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At the recent Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, Patrick Mork, CMO of the second largest mobile application store GetJar, detailed a number of ways developers can distribute their mobile applications.  In a breakout session he led, entitled "Monetization and Acquisition in App Stores," Mork discussed the large number of channels now available to application developers for distributing apps, and encouraged them to utilize as many channels as resources allow. "Broader is better," he said.

Mobile phones are being used for everything these days - if you can think of it, there's probably "an app for that," as they say. One area where we've seen a lot of innovation lately is in mobile devices being used as remote controls for navigating the TV. From hardware devices that pair with headphone jacks to completely software-based solutions, today's smartphones and other connected devices are completely capable of replacing your old TV remote.

After your app has conquered the top mobile platforms (including, don't forget, the mobile Web), where do you go next? Do you move on to your next project? Or do you start looking into porting your app to the less popular mobile platforms? Do you consider taking your app to the desktop, the TV screen or the game console?

And how do you determine which one should come next?

This week, an interesting new startup called Appbackr launched, creating the first wholesale market for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) applications. The idea is that developers can submit apps to Appbackr instead of the iTunes App Store at wholesale prices.

So why would developers want to do this?

According to a new report from the Luxury Institute, today's affluent mobile customers are getting into smartphone applications, with 34% having downloaded apps onto their phones and 11% reporting they have plans to do so soon.

So what apps are these customers go for? The free ones, of course. As it turns out, even though they can well afford to pay, 39% of affluent customers using mobile apps only download non-paid apps. Says the report, "having to pay extra for downloaded applications is the leading barrier to more widespread use of mobile apps." That may go for the rest of us too.

Curious about what the new Twitter app looks like on the just-launched Windows Phone 7 platform? Well here you go: a first look at the new application interface comes from Microsoft's Channel 9.

The new app features something called "Top Tweets" which lets you see what people are talking about on Twitter, even if you're not logged into the service on your phone. It also lets you view Trends, Suggested Users and Nearby tweets, all before you authenticate with Twitter.

If you do log in, you'll have access to the standard Twitter features (replies, messages, etc.)

Today Nokia has released its Ovi Store download numbers and they're starting to look good. In fact, it appears that Nokia users are now downloading more applications than Blackberry users.

According a press release put out this morning, Nokia says it now reaches 140 million customers worldwide and is seeing more than 200,000 people per day signing up for Ovi, the marketplace which features applications, music, video and other downloads. Also, the Ovi Store, available in 190 countries, has now reached a milestone of 2.3 million downloads per day.

Nokia just announced a new mobile application development contest that comes with $10 million in "cash, devices and marketing prizes" up for grabs. The "Calling All Innovators" contest, presented by Nokia and AT&T, is designed to encourage developers in North America to build applications for the company's mobile customers.

Although the handset manufacturer is still tops worldwide in terms of market share, it has struggled to attract developers to build apps for its Symbian mobile operating system platform, which features an iTunes App Store competitor called the Ovi Store.

A research project that aims to develop a standard for universal applications has just received £10 million in funding from the European Union. The project, called Webinos, is being led by the Fraunhofer Institute, the same group that developed the technology behind the ubiquitous music file format MP3.

Webinos' end goal is to create a framework for Web applications across mobile, PC, home media (TV) and even in-car devices which doesn't require the apps to be reprogrammed for each platform.

An iPhone application called "iPA God," which supposedly aids in the distribution of pirated applications, is now up for sale along with its source code. The app, whose name refers to the file extension for iPhone applications (.ipa ), made waves in the hacker community last week, when it was revealed to be the first ever tool for downloading paid applications to your phone that didn't first require you to jailbreak your device. Instead, the app is said to use an exploit found in the latest versions of the iPhone operating system.