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App developers who launch their projects on the Facebook platform have created 235,644 jobs and contributed $15.7 billion to the economy, says a study released by the University of Maryland.

Using statistical evidence provided by Facebook and apps developers, researchers at the Smith School Center for Digital Innovation, Technology and Strategy show that the boom in games like Farmville and the creation of productivity apps are boosting at least one corner of the economy.

Improved mobile phone cameras and the ability to live stream anything from a phone has proved threatening to police who don't like to be filmed, but an app used by the University of Maryland police department could be the future of 9-1-1.

The University of Maryland police department is testing an app that will allow police to monitor live video of an emergency situation and will allow a mobile user to beam video to the police station in a time of need.

Mobile Roadie, a self-service app development platform for brands and music, launched its system in a crowded but fragmented China platform ecosystem today.

The China mobile application market is characterized by confusion right now. Already-strong local players like Tencent have launched mobile app platforms to sell apps for Android and iOS. But those platforms depend on partnerships with companies in Europe and the United States.

Mobile Roadie is tearing up that formula. It's a Western company that's letting local developers make apps for themselves.

Nielsen has released its first mobile app rankings for Android since the organization started measuring smartphone usage directly using on-device meters.

The results are not hugely shocking, but contain some interesting tidbits nonetheless. The list is broken down into three rankings: overall usage, male usage and female usage. The top half of each list is littered with the apps you'd guess were popular: Facebook, Gmail, Maps, YouTube. Pandora, Words With Friends, Twitter and Amazon's Kindle app all make expected appearances in the top 20 as well.

We are in the final stretch of iOS 5 beta as the iPhone 5 is expected to launch in early October. According to Boy Genius Report, iOS 5 Beta 8 is expected to be released this Friday, Sept. 16. The final Gold Masters build is expected to drop a week later, on Sept. 23. Developers, are you ready with your final preparations for the newest version of the iPhone?

In conversations with developers, iOS 5 beta is just about ready to go. They really like the split keyboard functions and feel that it is now stable enough that it runs just as well as iOS 4.3. Battery life, always a problem in early betas, has been fixed. There are still a "few nagging bugs" as one developer put it, but the timeline is well in place for a launch in the next several weeks.

Formspring, the ask-me-anything Q&A social network, has just launched its first native iOS app. The big new feature for Formspring is photo sharing, which is incorporated into both questions and answers from the app. The iOS interface builds nicely on the website's UI makeover and new community features added earlier this year.

Formspring's Sarahjane Sacchetti says that the app is focused on keeping things "super-simple" for users in order to drive more activity. It's built around posting questions, answering, and viewing content from friends. Formspring says that over 75% of traffic to their existing mobile website comes from iOS, so this more powerful native app should see rapid adoption among Formspring's current users.

Verizon is announcing today at its developers' conference that it is has completely rebuilt its application store that ships with every new Android device the carrier sells. Starting from scratch, Verizon has recreated its own Android application store and integrated a new search feature from app discovery engine Chomp.

The Verizon Android store will focus on premium apps and ship alongside the Android Market on Verizon devices. Verizon is dropping its V Cast app store and renaming it Verizon Apps. On the flip side, Verizon is trying to make app search easier through its partnership with Chomp, a company that has created an algorithm specifically designed to tackle the tricky problem of app store search results.

Last week, open source HTML5 framework provider Nitobi and Microsoft announced that PhoneGap is ready for use with Windows Phone Mango. That means that Windows Phone developers can now add Web app functionality into native Mango applications in the same way that they can with iOS and Android. The question remains: Is Windows Phone ever going to be a viable consumer option?

PhoneGap has come charging into the mobile development ecosystem in the last several months. Nitobi's star is hitched to the rise of HTML5 and functional APIs. Yet, Microsoft working with PhoneGap is perhaps further validation of the framework than PhoneGap is a validation of Windows Phone as a legitimate platform.

In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for August 2011. Last month there were some interesting iOS apps and updates along with some dynamic Android apps.

The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.

A new report from research firm Yankee Group shows that Android developers are facing a huge problem when it comes to piracy. Nearly 75% of Android developers surveyed said it was easy to copy an Android app and republish it. Half said it was "very easy."

This is affecting the bottom line of developers, a third of whom said the consequences of piracy cost them more than $10,000 in revenue and support costs. The report says that developers claim they get no help from Google battling Android application piracy and that the Android Market is too soft. What can Google do to help protect developers?