Precorder (on sale now for $1) from Airship Software constantly buffers a few seconds of video before you hit the record button, effectively eliminating “shutter lag.” It’s a brilliant idea that the developers say they borrowed from the Planet Earth team — who used it to film this amazing spectacle of great whites breaching (note: Your results may vary. A lot).

This one’s got us raising an eyebrow: an app that figures out not only the distance to an object, but its speed — for a buck.

From the app’s press release:

Employing the device’s three-axis gyro and basic trigonometry establishes distance. Speed and laps are measured using the motion sensing of the video camera, timing the interval between the object entering and leaving the frame. The app is compatible with iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, and iPod touch 4.

We’re assuming that though SpeedClock is compatible with the 3Gs, it must deliver somewhat less-accurate results on it as there’s no gyro. We’re also assuming the app isn’t all that accurate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the app requires the user to guesstimate the distance from the iPhone to the object. But who knows, maybe one day the tech’ll get there; somehow the idea of state troopers aiming iPhones instead of radar guns seems somewhat more cuddly.

Thanks to the inclusion of WebSocket support for the iPad’s Safari browser in iOS 4.2, the doorway for collaboration through the web between the iPad and assorted devices has been flung open.

One of the first apps to take advantage of the iPad’s new trick is $10 SyncPad, which presents users with a faux whiteboard to scrawl notes on, then lets other users of the app scribble on that same whiteboard over the Internet, with the results showing up in realtime (well, almost — the developer, Davide Di Cillo of development company 39 Inc., told us it updates a little slowly, but that the problem’s been fixed in the latest update, which is waiting for Apple’s approval).

There’s no limit to the amount of collaborators, although each has to have (of course) the app and an Internet connection; the iPad-less can view the whiteboard through a web browser for free, but have to make do without being able to add input for the time being — although Di Cillo says they’re working on a fee-based version that’ll allow collaboration via a browser as well. There’s also a view-only free version of the app for the iPad.

Ever since we posted about  Let’s Create Pottery HD last month, we’ve been wondering when the app — that lets users have a go at creating virtual pottery on the iPad — would be out (or even be practical) on the smaller screen of the iPhone/iPt.

Last week, developer Infinite Dreams released the iPhone version, then added further enticement to get our hands dirty by releasing a free, try-before-you-buy version of the app a few days later (Which is a good thing, because the paid version looks like it might be a little prone to crashing, judging by the comments).

Still, the lite version checks out pretty well, and the full version, with its expanded creative options, is on sale right now for just a buck.

On Monday, we mentioned the launch of Peel, a new app that uses an algorithm similar to the one used by Netflix to try and figure out what its user should watch. Here’s the second half: A peek under the hood, excerpts from a chat with Peel’s (née Zelfy) VP of marketing, and a look at an accompanying piece of hardware that’s (maybe) coming next.

Apple is making a big deal about the jazzed-up photo book capabilities in iLife ’11, and for good reason — being able to cradle a vibrant, printed image still trumps the digital alternative. But iPhoto isn’t the only way to transform pixels into ink.

Simply Postcards lets users grab any photo off their iPhone and snail-mail it to an address in the U.S. or elsewhere. Postcards ship the day after ordering them, and prices range from $1-$2 for a stateside address to double that for international cards.

The app is free, and so is the first postcard; the Cult is going to use its free credits to brighten the Microsoft HQ mailbox with images of our new MacBook Airs!

The iPad is just about perfect for reading magazines; surprising, then, that more publishers haven’t come out with iPad-specific apps, right? Thankfully, publishers seem to be catching on, and last week saw two tricked-out versions of women’s magazines debut as apps on the iPad.

Couch potatoes take note: Peel, a free app that’s a sort of mix between Netflix’s movie suggestions and TV Guide, made its debut last week.

And it’s got a star-studded development team backing it up. Core members of the original iTunes team helped create Peel’s interface, and a team that beat Netfilx’s movie-suggestion algorithm in a competition worked on Peels innards.