App Developers | featured news

What was born just before YouTube and Twitter, powers whole websites with open source code and has now been downloaded 25 million times? Joomla! The popular Content Management System with an exclamation point in its name passed a major milestone this month and now says its future will be based on helping developers build all kinds of other apps.

A boom in apps has fed longstanding tensions between Twitter and the developers over whether they are partners or competitors.

The search giant is hard at work on its new Google TV 2.0 product. Developers have been joining Google’s new “Fishtank” program to get early access to tools that will allow them to create compelling new content for Google’s next attempt at entering our living rooms. Google TV 2.0 runs a barebones version of Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) and there are reportedly only 50 developers partaking in the initial Fishtank program.

The BlackBerry maker has recruited web developers in several countries to blog about its new tablet

Recent revisions to the iOS developer agreements caused considerable controversy by restricting which programming languages could be used to develop iOS apps. Those changes also restricted what kind of analytics data could be collected by developers and advertisers. Now, however, Apple has backed off on its position: it will relax these rules in order to give developers more flexibility. Additionally, Apple will now actually publish a list of app review guidelines for developers—the first time the company has done so since the App Store launched more than two years ago.

Apple is attempting to avoid an antitrust probe into its trade practices by revising some of the terms of its developer agreement. It's not clear which parts would be revised, but government regulators are interested in provisions in Apple's iAd advertising program, and Apple's decision to reject apps built with cross-platform applications.

Apple has sent a clear message to any developers who try to game its iTunes App Store.