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How much can an add-on QuickBooks app generate in terms of a prize? If you guessed $25,000, you would be right on the money. As part of an event earlier this week, Intuit gave out several checks to app developers, including the first prize to CoreConnex' Corelytics Financial Dashboard, an app that allows small business owners to track key indicators and trends in their QuickBooks financial data.

Today Amazon launched an HTML5 browser version of its market leading eReader application, Kindle. Called Kindle Cloud Reader, it's a direct response to the 30% cut of sales that Apple now takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions via iOS apps. The 30% Apple toll hits businesses like Amazon hard, because the margins on book sales are slim enough as it is.

The HTML5 Kindle site appears to be optimized for the iPad. It's accessed from the Safari browser in the iPad, so it routes around Apple's App Store. That means Amazon doesn't need to give Apple 30% of an eBook sale. Because the HTML5 site is very close to the functionality of the iPad Kindle app, this is going to have huge ramifications for Apple. Yes, Apple's walled garden has just been structurally weakened. I'd go as far as to say that it's a matter of months, not years, before Amazon pulls its iOS Kindle app from the App Store.

Adobe is shutting down two of its app stores dedicated to mobile and desktop application distribution, Adobe InMarket and the Adobe AIR Marketplace. The decision, the company says, was based on developer feedback. Adobe says it will now focus its efforts on helping developers publish their apps on multiple platforms, including official app stores like Apple's iTunes, Google's Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Intel's AppUp, Samsung Apps and Toshiba App Place.

Apple is launching a new program designed for business customers: App Store Volume Purchasing. With this option, U.S. businesses have a way to purchase mobile applications built by third-party developers in volume, using a corporate account. In addition, the program sets up a separate app store of sorts where developers can sell custom B2B apps just to those customers enrolled in the Volume App program.

Why did Apple put out a press release today about reaching the milestone of 15 billion downloads? Maybe to distract you from the other news about how it just lost the rights to the term "App Store" in a high-profile lawsuit against top competitor Amazon.

Well, guess what? It worked! Look what our headline reads!

Still, it is an impressive number, and one that puts competing app stores to shame. And Apple had even more new numbers to reveal today, too.

Brazilian blogger murdered. 36-year-old Brazilian blogger Ednaldo Figueira was shot down in the streets of his home town, Serra do Mel.

After receiving death threats, Figueira was shot six times on June 15 by gunmen on motorcycles outside his workplace. In addition to being a blogger, he was a newspaper editor and an official in a trade union. This is the second time a blogger has been murdered by his government or, in Figueira's case most likely organized crime figures attached to the government.

In Apple's new App Store Review Guidelines out this week, it appears the company has backtracked on its earlier plans to strictly enforce how mobile application publishers can sell subscriptions. In the earlier set of guidelines released February, Apple required any applications selling content through subscriptions to also make that same content available within the app at the same price or less.

Now, the guidelines state that app publishers can offer access to content purchased outside the app, with no requirement to offer the subscription through Apple's store.

The app store analytics firm Distimo has released its latest report on the size of the various mobile app stores, as well as the types and prices of apps that are most successful there. The report compares the Apple App Store for iPad, Apple App Store for iPhone, Apple Mac App Store, BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog, and Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Despite all the buzz surrounding apps and mobile devices, the report finds that these stores only experienced moderate growth over the last few months.

No surprise, the Apple App Store still dominates, fueled primarily by the number of apps available for iPhone. However, when you separate that store into two - iPhone apps and iPad apps - you get a different picture. Despite being the largest store, the Apple App Store for iPhone was among the slowest growing stores in terms of relative growth. Even so, that growth was still second only to the Google Android Market in terms of absolutely growth.

B&N's Nook Color e-reader is receiving a major update today which brings a wider selection of Android apps to the tablet, plus an email client, faster Web browsing and support for Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies.

The update will also deliver an upgrade to the tablet's base operating system, bringing it a newer version of Android - Android 2.2, code-named "Froyo." While this is not the most current version of Android available at present, it's less of a concern here because the tablet runs its own user interface designed specifically for e-reading.

Here an app store, there an app store, everywhere an app store. 2011 is quickly becoming a year of app stores, with each browser offering its own marketplace of Web apps. What's a multi-browser user to do in this world?

Kynetx, a cross-browser platform for browser extensions and apps, wants to give both developers and users a one-stop shop for apps that don't discriminate according to what browser you use for what task. The company has launched an app store of its own for something it's calling "browser apps."