Plugins are to WordPress what apps are to smartphones…  They optimize and extend performance beyond your imagination, they’re constantly improving and they’re just plain awesome!

To that end, I’d like to revisit a previous post that addressed the question, Which plugins should I use and add to that list a few I recently discovered (with the help of my friends – thanks Gerry!):

• WPtouch – tranforms your blog into a smartphone app
• WP-Optimize – cleans up your WordPress database
• Blackbird Pie – adds embedded tweets into your posts
• LinkedIn Share Button -  allows quick and easy sharing via LinkedIn

What great plugins have you found?

WordPress is our blog software of choice – easy to use, simple to maintain and has great funtionality. To improve this functionality, we also use plugins (tools that do a specific task in your blog). The plugins we recommend are:

• Akismet – The amazingly powerful spam blocker! Protects us against all the garbage that the spammers send through and rarely makes a mistake.
• All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Easy to update and allows you to create seo friendly titles and keywords for each post.
• BackType Connect – Show related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.
• CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
• FD Feedburner Plugin – Redirects all feeds to a Feedburner feed. Enables easy tracking through Google.
• Google Analytics for WordPress – It automatically adds Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your  blog.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a new sitemap every time your blog is updated which is compatible with  Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
• Gurken Subscribe to Comments – Allows readers to subscribe to comments so they can follow a conversation.
• WordTwit – Posts updates to Twitter about entries automatically. Includes many configuarble options, statistics and more.

We use these because they have been successful for us, and are easy to use. Which plugins do use use and recommend?