With a few taps on his cell phone, Grand Valley State University student Greg Zavitz can look up anybody at the school, view detailed maps and even watch someone ordering a latte on the Pew Campus — all with a mobile application he helped design.

Read More www.mlive.com

You’ve surely heard of Silverlight, Microsoft’s shinier and altogether more-fluffy answer to Flash.

Silverlight is now at the stage where the only real feature it lacks is ubiquity—the only real reason we keep using Flash is because the plug-in is installed on almost every computer in the world.

Read More www.downloadsquad.com

How many times has a friend showed you his or her favorite new iPhone app, and you lamented: Why didn’t I think of that?

With total application downloads from Apple’s iTunes app store topping three billion, and monthly sales of upwards of $200 million, the marketplace for apps is booming.

Read More www.inc.com

In the 1999 movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt famously tells a huddle of pugilistic aspirants: “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.”

Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement phrases that sentiment differently, but its directive to iPhone developers is essentially the same:

Read More www.theregister.co.uk

Aarhus, Denmark - DevDay for iPhone is a dedicated interactive one day conference for software developers and business professionals who want to learn how to successfully build and market iPhone applications. DevDay for iPhone will take place at Dexter House in London, UK April 26, 2010.

Read More prmac.com

Atomicon, in association with the Iconfactory and DS Media Labs, has released the original soundtrack for the hit iPhone game “Ramp Champ”, representing a new source of music for gamers, and a new source of revenue for musicians and composers. As a digital-only release, and available through the iTunes music store, the album fits neatly within the iTunes ecosystem, enabling game and music fans to easily purchase the soundtrack directly though the game. “We’re very excited about the possibility of accessing music fans from right inside the game. The ability to have in-game purchasing, or even just a link directly to the iTunes store, which downloads straight to the user’s music library, all within the same device, is really pretty cool,” says David Weiner, executive producer and composer at Atomicon, which released the album.

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Super-smart iPhone apps will replace silly iFart-like apps in the second wave of iPhone app development, said iPhone app developers at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco last week.

Read More www.sfgate.com

Adobe on Monday broadened its phone push with AIR for mobile. Much like the desktop version, the new technology allows Flash apps offline and outside of the web browser. In mobile form it can take advantage of specific phone features, ranging from multi-touch to accelerometers and GPS positioning.

Read More www.electronista.com

One of the more interesting aspects of the annual Game Developers Conference is the Independent Games Festival, a showcase for some of the best and brightest people and ideas in the industry. Hidden among the next big indie games is the Student Showcase.

Read More arstechnica.com

Dallas software developers play a big role in making sure there’s an app for that. Bear Cahill, who has been a contract iPhone app developer since late 2008, gets some work done at Jupiter House coffee shop in Denton. Cahill said it typically takes about 20 to 40 hours to build an app, with payments ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 per job.

Read More www.dallasnews.com

If you’re anxious to develop your own iPhone app, don’t know where to start, and find high-pedigree university instruction appealing, consider learning the art of the iPhone from Stanford University. You won’t need a high-school degree to take the class—the school’s Computer Science Department has begun posting material from its second 10-week iPhone Application Programming course in iTunes U.

Read More reviews.cnet.com

The growth of the iPhone app store and market has been phenomenal in recent years. Many websites and blogs have developed their own iPhone applications as a way of promoting their brand. One recent example of this was the Guardian newspaper in the UK with its own Guardian iPhone app. Quite a smart way of leveraging the newspaper’s online content I think.

Read More www.cvwdesign.com

If you’ve got regular customers with shiny new smartphones, then building a mobile application might be right for you. Designed well, an app puts information about your products, discounts and customer service at customers’ fingertips, wherever they may roam.

Read More online.wsj.com

In the classroom at Harvard Business School where Dan Bricklin came up with the idea for an electronic spreadsheet, there now hangs a plaque that designates the resulting software program as the “original killer app of the information age.”

Bricklin and his colleague Bob Frankston formed a company in 1979, Software Arts, which would eventually sell the VisiCalc spreadsheet program for $99. It ran on a new “personal computer” called the Apple II.

Read More www.boston.com

The sheer size of Apple’s app store makes it difficult for independent developers to stand out from the crowd. Some developers come up with creative concepts to get the word out, others rely on scamming and gaming different iTunes policies.

Read More mashable.com

As the ecosystem around iPhone apps continues to explode, the opportunity for advertising and monetization grows simultaneously. There are been an abundance of mobile and specifically iPhone centric ad-networks that have emerged, like AdMob (which was acquired by Google a few weeks ago), Greystripe, InMobi and others, to help developers make money from advertising on aps.

Read More www.techcrunch.com

iPhone developers have long been frustrated by Apple when they have an application rejected for inclusion on iTunes. One such developer has decided that it is time to make public the kind of apps that are being rejected and, if known, the reasons. The new website is appropriately named App Rejections.

Read More www.geek.com

Jonathan Kromrey, 41, worked at Apple as an iPod and iPhone games producer and designer before helping to create Namco’s new games team dedicated to the platform.

“When I was at Apple, we could put the blinders on to focus on game play.

Read More www.fastcompany.com

In a tough economic year, the all-important holiday shopping season is more important than ever, and that’s driving retailers to use every means to connect with consumers. More retailers are making those connections through mobile commerce, aiming to drive traffic to their web sites and stores.

Read More www.internetretailer.com

In his first wide-ranging interview on the matter, the Apple senior vice-president explains his company’s App Store vigilance—and why it sometimes loosens up. Apple (AAPL) is under fire from some developers for the way it vets applications that can be sold on its online App Store.

Read More www.businessweek.com