Mobile, Iphone App | featured news

An iPhone app aimed at helping Catholics through confession and encouraging lapsed followers back to the faith has been sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the United States.

Apple Inc joined a growing number of U.S. corporations that have cut ties with WikiLeaks, removing an application from its online store that gave users access to the controversial website's content and Twitter feed because it violated guidelines.

"The Smurfs' Village," a game for the iPhone and other Apple gadgets, was released a month ago and quickly became the highest-grossing application in the iTunes store. Yet it's free to download.So where does the money come from? Kelly Rummelhart of Gridley, Calif., has part of the answer. Her 4-year-old son was using her iPad to play the game and racked up $66.88 in charges on her credit card without knowing what he was doing.

Apple began carrying Google's free voice app for iPhone on Tuesday, after the application hung in limbo for more than a year.

Internet-payment provider PayPal said its iPhone application contained a security flaw that could allow a hacker to access users' accounts and has rushed out an update to correct the problem.

The App Store review office at 1 Infinite Loop has officially frozen over: we've gotten word that the official Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone in the next few weeks. In fact, we've heard from a source close to Google that it's already been approved — Google just needs to revamp the application to work with the iPhone 4 and iOS's multitasking capabilities. If you're a Google Voice user and you're on an iPhone, this is great news.

It's been a long, long road to get here.

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.

With its new and official iPhone app, American Airlines joins Southwest as the second major U.S.-based airline to land on a smartphone near you. Also in today’s App Industry Roundup, 37signals acquires Ember and is now offering a free version of Campfire for the iPhone.

Application let users turn their iPhone into a wireless modem.

Mobile game developers are increasingly turning to Google's Android mobile operating system.