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Despite some early problems managing the flood of developers seeking access to the iPhone software development kit, Apple reported 100,000 developers have downloaded the kit as of Sunday.

Apple formally released the iPhone SDK after an event at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters last Thursday. The SDK will allow third-party developers to create games, business software, and other types of applications for the iPhone with Apple’s official blessing.

Several would-be iPhone developers reported problems actually getting a copy of the SDK in their hands during the first day or so it became available. Over the weekend, Apple sent registered developers an e-mail acknowledging, “You may have recently experienced difficulty gaining access to, or downloading the iPhone SDK.” But that traffic jam seems to have cleared itself up as the initial frenzy died down.

In Wednesday’s press release, Apple included quotes from a number of third-party developers that give a pretty clear signal of what types of applications are already in development.

Intuit (TurboTax), Namco Networks (Pac-Man and Galaga), NetSuite (ERP/CRM software), and Six Apart (blogging software) are a few of the companies whose PR departments graciously worked up executive quotes for Apple’s announcement. During the event, AOL, Sega, EA, Epocrates, and Salesforce.com showed off preliminary versions of their iPhone applications.

If you haven’t downloaded a copy of the SDK yet, here’s where you can find it. The beta version of the SDK is free to download, but if you want to release applications based on the SDK you’ll have to join Apple’s iPhone Developer Program for $99 a year.

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It’s the first update since the SDK was released in November and includes changes requested by developers.

Google highlighted a couple of changes in the updated SDK, which was released Wednesday. It has a new user interface that the search giant said is still a work in progress.

In addition, developers can now support additional file formats in the Android media player. Also, applications can translate an address into a coordinate and the reverse, in location-based programs.

Developers haven’t had much time to review the updates; few have posted reactions on the Android developers’ blog.

Even though developers said that the first version of the SDK was thin, Android has managed to gain momentum. Four chipmakers, including Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, showed off prototypes that support Android this week in Barcelona at the annual Mobile World Congress.

Still, Android faces competition from the established mobile operating systems as well as companies that have rallied behind LiMo, the consortium that is developing an open Linux mobile operating system. At the conference in Barcelona, LiMo announced 18 phones that comply with the operating-system specification that are either on the market already or will be.

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It’s open bug hunting season over at uTest which is rolling out its QA marketplace and community.

The startup is trying a crowdsourcing approach to testing software bugs. Anyone can sign up to test software and make some cash. uTest estimates that its testers will be able to rake in anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month, depending on tester-expertise and bug pricing.

It is important to note that bug prices will fluctuate in real-time based on a variety of parameters, including: Bug type (logical, GUI), type of application (Web, desktop), number of testers that fit the required profile for the testing environment, bugs left to find, and more.

Over 2000 testers from around the world have already signed-up, so it seems the company’s pay-per-bug model is resonating well across testing professionals.

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Cobra, a .Net-based programming language, is being readied for open source release as an all-in-one solution to address multiple needs in software development.

Now in a beta stage of development, plans call for offering the language as an open source offering later this month under the MIT license and having a general, 1.0 release ready some time this year, said Chuck Esterbrook, the author of Cobra. Cobra runs on .Net and Novell’s Mono, which enables .Net applications to run on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS, and Windows.

“The idea is to take productivity boosters that are currently scattered among different languages and bring them together in one language so you can get the benefits of all of them at the same time,” Esterbrook said. Cobra is intended as a general-purpose language for building any type of application.

Users would get static and dynamic binding, which is featured in Objective-C and Boo; the expressiveness and quick coding of Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk; and the runtime performance of C#, Java, and C++, the Cobra Web site says. First-class language support for unit tests, now highlighted in D, also would be part of Cobra.

Also featured is a software contracts capability for object-oriented programming. Software contracts serve as an interface to the methods they describe, Esterbrook said. This capability currently is featured in the Eiffel and D platforms.

Cobra could save developers work. Citing the example of a program developed in Python and then ported to C++ for performance reasons, Esterbrook said Cobra is different in that it offers both rapid development and performance.

Cobra serves as a compiled language that has optional dynamic binding, providing improved error messages and performance, Esterbrook said. Development of Cobra is being done on both Macintosh and Windows; it also is being tested on Linux.

Additional refinements in Cobra include defaulting to accurate decimal math and detailed postmortem exception reports. Cobra offers “a practical synthesis of already-proven features that are currently scattered across multiple languages,” the Cobra site states.

Cobra’s naming was derived from its taking its syntax from Python. Until Microsoft’s Lang.Net Symposium in Redmond, Wash., last week, the project was in a stealth mode, with fewer than 10 serious users.

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After months of rumblings and announcements, MySpace is finally getting ready to pull the trigger on its long-awaited platform for developers. Starting today, programmers can sign up to register for the MySpace API program, which will go live on February 5th. The APIs will allow developers to create social applications for MySpace much like they can already for Facebook. The platform will be compatible with Google’s OpenSocial platform, meaning that applications written for OpenSocial will work on MySpace with a few minimal tweaks.

More details will come out later about what exactly the APIs will allow developers to do, but at a high level they will allow for deeper integration into MySpace than can currently be done with Flash widgets. The APIs we believe will support Flash, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets, and give developers deeper access to MySpace member profile information and their connections. Developers also will be able to make money from advertising associated with their applications.

