What started out as a pleasant chat with someone who was writing some iPhone applications has rapidly blossomed into an extraordinary outpouring of interest from the iPhone developer community. As a result, I’ve decided to run a series of developer spotlights, probably 20 or more, over the next few weeks. It’ll offer you insight into the time involved, complexity and rewards of developing a game or utility for one of the most interesting software sales environments on the planet: the Apple iPhone. I hope you enjoy the series!

I’ll kick it all off with an interview with Darren Andes, who wrote Baby Tracker: Nursing

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By now most seasoned Internet surfers realize that wherever they go they leave their electronic footprints. They may feel much more comfortable communicating with a close friend via a cell phone. However as John Whitehead points out Big Brother Is Listening to Your Cell Phone Calls. Indeed it would appear that Big Brother would like to listen much more.

Moreover, the FBI and other government agencies are demanding greater legal authority to be able to force companies–especially cell phone companies–to turn over customer information. “They have pushed for an aggressive interpretation of the statute that would allow it to monitor certain Internet content without a warrant and to collect tracking information about the physical locations of cell phone users,” the ACLU reports, “turning cell phones into what, for all practical purposes, are location tracking bugs.”

Now the Bush Administration is prodding Congress to grant retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that have allowed government agents access to their customers’ private phone call data. If Congress passes such a law, it would put an end to the dozens of lawsuits that have already been filed against phone companies alleged to have violated federal privacy laws by handing over customer data to the government. It would also put an end to any pretense that our government has our best interests at heart.

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Ikanos Consulting is developing a framework which is in beta testing which will, when completed, allow you to run Windows SideShow Gadgets on a windows Mobile device, finally bringing SideShow to the masses.

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Although cell phones are ubiquitous, only limited numbers of individuals use them to surf the mobile Web.

The telecom companies have not helped mobile Web growth by often charging excessive broadband transmission costs. In addition the cell phone has limitations with a small display screen and tiny keys for input. Although the slow rate of growth might appear unsurprising, there is a better way. (more…)

Google has released their AdSense for Mobile program for a couple of countries now after testing it for some while*. (more…)

We’ll put aside Yahoo’s CEO woes and turn our attention to their continued expansion of mobile services.

The company has already made many announcements over the past few weeks, and tomorrow they’ll officially make two new mobile announcements.

First up, Yahoo’s announcing new features for Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 including: (more…)

Banking is one of the most essential functions for most of us. We are also increasingly on the move.

Clearly the bank that we can contact on the mobile web is more likely to get our business.

In the UK, Barclays is helping customers stay in touch with their money with the launch of a mobile banking service. For now, they can check their account balance and statements but more services are being lined up for the future. (more…)

Zec points to an interesting item by Information Week on Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy, which was the subject at a meeting of the New York City chapter of the Usability Professionals Association.

Google user experience designer Leland Rechis said, bluntly, that the mobile Web is Balkanized, “The Pangaea of the Web is gone.” And don’t expect this to change anytime soon, either. Thanks to carrier portals and off portal applications, there is no one mobile standard to develop for.

In the mobile world developers have to be prepared to optimize for different devices, browsers, languages, carriers, countries and cultures.

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Google continues to refine the way it offers Mobile Searching: the blog post is titled Walking, Talking, Searching, Finding:

You won’t need to sift through both mobile and regular web results, or specify your search type-local, image, web, etc.-as our new search experience will offer you results based on the nature of the query itself. So if you search for [bbc] on your device, you’ll get a link to the mobile-friendly BBC website. Search for [us post office], and you’ll get listings for the branches that are closest to your set location, and so on.

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