As a software engineer, I want people to appreciate my work, and I hope they find it valuable. One way thy can show me that value is to pay me for it.

That said, I installed a few apps last year that totally rocked. I’ll share my three favorite apps of 2010. They are SpringPad, Camera+, and Mormon Channel.

SpringPad is an application similar to Evernote, but I like the way SpringPad visually represents my data. The iPhone app is every bit as good as the Web version. You can create multiple notebooks, and within the notebooks, you can create todo’s, links, text, and web clips.

The feature that really won me over though was the way it handles web clips. It actually works. I can never get Evernote web clips to work. All I get is the page text and usually no images, so when I look at it, the page is all screwed up.

Camera+ is an awesome application. There are so many options that it would take me days to explain them all. But here are a few of the ones that won me over.

• Dozens of styles that allow me to alter the photos.
• A timer, like a real camera
• Edit existing images
• Share multiple images to Facebook, Twitter and Email. This is huge, and the one feature that really won me over. Most of the other apps only let you send one at a time.

The Mormon Channel is a pretty narrow niche, but for me it brings together all the amazing resources the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints has to offer. Everything from scriptures, magazines, radio broadcasts, audio recordings, video records and more.

Another Mormon specific application that I am getting a lot of value from is LDS Scriptures App. This application is probably the most comprehensive LDS based application I’ve used. This application includes scriptures, manuals, magazines and other content. The only thing I wish it had more of would be audio and video content. But other than that, this is a rock solid app.

Other applications that I really enjoyed; Angry Birds, Facebook, TweetDeck, Pandora, Foursquare and DropBox.

At first I didn’t get it. Fact is, until this afternoon, I still didn’t get it. But then this little message popped up when I checked in at Chick-Fil-A in Sandy, Utah.

After I saw this, it hit me, the untapped value of an application like FourSquare. What a strategic opportunity for businesses or events to push an announcement to the person checking in. Here I am checking in at Chick-Fil-A and I get a note to check out Fudruckers, about 50 feet away. I could possibly have been given a code to use for a discount on a meal.

I’m going to target a few places and see what I can come up with. My first attempt will be to add information on PodCampSLC 2010. If you check in at places around Neumont University, I’m going to suggest you check out the site.