My first iPhone/iPod Touch application, Hiragana, has been published on the App Store. Apple's review of it took less than a week from submission to publication which did catch me off guard, as I was hoping to have more time to prepare a webpage for its launch.

Hiragana is a flash card application which helps me, and hopefully others as well, take advantage of occasional down time during the day to study the Japanese hiragana characters.

You can slide the cards left/right to flip through them. There are 104 character cards in all, plus one information card which functions as the application manual.

Sliding the card upwards reveals the pronunciation of the character.

A double tap zooms the card out to fit the whole card on screen, and presents a card removal button similar to the ones in Mobile Safari's tab view.

The cards can either be studied in order or in randomized order. This is toggled by tapping the crossed arrows in the lower left corner.

The i-button in the lower right flips the view around and allows the customer full control over which characters to include in the card set.

The application makes use of Core Animation to provide a very smooth and pleasant user experience.

Hiragana is available now for $3.99, all feedback is appreciated.

A version of the application focusing on the Katakana characters has also been submitted, but it is still in review.