• The Guardian runs a piece of iPhone apps, sensibly pointing out that not everyone developing apps is a millionaire just yet.
• That said, apps seems to be selling faster than songs did: "It took Apple more than two years to sell 1 billion songs on iTunes, so it's going to hit 1 billion apps about three times faster."
• Lovely if frightening piece on the Register about the mobile as self-inflicted surveillance: "There are already two documented cases in Europe where not carrying a mobile phone was considered one of the grounds for arrest"
• The panopticon ain't all bad, depending on who's doing the watching;
• Some fairly obvious video chat patents for the iPhone;
• US mobile carriers want fewer OSs, film at 11, though why any carrier wants to get involved with supplying "a unified development environment" to provide cross-device consistency is beyond me. Developer support is probably the one thing operators have been worse at than being media companies (with a few exceptions I won't go into now, so everyone I know at operators thinks I'm talking about them).
• Sulake are doing a mobile virtual world, and about time too.
• Nokia have launched the Ovi store, though please god don't let them use "location sensing and social networks" to start recommending applications.
• Android went priced, and about time too. We've had surprisingly high download figures for some simple Android apps - hmm, I need to write a piece about that....

• Twitter on Scala: "the production issues that led them to consider Scala in the first place, what issues they ran into using Scala in production, and how Scala affected their programming style". Disclaimer: I know *nothing* about Scala, though it sounds like enforcement of functional programming (and its effect wrt concurrency) was the big win here...
• Google App Engine got Java - wooo! Very exciting, I've been playing with this over the weekend and the tools look decent (though, ahem, my first real GAE project won't bloody deploy). I think this'll make a big difference to how we build and host server-side products long-term...
• Mock objects for threading tests;

• 10 graphic design paradoxes - though I can't see anything here which only applies to graphic design, all good stuff
• dominant UI metaphors and how we might escape them: "It seems a bit fatalistic, but I can’t think of a way that the entire desktop metaphor can be overhauled without either everyone in the world switching over at once (which won’t happen), or becoming a “data island” like the Newton or Classic Mac OS.". I've just read Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson, who's wonderfully annoyed at the universal adoption of UIs from Xerox PARC: more metaphors, now!
• Design considerations for touch UI

We're just putting together a newsletter for FP, and looking through it, I've realised I'm doing a bit of speaking over the next few months. So if you fancy catching up, I'll be:

• Doing a short skit on "Knocking Down Walls" at MobileDesign in London on 22nd April. Getting designers and developers working well together - particularly in an "Agile" environment - is a Really Big Deal to me. I'll be talking about a few of the things we've learned over the years.
• Then on 3rd and 4th June I'll be up at the Mobile Web Summit, also in London. My talk is titled "Mobile Media 2.0 - a 2 way channel, leveraging the benefits of enhanced communication with your audience", which I think is a very posh way of saying that I'll be talking about why mobile is good for conversations more than broadcasting stuff. Hopefully I'll manage to come out with some observations which aren't *quite* that obvious ;)
• Update: how could I forget? I'm not speaking there, but really looking forward to Geek'n'Rolla on April 21st. It'll be a good opportunity to take the pulse of the UK startup scene...

I'm also keeping my fingers crossed about a submission I've co-authored for a certain Large Agile conference, but more on that when I hear back from the organisers...

Hmm. These lists-of-links aren't working so well for me. Does anyone actually read em?

• Biometric sensors in iPhones?
• The dangers of confusing marketing launches with product launches
• Running efficient meetings, some hints from Seth Godin. As the years go by I'm increasingly convinced that little things - like meeting discipline - are deceptively important.
• iPhone - not the only game in town, but a great hook for getting businesses interested in mobile again :)
• Nice graph showing the value of flat-rate data in growing mobile usage;
• Toilet paper manufacturer sponsors mobile directory of public toilets, available as an iPhone app - obviously;
• The Google UX guidelines: "useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable";
• Apple introduce a refund policy and get a few folks' backs up;
• I'm really enjoying anything Steve Blank blogs at the moment.
• iPhone app usage drops over time and ad revenue won't cut it (according to App Store Secrets);
• App stores, app stores, app stores. Device vendors will do them, operators will do them, third parties will do them. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
• What to do if your startup is about to fail;
• Trutap won a Spiffy!
• Smule do it again, with the iPhone Trombone;