Wow, that was fast! Tonight, Apple released the official iPhone and iPod Touch Web Apps Index featuring all kinds of yummy Web 2.0 applications (more than 200!) for your favorite converged media device. Categories include: Calculate, Entertainment, Games, News, Productivity, Search Tools, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities and Weather. And yeah, that means they didn’t take the advice from our post yesterday and include an Education category, but hey, it’s okay… really… we’re fine with that. Why Steve?!! Oh, why?! We thought you cared! We don’t need some kind of official affirmation to know what a handy site we run. Plus, we figure that new categories will pop up as apps show up to populate them anyway, so our vision of the world is inevitable. And that’s a comfort. So let’s get fired up and get programming, education web gurus! We’ll show them!

Along with the app index, Apple has also posted a nifty feedback page for anyone who wants to comment on the apps they’ve downloaded, and for developers, they’ve put up a handy guide for submitting web apps (though you have to have an AppleConnect account to get in).

Though it’s unfortunate (and maybe a little surprising) that the Web App Index isn’t optimized for viewing on the iPhone (unlike MockDock and Leaflets), we see the release of the index as a really positive development, offering a ready-made audience and distribution channel for the best iPhone web software developed. And we’re glad to see this sort of application infrastructure coming from Apple since it means that our favorite devices will be even more accessible and will offer richer, more specialized software for students and faculty.

Now… On to downloading Bejeweled and Missile Command so I can, uh, research that academic paper I’m working on… Yeah, that’s the ticket!