You've got to hand it to those indie developers, they always have something up their sleeve to give us more bang for our buck with the gadgets that we have. A free application called Dot.Tunes does that and more.

It basically extends the serviceability of your iTunes library so that you can stream it on the net and play it right off your PC. What the application actually does is turn your iTunes library into an SQL database and sends it from your PC to the web using an Ajax front-end and multi-layered security system.

While the basic service of the application is free, plug-ins to stream your iTunes through your Wii's, PS3's or PSP's browser are also available at US$ 10 a pop. Also, there's another plug-in available that gives you a custom interface for your iPhone which extends the amount of music you can fit in it for US$ 20.

DotTunes, an Australian-based company, encourages people to open up their iTunes library to friends through the use of their products. They had this to say regarding the matter:

Why pay to podcast or for internet radio streams, when you can publish your own radio shows, TV programs or music mixes directly to your loyal fans? Dot.Tunes is not some lightweight iTunes utility. It's a fully developed web server application that supports mp3, AAC, aiff, .wav, mpeg, mp4, and .mov files, allowing you to share your iTunes library contents with your friends in other cities, your classmates across the dorm or the coworkers scattered throughout the building.

"No software developer kit (SDK) is required for the iPhone." That statement may prove to be the death knoll for those who hoped to run cutting-edge third party applications on the iPhone.

As pointed out by Jesus Diaz in his Gizmodo post, third party software developers are now only limited to using AJAX, an internet standard that spawned applications such as Gmail, Facebook, and Google Maps. While AJAX has proven to be indispensable, it still gives developers little freedom when it comes to creating applications.

Apple's press release has this to say about the iPhone not having SDK:

Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone's services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps.

However, this is hardly new, since the Safari is already included in the iPhone, which can auto-detect phone numbers and addresses embedded in webpages effortlessly.

Needless to say, a lack of SDK means lack of innovative third party programs that may improve the experience of using the iPhone. More importantly, there will be a severe lack of great games that could possibly be played on the iPhone. Apple may have ties with Electronic Arts (EA) and id software - both game geniuses in their own right - but how about other game developers who know their stuff as well?

Simply put, not giving software developers enough freedom to create applications may very well hurt possible iPhone users hoping to get cutting edge technology.

Well, there's still widgets to work with, anyway.

YahooÂ?s own Graded Browser Support may have rated Apple's Safari "an A-graded browser" for achieving the highest level of support with the Yahoo interface library. But  the company released a preview of its Ajax-enabled home page only for Internet Explorer 6.0 and Firefox 1.5. Not surprisingly, Yahoo's act was met with bristling hostility from Apple fans. One developer  in particular described it as "highly disappointing and disillusioning" and "just plain wrong."

"The only logic one can use to justify such a move is based on a totally PC-centric viewpoint, which argues that only Windows users are worth troubling with, since they comprise the vast majority of potential viewers," said Leland Scot in an article on the topic posted on Musings from Mars. "But this is precisely the viewpoint that must cease if Web 2.0 is to become the fertile melting ground for truly cross-platform interdependence that it wants to be. ItÂ?s simply not the viewpoint of any company that really cares about Berners-LeeÂ?s vision or about the millions of users on platforms other than the virus- and malware-riddled mess that is Microsoft Windows today."

By the way Sir Timothy "Tim" John Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium once said "Anyone who slaps a Â?this page is best viewed with Browser XÂ? label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.Â?

Furthermore, Scot said Web 2.0 sites "should be built to open standards, and any catering to specific browser extensions should be avoided. If proprietary extensions are utilized, they should have no effect on the siteÂ?s core functionality, and should not be even noticed by users of other browsers. For example, IÂ?ve employed a harmless extension to the HTML text input field that Apple developed in order to beautify search forms in Safari. ItÂ?s nice for Safari users, but has no impact on IE users or on Firefox users on any platform."

Looks like Yahoo stirred a hornets nest and the pissed hornets are not holding back on the sting!