Want an iPhone app business without all the boring hassle of actually programming and releasing iPhone apps? Boy, does Brice Milliorn have a deal for you! He's auctioning off his iPhone app business, which he says has 87 different apps for sale, over on eBay.

Milliorn says he started out developing apps on his own, but the business is just too big for him to keep up so he's selling all of the apps and their rights, all of the source code, and technical support for two months to transition everything over to the new owner. He doesn't specifically say that he'll transfer the developer account on Apple's App Store to your name (he says he'll send over a DVD with the source code and transfer "the whole kit and caboodle" to you), but we presume that's what will happen -- of course if you go for it, you're doing this at your own risk.

What will a burgeoning App Store business, complete with apps like iSexyRef and Swine Flu cost you? Just a cool $100 grand. That's the starting bid in the eBay auction, which has just over a week left and no bids as of this writing. There are certainly less expensive ways to get started selling apps on the store. It only costs $100 to register in Apple's Developer Program for a year, and then you just need to find a developer you can pay -- or even do it yourself with a helper service).

If you'd rather start off with a bunch of marginal to silly 99-cent apps and happen to have an extra $100,000 lying around to spend (maybe for a nice holiday gift?), here's your opportunity.

iPhone developer Brian Stormont pinged us this morning to share the news that Apple has quietly updated iTunes Connect with a great new feature: Status History. Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site.

This option does not, at this time, appear to be universally available. When I checked my personal apps this morning in the iTunes Connect "Manage Your Applications" screen, I was unable to find any Status History links on any of my application listings. However, I was able to confirm this feature with other iPhone developers.

Another new feature appears to be that the amber-bubbled status messages have been extended. In addition to the standard "In Review," iTunes Connect now offers a "Waiting for Review" status for newly uploaded material. If you see any further interface changes or new status messages, drop us a comment and let us know.

So what does this all mean? In my opinion, this is all great stuff, helping move Apple towards greater developer feedback. No, it's still not the full ticketing system that a lot of us are hoping for but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Thanks, Maior

We mentioned Gamesalad's plans to bring their publishing system to the iPhone earlier this year, and now they've done it: for $99 a year, they say that you'll be able to design games on their game creator development tool, and then publish them straight out to the iPhone's App Store. If you don't want to bother publishing the games yourself, you can create them and have them "viewed" through the Gamesalad Viewer (which we couldn't find on the App Store quite yet), or you can export them out as full applications and publish them as your own iPhone apps (Flutterby is in the store right now as an example of a Gamesalad Creator game).

There's also a $1999 membership service that lets you customize every aspect of your games, and provides you with direct customer support, which is supposed to be for "elite users" (like, we guess, actual game companies). And truthfully, I've developed a few apps using just Xcode, and it's not too big a deal (though I've never had to go through an actual release or worked with end users, which I'm sure is most of the battle anyway). But if the thought of using professional coding tools to develop your little game idea sends you into panic attacks, and the Gamesalad creator seems more your speed, this might be a nice viable way for you to turn your gaming idea into App Store gold.

It costs nothing to download and try out the creator, so if the idea interests you, you can work on putting a game together, and then pay later when you decide you've got something you want published on the iPhone. And hey, if you do put a game up, be sure to send a tip and let us know -- we'd love to see the end products of this process.

With all of the success stories coming out of the App Store, it's been pretty easy to forget the problem of piracy for most developers. Not so for Fishlabs, who've posted over on the Touch Arcade forums that their latest game, Rally Master Pro 3D, is experiencing a 95% piracy rate. You read that right: supposedly 95% of the people playing the game on the iPhone haven't paid for it.

There's probably a multitude of reasons why that is -- the app is $7 with no trial version, it's not a super-popular app quite yet (so one pirated copy on a popular message board is probably traveling farther than the copies coming off of the official App Store), and there are probably at least a few other factors in the mix that we don't know yet. Still, 95% is obviously pretty darn high for a platform that's supposed to only deliver software through Apple's official store.

Now, fortunately Fishlabs doesn't sound litigious -- they're not pulling the old "piracy = lost sales" fallacy that many companies in this situation would do. They are lowering the price on the app -- they expected it to be worth more, but apparently their consumer base seems to disagree. They tell Mobile Entertainment that they'd entertain the idea of providing content only through Apple's in-app purchasing service (presumably, that would prevent piracy by locking down the extra content), but they also say that's a gamble they've tried and missed on other platforms before.

Of course, it'll take more than one post on one message board to make hay out of the problem of app piracy -- it definitely happens, but on the other hand, there certainly are apps selling well, and there are also apps not selling well that don't have this level of piracy going on. Apple already has lots of authentication and validation processes in place, but if app piracy is this big a problem for everyone, they may need to look at more.

Have you ever wanted to work with rather deep elements of Core Foundation in the iPhone SDK with some sort of front end? August Joki has just come up with a project that provides a Cocoa Touch wrapper for the CFStringTokenizer type in the Core Foundation framework.

As you can see in the screen shot at right, the demo provides various aspects about the current string including the string in a letter, word, or using a WordBoundary. It works just like CFStringTokenizer can, but can be accessed using this front-end.

