This month we've got a free, internationally-renowned, trend-bucking newspaper, a price comparison app that reads bar codes, slow motion video effects, a Google Calendar that stays in sync, a clever camera app and the entire night sky.

While print publications all over the world are cooking up ways to make you pay for their content, let's hear it for the Independent newspaper in the UK which has released an app that lets you read the paper whether your iPhone's connected or not. When there's a connection, the Independent app (free) downloads content for you to read offline later: when we last looked ours had 444 articles, complete with graphics. There's no widescreen view, but it's easy to enlarge the text, bookmark articles for later or e-mail them to friends, and once the occasional kinks have been worked out (badges losing the number of unread articles, bookmarks sometimes not registering straight away) this will be a must-have.

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Ever been in a shop looking at the perfect present but with a niggling feeling you might get it cheaper online? Wonder no more. RedLaser (£1.19) is a bar code reader that uses the iPhone's camera: just line the bar code up between the guides and listen for the little ‘ping'. Then sit back as the app goes off and searches online retailers for cheaper prices and use the results list to buy online. It doesn't support every bar code and every online retailer of course, but this is the best app of its kind we've seen and the free Custom App builder lets you add a favourite web shop manually if it's not already included.

We'll be using some of the money we've saved with RedLaser and spending it on CalenGoo (£3.99), which lets you display your Google Calendars on the iPhone and keep them in sync. Despite the tiny screen size, it does a nifty job of displaying day, week, month and list view and supports multiple calendars (you choose which ones to display). It can't handle Google Tasks, which is a shame, and alarms don't work unless the app's actually running, but you can get around this with Google SMS alerts so that's not a problem. In all, an excellent app and one we'll be keeping a careful eye on.

While the rest of the iPhone world has the hots for Snapture, we've taken a shine to Photogene (£1.79) and not just because we're contrary. We like the fact that it doesn't get in the way when you're taking pictures, along with the range and quality of its effects, including crop (some useful presets here too) straighten, effects (like pencil and sepia) adjustments for exposure, colours and RGB levels, speech bubbles and comic book-style captions, frames, backgrounds and even that reflection effect popularized by Apple. Finally, multiple levels of undo make this our current favourite photo app.

Since we're the kind of people who look up rather than down, we're partial to astronomy programs yet remain permanently put off by their complexity (stupid inconsiderate galaxies). Three cheers then for Pocket Universe (£1.79) which, instead of baffling the bejaysus out of you, displays everything that matters to the back yard star gazer: specifically a what's-in-the-sky-right-now planetarium that uses the iPhone's motion sensor (and compass in the GS) to display whatever you point the phone at. There's more info about individual objects, a neat summary of what's in the sky tonight (including good basic stuff like where the planets are and if any meteor showers are visible) as well as astronomy news and a quiz. Hours of educational fun and just the right level of detail.

Finally, as rock bands all over the world like to say, we'd like to slow things down a bit courtesy of Slowmo (59p) which lets you take a video clip and then, using a simple slide control, make it play back in slow motion. You can stretch the audio track to synchronise with the new video length for creepy low-budget horror effects or loop it to play along at normal speed. Andyoucanalsospeedthingsupinthesameway. It only works on the 3GS but the results are effective and less choppy than you might think.

As above. All the apps are available from the App Store on iTunes.