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Apple today previewed a new version of its iPhone firmware, as well as a new version of its SDK for the iPhone. Among the highlights of the announcement were the availability of a new homescreen, MMS, copy and paste, and the long expected arrival of push notifications. Developers will now also be able to sell in game accessories and subscriptions through Apple's App Store.

iPhone developers will be able to download the new firmware today, while the rest of us will have to wait until it is released to the public later this summer.

Ever since Apple finally lifted the NDA covering the iPhone SDK, a small number of developers have started to open source their native iPhone apps. Today, Freshbooks, a popular online time-tracking and invoicing service, joined this group by open sourcing its native iPhone application. Other open source iPhone apps include Wordpress, the applications from Apps Amuck's 31 Days of iPhone Apps, and a collection of source code for handling the iPhone's touch controls.

The popular mobile browser Opera today launched a software developers kit (SDK) for widgets. While rival Apple's iPhone SDK requires that applications be distributed exclusively through the still-unlaunched iPhone App Store, pay a $99 application fee and wait - Opera SDK built widgets appear to be much more open and free.

Opera's widgets will be able to run on the company's wildly popular mobile browser, Opera Mini excluded, the desktop version of Opera, the Nintendo Wii and any other devices that run Opera 9.5. We covered the launch of 9.5 here.

Apple's iPhone is aimed to be a game changer for the mobile world and today has been one of the key turning points in that unfolding story. Today's announcements were basically two. The new iPhone SDK, or Software Development Kit, made all of the debates about locked or unlocked phones fade away into the distance. Second, allowing the phone to be tied to Microsoft Exchange and bringing in Blackberry-style push email turned the tables in the debate over whether the iPhone can be a business phone.

The future of the iPhone is coming into focus, even if it is a bit abstract at the moment. Reports are beginning to surface that Infineon, a German chipmaker, will provide Apple with a new chip set for the next-generation iPhone — let’s call it iPhone 2.0.

Syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog

Yahoo! announced tonight that it will be turning its mobile service, Yahoo! Go, into an open platform for 3rd party developers. Unlike Google's Android OS, the Yahoo! Go platform will work on more than 250 mobile devices that Go already works on.

PaidContent's MocoNews points out that though Go "comes preloaded on some phones made by Motorola, LG, Samsung and Nokia, carriers in the United States strip the software from the phones."