If you're wondering what CFStringTokenizer actually is, it's useful for breaking a string into a token, which can specified by words, sentences, or paragraphs. You're also able to further modify the tokenization once you break it down.

This is something that's going to be useful for iPhone developers who like to work with a Cocoa Touch interface to bring lower-level elements of the iPhone OS into their apps, and also to developers who work with natural language strings.

To download this project, go over to the cocoa-stringtokenizer project page on GitHub.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 is apparently going gangbusters over on the App Store -- Tapulous has gotten in touch with us to let us know about two different free promotions they're doing lately, as well as give you readers a chance to win their entire catalog for free.

First up, the free stuff for everybody. Today, October 22, they're giving away the great song "Fireflies" by one of my favorite new music acts, Owl City. It just happens to also be the number one song in iTunes today as well, which is a pretty big deal for Tapulous -- it's the first time they've been able to pair up a TTR track release with a #1 on the download charts.

To get that free song, just sign in to the application and pick it up. Additionally, if you don't have the app yet, buying the app before this Friday can get you a free premium two-pack -- all you have to do for that is email your iTunes reciept (or a screenshot of it) to "freemusic AT tapulous DOT com" and put your TTR3 username (and only your username) in the email subject line.

And hey, if that's not enough free stuff, keep reading -- here at TUAW, we're giving away licenses to TTR3's entire premium catalog (the whole thing, from A Perfect Circle to Robbie Williams) to three lucky commenters.

It appears that the Dev Center at Apple just updated its documentation set today. If you're using Xcode 3.2 and you want to update your documentation, you might be looking in the wrong place.

Before 3.2, you used to update your documentation in the Developer Documentation window (Help > Developer Documentation, or Command-Option-?). Now you'll find your documentation sets in the Xcode Preferences window (Xcode > Preferences... or Command-, and then choose the Documentation tab). Also, if checked, Xcode will automatically update your documentation when you launch it.

This Documentation panel offers subscription options for installing a documentation set (such as, for example, Mac OS X Legacy Library or iPhone OS 2.2 Library) as well as a handy Check and Install Now button that lets you request the latest updates. Use this to keep on top of the latest documentation updates.

Thanks, Scott Lawrence and @zadr

Shazam is one of the first apps I actually used in context on the iPhone, and while we haven't heard much about the app since it debuted way back in the early days of the App Store, apparently the company itself has been blowing up, thanks to the free app. They've picked up a nice round of investment from venture capitalists, and the service itself now boasts over 50 million users (by comparison, Last.fm claims only 30 million, but they've gotten way more press than Shazam's service, including recent integration on Xbox Live). That's a heck of an achievement, and Apple is a huge part of it -- not only did Shazam make a big splash on their iPhone app, but they say that Apple actually helped connect the VCs and the company together. That's an interesting peek behind the scenes at what Apple is doing for one of the App Store's oldest and most popular free apps.

As for why Shazam is so popular, the VCs say they can see the platform as a "springboard" for selling music, advertising, and a few other commodities. Currently Shazam's free app only lets you tag five songs a month (a limit I never hit and thus didn't know about, even though I would say that I do use the app regularly), but they're planning a paid version that will allow unlimited identification of songs through the iPhone's microphone. I don't know how well that will sell (it's hard to believe that people will pay $5 for a service they are already using for free, though perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of music that people want to "tag"), but it's clear that Shazam is a company that is making the absolute best of having an extremely popular free app on the App Store.

It was just yesterday that Apple announced they would allow free apps to enable in-app purchases, and developers are already jumping on the "get the app for free, buy the content later" business model as quickly as they can. ngmoco came out swinging, as Touch Arcade reports, with both a free intro version of Rolando 2 out for purchase, with later chapters of the game as add-ons. They've also been working on a shooter called Eliminate, and we're now told that title will be free as well, with extra content to buy later.

The creators of Urban Rivals, an app that is based on a virtual trading card game, have let us know that they too plan to go the free-with-microtransactions model as soon as their app is released, and though we haven't actually heard from Tapulous, Andrew Lacy told us outright that the only reason Tap Tap Revenge 3 had a 99 cent price tag on it was because of Apple's limitation, so we'll expect that app to go free as soon as it can.

Clearly, there's a drive for this model on the developer side, but the question will be just how much this echoes with consumers -- certainly the "download a trial, buy more later" model has worked well on other platforms, so we can expect it to work here on the App Store as well. But on the other hand, just as when the App Store first opened for business, it's a very "wild west" moment -- everybody and their brother is offering up in-app transactions, and they're all of varying prices and quality.

My guess is that we'll see a few "hits" -- a few free apps that everybody buys content for (Tap Tap Revenge 3 is a good guess; considering that because you know most of those songs, there's much less guessing on what the quality of the transactions will give you). At the same time, there will likely be apps that everyone agrees aren't worth the in-app purchase (it's the old story of "horse armor" when Xbox Live started doing microtransactions). Until we find a good balance, where quality meets price, odds are that it'll be tough for consumers to know just what's worth it, and thus tough for developers to convince them that their content is.