MySpace has a lot of catching up to do with Facebook in terms of building a loyal community of developers. For one thing, Facebook is far ahead technology-wise, with nearly 15,000 apps written for the site. But competition is always welcome. One way for MySpace to attract developers would be to offer better economic incentives. Amit Kapur, who is MySpace’s newly-appointed COO, tells me he is most excited about helping developers make money:

Yeah, I think ultimately that may be an area where we are able to differentiate. If you look at the past, companies like Photobucket and YouTube did contribute to the success of MySpace. They were continuing to build on the user experience in ways we were not focused on. Philosophically, we want to make that easier for companies.

As we find out more details about how the economics will shake out, we’ll keep you posted. Kapur also mentioned that the three big areas MySpace is focusing on right now are: making the Web more personal, more portable (through both mobile and data portability), and more collaborative. It is a fair bet that social apps that focus on those areas are likely to receive more attention from MySpace.

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Is Ruby on Rails the next Java? Benchmark Capital thinks so. It just invested $3.5 million in Engine Yard, taking its entire series A round. Ruby on Rails is an increasingly popular Web application programming environment because it is dead-simple, open-source and very fast to develop on. The downside is that it is not always as robust as more mature frameworks such as Java.

In fact, Ruby on Rails is getting a lot of the same criticisms that Java got in its early days. Namely, that it can’t handle millions of users or handle huge transaction loads. “Everybody considers it a great prototyping language, but not serious enough for enterprise quality environments,” notes Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky. But Engine Yard wants to change all of that by providing a hosted environment for Ruby-on-Rails apps that is is stable, kept up to date, and lets the applications scale to millions of users. Combine that with the simplicity of Rails, and Lasky thinks he has a winner:

    Rather than it being top-down the way Java was, Rails has grown up out of the grass roots of the programming community. Rails allows you to innovate and iterate so rapidly that it has accelerated the rate of innovations.
Rails is making it fun to program Web apps again. Java is not fun. Happy programmers are productive programmers.

Engine Yard wants to be to Ruby on Rails what Red Hat is to Linux. By figuring out the best, enterprise-class implementation of Ruby on Rails, and keep it maintained, its customers don’t have to worry about it. Engine Yard already hosts Ruby on Rails apps for 250 customers, including Kongregate and divisions of several Fortune 500 companies. Competition could come on the hosting side from companies like Joyent, and on the technology side from Sun’s own JRuby initiative, which is a Java implementation of the Ruby programming language.

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Between mountains of code, demanding clients, and long hours, freelance programmers have a challenging life. Fortunately, we’re not the only ones that realize this. In fact, there are loads of resources out there designed to make a freelance programmer’s life just a little bit easier, and we’ve highlighted 100 of them here.

Cheat Sheets & Tutorials

If you just can’t seem to remember a specific piece of code, or if you need a crash course in a new language, these resources are here to lend a hand.

1. A Field Guide to Scriptaculous Combination Effects: Use this resource to learn about Scriptaculous combination effects, from options to toggling and more.
2. JavaScript Cheat Sheet: Get the lowdown on JavaScript expressions, functions, and more with this cheat sheet.
3. AJAX Programming Online: Take this Sun employee’s AJAX course, or just check out the site for loads of information.
4. CSS Panic Guide: Don’t panic! This guide is here to guide you in the right direction with CSS.
5. ASPFAQs: Get all of your ASP questions answered in this repository.
6. CSS Cheat Sheet: Use this cheat sheet for a shortcut on CSS syntax and more.
7. CSS Property Index: With this index, you should have no trouble figuring out properties.
8. ASP/VBScript Cheat Sheet: This cheat sheet will help you cover expressions, methods, and more in ASP and VBScript.
9. A Simple Guide to HTML: For super simple HTML, use this cheat sheet for formatting and more.
10. Ruby QuickRef: Keep this reference handy for help with the Ruby language.
11. PHP Cheat Sheet: PHP cheaters can take advantage of the references to SuperGlobals and more on this cheat sheet.
12. PHP Code Exchange: This exchange site is home to loads of searchable PHP code.
13. Max Kiesler: Round-up of 30 AJAX Tutorials: Get access to loads of AJAX tutorials with this list.
14. Python 101 Cheat Sheet: Get a Python intro with this cheat sheet.

Business Tools & Advice

If you rock at writing code, but can’t seem to keep your books straight, these resources are for you.

15. Tax Tips for Freelancers: Learn about tracking expenses as well as Schedule C in this article from About.com.
16. Less Accounting: Manage your invoices and stay on top of clients with this accounting and CRM hybrid.
17. Freelance Tax FAQ: Go through this question-and-answer session from The Anti 9-to-5 Guide to find out what you need to know about deductions and other important tax items.
18. Web Site Development Agreement: Check out this real-life development agreement for contract guidance.
19. Creative Commons: Use Creative Commons to license and protect your work as much or as little as you want.
20. Furd Log: Read this blog to consider the aspects of intellectual property.
21. Escrow: Don’t let non-paying clients flake out on you. With Escrow, you can require that they put money up in advance, and you’ll get paid once you’ve completed the job.
22. Can You Take a Home Office Deduction?: If you do programming work from home, read this article to get the lowdown on claiming a home office deduction.
23. Is it Time to Upgrade Your Accounting Software?: Consider the effectiveness of your accounting software with this resource.
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