Friday amidst the fury new iPhone application releases, Pandora released an application for iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to take their personalized radio stations with them. Existing Pandora users can download the free app and instantly have access to all their current radio stations as well as add new ones. If you're not already a Pandora user then the process is slightly more difficult to get started and involves authorizing your mobile device on Pandora's web page.

Pandora for the iPhone offers the same features as traditional Pandora for your PC. Stations can be easily created around a particular artist or song that you enjoy. As you're listening to a song you can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down to help customize the station to your preferences. Songs can be skipped if you really don't like them, bookmarked if you do, or immediately purchased through the iTunes store if you can't live without them a moment longer. The app also has an information button where you can read about why a particular song was selected to play on your radio station.

We gave the app a little test drive last night. We were really impressed with the app's interface and love that looks a lot like traditional Iphone music player, complete with full screen cover art. If you're still rocking a first gen iPhone and live somewhere where your EDGE data tends to be a little hit or miss, then so is your Pandora. We drove around town and had a few instances where the music would skip, or in some cases stop entirely which is no fun when you're trying to rock out. Most of the issues seemed to happen in-between songs so the app may be designed to work a little ahead of itself to compensate for passing through areas that aren't EDGE friendly.

One of the two big differences in the new iPhone 3G is the included GPS technology. Restaurant locator/review site UrbanSpoon knows this very well, and they've taken advantage of the GPS with an iPhone native app for UrbanSpoon. Without even having to tell it, it knows where you are, it knows where restaurants are, and it's ready to get food into your mouth.

It gets more fun than that, though: you can actually shake your iPhone like a Magic 8-Ball to get a random recommendation near you. This is great if you're really hungry, don't care where you eat, or just like trying new places. An iPhone native app gives UrbanSpoon a leg up on other review sites like Yelp (which we also find very useful!) by making its information more easily portable. Look for it in July, when Apple launches the iPhone app store.

[via MG Siegler at VentureBeat]