Dear Internet,

It's 2010, no one wears silver jumpsuits, and our cars don't fly.

Have a free app instead. We love you.

Sincerely, hive05

Speaking of reviews, here are two things we'd love to see added to the App Store:

Give devs the ability to contact reviewers. If a user has a negative experience with an application, the first thing we'd want to do as a developer is get in touch and find out how we can make things better, find out if it's a problem with our app, something we missed, or simply a novice user with questions. Currently, there's no way to do this, and we're stuck hoping that anyone with issues sends us an email alongside their review.

Sure, I guess this could lead to angry developers sending abusive messages to their negative reviewers, but that's a small sacrifice (or a bonus, if you're inclined to sending abusive messages to your negative reviewers).

List the version the review is for. This should be an easy one. At a glance, it allows the buyer to see if and how the developer responds to user requests, how current versions stack up to previous releases, and so on.

Oh, I forget about another one. Three things we'd love to see added to the App Store.

Give us an easy way to give out review copies. [Update: promo codes are here!]Something that works like iTunes codes would be perfect. As it currently stands, giving away a copy of an iPhone application requires a few steps of back and forth between the developer and recipient. I want to be able to generate codes and sprinkle 'em around the web a bit, pass copies to bloggers, that sort of thing. Hell, it'd be nice for contests and giveaways, too.

Oh! And what friends are buying, I totally forgot about that one.

I want to see what my friends are buying. The social web, Apple, it's last years big new thing. Sure, you don't want to turn the App Store into another Facebook, but there's gotta be more ways to filter apps.

As a buyer, the App Store is pretty overwhelming, there's a bajillion apps, not enough reviews of new entries, and no built-in demoing system, so buying something new can be a crapshoot. I want to build a list of trusted peers, and spread the risk around a bit. Let me sort applications based on their reviews, let me easily find what interesting new apps they've managed to dig up.

As a seller, the biggest factor affecting sales is where you stand in the category listings. Once your app scrolls off page three or so, sales nosedive, and updates are the single easiest way to bump those sales back up again. But what happens after you've added all the polish and features you'd like to add? What if your app is basically complete right out of the gate? Unless you find yourself on one of the Top lists, you're app is buried. Filtering trusted reviews doesn't completely fix this, but it does potentially give an app more exposure.

And while you're at it, how about an App Genius? Something to tell us "hey, looking at what you've bought so far, if you really enjoyed App W, X, and Y, I bet you'll love Z!"

Hmm, guess there were a bit more than two. Anything else you'd add to the list?

We anticipate relatively quick approval, and based on the last submission it should be on the store sometime this week.

Update 11/12:  I just received notification that version 1.2 has been approved.  Look for it in the app store tomorrow.

The goods for version 1.1:

• Improved look and feel, new icons
• Decreased load time on launch
• Added toggle to view all contacts / only contacts with images
• Pagination!
• Various bug fixes

Thanks to those of you that have sent in bug reports and suggestions, we take 'em seriously here at Hive05.

Screenshots of the version update:

ICONtact is a very simple application which provides you a graphical view of your address book.  It's really very straightforward and pretty much everything you need to know can be determined from the screenshot below.  Hopefully it will be on the App Store in the next week or so for a price of $0.99 (what a bargain!).

Update: It's live! Get it here.