In advance of tomor­row’s release of the new 3G iPhone, Apple has launched its new App Store on iTunes, which fea­tures new tools that will imme­di­ate­ly make the iPhone (and iPod Touch) a more ver­sa­tile — and, in some cas­es, enlight­en­ing — device. Below, we have high­light­ed ten apps worth explor­ing if you’re hun­gry for enrich­ing infor­ma­tion. 9 of the 10 are free. (Please note: To access the App Store, you will need to down­load the lat­est ver­sion of iTunes (here) and also the new iPhone 2.0 firmware, which has yet to be offi­cial­ly released — although you can find an unof­fi­cial release and direc­tions on how to install it here. The offi­cial release should be com­ing any time now.)

1.) The New York Times: Thanks to this app, you can read “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on your iPhone. It lets you cus­tomize the news you read, and also read arti­cles offline.

2.) AOL Radio: One down­side to the first gen­er­a­tion iPhone is that it did­n’t allow you to access inter­net radio. This app helps to change some of that. It gives you access to 150 CBS radio sta­tions across the US, includ­ing some key news sta­tions.

3.) Man­darin Audio Phrase­book: Lone­ly Plan­et, the pub­lish­er of fine trav­el guides, has pro­duced a free Man­darin audio phrase­book, which includes 630 com­mon­ly used phras­es. Via the iPhone you can hear how the phras­es are spo­ken (and also see how they are pho­net­i­cal­ly writ­ten). For $9.99, you can pur­chase phrase­books in nine oth­er lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai, Viet­namese and Czech. See full col­lec­tion here.

4.) Tru­veo Video Search: The Wall Street Jour­nal calls Tru­veo the “best web-wide video-search engine.” And now, with this Tru­veo app, you can use the iPhone to find videos from across the web, and, regard­less of their for­mat, play them all in one appli­ca­tion. This sounds like a great addi­tion, espe­cial­ly since many videos weren’t playable on 1st gen­er­a­tion iPhones.

5.) Net­NewsWire: With this app, you can add an RSS read­er to the iPhone, allow­ing you to read RSS feeds in a neat and clean way. It also lets you “clip” arti­cles that you like and read them lat­er. Don’t for­get to sign up for our feed, and you can always add more cul­tur­al feeds by perus­ing our list of 100 Cul­ture Blogs.

6.) Google Mobile App: Let’s face it. In today’s infor­ma­tion world, Google is a must-have. And so it’s nice to have an app that makes Google and its many func­tion­al­i­ties com­plete­ly iPhone friend­ly.

7.) AppEngines E‑Books: For 99 cents, you can down­load a clas­sic e‑book to your iPhone, and read it in a quite leg­i­ble for­mat. In this col­lec­tion, you will find Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Pride and Prej­u­dice, Dick­ens’ Great Expec­ta­tions, and about 40 oth­er e‑books.

8.) Talk­ing Span­ish Phrase­book: Too busy to learn a new lan­guage? Then you’re in luck. This app will do the talk­ing for you. It takes basic phras­es in Eng­lish and then con­verts them into spo­ken Span­ish. There are also free ver­sions in French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian.

9.) Epocrates: This free app turns your iPhone into a com­pre­hen­sive drug data­base. Very handy for the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty.

10.) NearPics: If you’re trav­el­ing, and if you want to dis­cov­er great places near­by, this app lets you dis­cov­er pic­tures that have been tak­en in the vicin­i­ty. The app offers a way to dis­cov­er intrigu­ing places (or things) that nor­mal­ly fly below the radar. Also, this oth­er app lets you put Flickr on your iPhone. More ways to sat­is­fy your inner pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get