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Although Microsoft themselves haven’t deigned to design applications for the iPhone directly (yet!), that doesn’t mean their various subsidiaries and hangers-on aren’t eyeing the platform. We already told you about the first zany Microsoft-tech to hit the iPhone, the Olympic-version of the Zumobi tiled-content application. Now Gizmodo brings word of another Microsoft-related company coming to the iPhone: TellMe.

TellMe is a more direct Microsoft subsidiary than Zumobi and it’s essentially a voice recognition company whose technology is already used by Microsoft in various applications (notably for mobile users, on their excellent Live Search app for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian devices). They also have a stand-alone BlackBerry app that enables localized search. The basic premise is that you talk at your phone, your voice gets transmitted to the TellMe servers for very quick and very intelligent voice recognition and parsing, and finally those servers send your phone the information you asked for. All in all, it’s a pretty sweet system ….as long as you have unlimited data.

Our hope / assumption is we’ll see some voice recognition software that will not only handle local search (and integrate with Google Maps) but will also manage to search contacts. Pretty Please?

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, in an attempt to get to the bottom of the PodcasterGate’s latest controversy, namely Apple reportedly slapping “NDA” (Non-Disclosure Agreement) on the rejection notices and discussion there off, confidentially polled developers and came to the following conclusion:

My conclusion is that as [redacted] up as this entire situation is, both with the App Store rejections for “duplication of functionality” and NDA frustrations, it does not seem as though Apple has changed its policy regarding whether rejection notices are confidential.

Indeed, some Mac (but not iPhone) developers reported all their communications from Apple, going way back, bore non-disclosure language. This latest wrinkle does indeed appear to be inconsistent legal notices from different Apple developer reps, rather than any substantive change in response to PodcasterGate.

Still, resentment levels among iPhone developers are still soaring, and due to the NDA, the public displeasure ain’t nothing compared to what’s building internally.

Daring Fireball points to this Twitter from Raven Zachary as a reason why developers will put up with Apple’s capricious and communication-challenged App Store:

Trism, the $5 gravity/tilt-assisted iPhone puzzle game by Steve Demeter, has made $250,000 since July 11.

We’re pointing to DF because they’re right.

And for more on the other side of the App Store debate, check out the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly from TWiT, where Scott and Alex take complaining developers to task, pointing to PodcasterGate as something that could threaten Apple’s revenue stream if Amazon or another major company sited it as precedence for releasing their own music catcher Apps, bypassing iTunes, instigating Apple shareholder lawsuits, and other corporate level intrigue.

Agree or disagree, all sides of the issue are definitely upping the debate. (And Trism may just have given one side 250K more arguments in their favor…)

The folks at Mozilla are still fuming mad over Safari-gate. The developers behind the popular open source browser Firefox stated flatly that no efforts will be made to port Firefox to iPhone, blaming Apple’s Gestapo-like restrictive software license.

So this means I can’t look forward to a browser that consumes half my memory and grinds to a halt on AJAX-heavy websites? Tragic.

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Fortune is quoting Microsoft VP of Specialized Devices and Applications Group (whatever the hell that is), who indicates the software giant may be open to developing applications for iPhone.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone, to the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”

The thought of Microsoft software running on iPhone is sobering enough, but even more so when you consider the company’s own mobile platform, Windows Mobile, competes directly with iPhone. Fear the fruit.

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iLounge tells us that Apple has sent out a second note to would be $99-level iPhone SDK developers:

“We have many more requests than we can serve during this initial beta period, so we must limit the Program at this time. We plan to expand it during the beta period, and we will contact you regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. We appreciate your patience.”

This follows up on last week’s far more confusing note, and the rampant speculation it caused.

Now TUAW brings word that some developers have, indeed, been granted access to SDK paradise:

The accepted developers were apparently among the first to apply. The accepted developers previously received the rejection letter. The acceptances appear to be random. The program is firewalled. Five iPhone limit. Test devices are iBricks [or maybe not: see update at TUAW]

So does that really clarify anything? Will anxious developers get in before June? Or is Apple dropping the ball?

Following up on the cryptic “I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me” letters Apple sent out last week to many (all?) would-be iPhone developers who had coughed up the $99 for a certificate all signed and legal, Daring Fireball reports on whether or not anybody has made it in already:

I believe there are a small handful of developers who are sort of “in” already, but they were hand-selected by Apple. Perhaps, as with the ones who came on stage during the event to demo their “two weeks worth of work” apps, they were involved before the SDK was even officially announced.

But everything I’ve heard suggests that last week’s email from Apple was sent to everyone who applied for the program. I.e., there are developers who’ve been let in through the back door, but no one has gotten in through the front door yet.

John Gruber goes on to quote two sources who’ve told him that Apple has received over 10,000 applications alone for the $99 package and couldn’t meet demand for certificates this fast if it wanted to (and no one seems sure whether they do or not, nor how badly).

Massive over-reaction by the Twitterati? Yet another example of Apple’s dwindling communications skills? And will we have to wait until the June (30th at 11:59pm?) release to know for sure?!

Ah, Apple gone and done it now! SXSW debuted this year’s hottest social trend: Mass Twitter-steria, and now the 140 character mob has its torches and pitchforks ready to storm Cupertino. Or not.

Let’s back up a step. Following the Apple SDK announcement, pretty much everyone and their neck-bearded uncle rushed to developer.apple.com and started their download engines. 100,000 of them in the first few days alone. That’s a lot of love. And even more expectation.

Today, many would-be developers, including tippity-top tier indie sensations, received the following cryptic response from Apple (via Daring Fireball)

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Apple slamming the door, or asking a larger-than-anticipated crowd to take a number and please be patient? Sadly, no rosetta stone was provided to help us suss that out.

My money is on the latter. 100,000 certificates is a lot to process (and almost certainly weed out). That Apple didn’t communicate this effectively is, unfortunately and increasingly, par for the course 1 Infinite Loop way.

It should also be made clear that this in no way prevents anyone from developing on the iPhone, using the free ADC membership and the simulator environment. What this does, however, is prevent anyone who hoped to sign up for the $99 membership from receiving their authentication certificates. This means no transferring apps to an actual iPhone, and more importantly, no testing on an actual iPhone for now.

It seems like only yesterday Apple’s servers were overwhelmed by the unbridled lust of developers, feverishly downloading the newly released iPhone SDK, going offline and back again like cheap Christmas tree lights. Today Apple is reporting that over 100,000 SDK downloads have been made in a span of just four days. That’s amazing considering that traffic bottleneck prevented downloading to occur for hours at a time, and Apple’s iPhone developer page was broken for nearly two days.

Makes you wonder how much higher that figure would be if everything had gone smoothly out of the gate. 500,000 perhaps?

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No term strikes more fear and fluster in a coder than the word “Java”, and I’m not talking about the scalding hot cup of Starbucks dark roast you spilled in your lap on the way to work this morning. No, I’m talking about Sun Microsystems’s long touted (and lamented) portable programming environment designed to run small applications through virtual runtimes. Java is best known for its ever-reaching marketing slogan “Write once, run anywhere”, though veteran developers will tell you the only thing Java truly excels at is crashing.

Now, for better or worse (I’m leaning towards the latter), Java support is coming to iPhone. For end users its arrival will go largely unnoticed and have little impact, save for its manifestation in mobiles gaming. For corporate users, however, it heralds the iPhone’s arrival in the enterprise where custom Java applications are lingua franca. This is indeed important news. Just not to me. Next!

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