends.

One can, for example, download an app that displays a big picture of a lighter with a burning flame that can be substituted for the real thing during concert slow songs.

Those who are on a quest for more cowbell can download an app that allows them to clang away.

There's the aforementioned bodily function app (an inappropriate favorite with kids). And a light saber app displays the famous "Star Wars" weaponry with appropriate sound effects.

This week, I've learned of an app that will produce the "censored" beeping noise to be used around potty-mouthed friends, and one that provides a fake X-ray of a hand to be used around gullible friends.

Perhaps my favorite useless iPhone app is iSwap Faces, which allows the user to snap an iPhone picture of two people, digitally cut out their faces, then swap them.

The monstrosities I have created out of my otherwise attractive friends' heads are amazingly awful and very, very wrong. But we never fail to laugh hysterically through our grimaces at the finished products.

Say you're easily amused.

As I've demonstrated here, there are hundreds and hundreds of apps for that.

Originally posted at: SavannahNow