I like the way Schiau Studios thinks -- when customers complained about the price of their $2.99US App Store game Alchemize, they raised the price up to $39.99. Over on the TouchArcade forums, they make their case: most devs, they say, when faced with complaints about price, will just lower their price even though their software is already cheap. So they wanted to buck the trend, and instead raised it up to almost $40 (which, incidentally, is slightly more than what you might pay for a handheld console game).

Lest you simply complain that they were greedy, they say they were only out to make a point: everyone who purchased the game at the higher price point will have all of their money go to charity, and now that the game's back at the $2.99 price point, 33% of all the profits to be gained will go to the same charity. Regardless of whether the game's any good or not, we like their thinking.

Can we all agree to stop griping about price points? I've actually heard this come up lately on a comedy podcast of all places -- when Chicago broadcasting legend Steve Dahl (and one of my favorites) started up a podcast about a month ago, and introduced an app to go along with it. Steve was inundated with comments complaining about the $2.99 price, which he responded to with a great argument on the show: he's put a lot of money into the app and the show behind it, and if you're already a fan of his, paying less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks should not even be an issue.

Sure, when the App Store first started up, it was the Wild West -- both prices and quality were all over the place. But at this point, Apple's review system has more or less settled down, and blogs like ours are full of recommendations, with enough free apps to last any rabid app user most of their iPhone time. If you have any interest in an app at all, a couple of bucks shouldn't be enough to give you pause -- either pick it up and make sure the dev gets their due (small as that may be), or move on to find an app you'd rather buy.

As posting code on the blog can sometimes can get very cluttered, we have just set up a GitHub account for TUAW to make everything better and easier for everyone. This is where you'll be able to find code for our developer-related posts. We'll try to get some projects hosted in there very soon, so don't worry that it's empty now! If you haven't heard of it, GitHub is a hosting site for git revisions, which makes it a great place to host and interact with code of all kinds.

You can find our profile at http://github.com/tuaw today. What would you like to see on TUAW for iPhone/Mac development? Let us know in the comments below!

I only follow a few sports teams, but for the teams I do follow, Sportacular (that's the iTunes link for the free version, and here's the paid version, sans ads) is definitely my app of choice. For nearly every professional sport you can think of, the app will track scores, plays, schedules, standings, and anything else you need to know about everything from NFL to college football to the English Premier League and the PGA.

Right after iPhone OS 3.0 came out, the developer added in push notifications, and now I've got push updates coming whenever the Cubs have a game starting and ending (or at least, when they did -- there's always next year) and whenever a Bears quarter ends. Sportacular even has a few social features happening -- you can make picks and discuss each game with other fans using your Facebook login, as well as read news and updates about each team in the games you check out.

The app was updated to version 1.6 last night, and the new features include better game pages for NFL and NCAA football, and option to manage and track your fantasy football team in conjunction with their fantasy football app on Facebook. The one bummer I have is that they don't have actual media of the games -- for that, you'll probably have to go for an official app. But especially as a free download (the ads are definitely non-intrusive), Sportacular is really impressive with everything it does to help you track your favorite sports and teams.

Edible Apple has an interesting analysis up about this Newsweek article claiming that App Store developers aren't getting rich. Newsweek basically claims that all those success stories we've heard about App Store developers have a darker side: if they aren't already buried in costs from developing that hit app, they're desperately scrambling to rise above the noise and get another one's sales up on the App Store. [For a similar perspective to Newsweek's, check out this post from Ged Maheux at the Iconfactory.]

Edible Apple replies that that's true, but a closer inspection of the numbers shows that these devs are actually making plenty of money -- while their costs are going higher than they expected (one example has a developer paying over $100,000 to make $200,000) there is still money to be made. What developers are actually discovering, says Edible Apple, is that the App Store isn't a gold rush -- it's a business.

That's an interesting point. In the beginning, the App Store was a gold rush -- you could hack together a fart app and come up with a few month's worth of beer money over night. But with almost 100,000 apps, it's a different ballgame. You either need to come up with an original idea that people are interested in, or polish an existing idea until it shines so bright it's unavoidable. And as Edible Apple says, that's actually a good thing. There is money to be made in the App Store these days -- multiple developers have proven that already. It'll take work and luck to do it, but isn't that the case with any successful business?

Part of my work requires me to mock up iPhone apps, often to show developers how I would redesign a user interface to work better than something they've come up with. Over the past few months, a number of paper sketchbooks have appeared on the market, all designed expressly for this purpose. I decided to try out all of the sketchbooks that I could find in a cursory Google search, just to see which one would work best for me. Of course, that meant that I had to write a review!

The three products I discovered and tested were App Sketchbook (US$16.99), iPhone Application Sketch Book (US$14.99), and The Developer Sketchbook for iPhone Apps (US$19.99). All of them are designed for the same reason, to let iPhone devs or business analysts describe how they want an application's user interface to look. Follow along as I take a look at these three sketchbooks, as well as a metal stencil template for drawing UI elements.