Finishing up our interview with August, I ask him about what it is like being an iPhone developer in the lime-light, or Celebrity Developer. He talks about how much fun it has been to break out of the traditional role from time to time, and how it has really helped out his programming business.

I also get his opinions on Apple’s filing to have jailbreaking iPhones judged illegal, what that means to the development community, and how jailbreaking is actually beneficial to the App Store and making the iPhone a popular development platform. August also tells us why he has avoided it.

Most importantly, August gives us the breaking story about the soon to be released app, YOWZA!!, and how it will change the way you shop and use your iPhone.

Listen to how August met Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman on Heroes) on Twitter, and joined forces with Rick Yaeger from MacMerc, to create a whole new business model for an iPhone app, and how they have tackled the problems of turning your iPhone into a money-saving shopping tool! And it’s going to be FREE!

Here is a little taste from Greg himself.

Enjoy!

You can check out August’s digital book, Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari on your Kindle from Amazon, or buy it in PDF format here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Well, the keynote is over and no significant iPhone news. No significant news at all, really. Quick roundup: new 17″ MacBook Pro, new iWork, new iLife, DRM free iTunes music.

The only iPhone related news had to do with other products mainly. First, there are some new slideshow formats you can sync to the iPhone from the updated iPhoto. Whoop-tee-do! Second, all songs in the iTunes Music Store will be DRM free by the end of this quarter (that’s March 31st to you and me). And there will be variable pricing (you know — all the songs you want will cost more while the ones you don’t want will cost less). And finally there will be a Keynote Remote app available for the iPhone. While these are great and wonderful things to some, to me it’s just meh…

Where’s the iPhone Nano? Were the case manufacturers just playing with us?

Where’s the notification service? You know, the one that we were told would launch in September 2008? The one that was in the iPhone SDK, then pulled? Where’s iChat for the iPhone?

But most importantly, where is MMS? Every $9 phone has that now. Why doesn’t the most advanced phone in the world have it? I bet that new Palm to be announced tomorrow will have it.

I guess we’ll have to just keep waiting for these things. Apple always does things on their own time schedule. But, come on! Please, Steve? Or Phil? Or anyone? Pretty please? Or maybe, I will look at that new palm? I wonder how many apps you can load on that device?

Tap Tap Tap, developer of a couple of the most popular and beautifully designed applications like Where To? (4.5 stars), Tipluator (3.5 stars) has imploded over differences in direction between it’s founders. It’s a theme we’ve seen before in iPhone developer Tapulous.

In this corporate divorce, most of the software has gone to Sophia Teutschler and will go under her Sophiestication Software name. This includes Tipulator, Groceries (unreleased), and Where Am I? (unreleased). The one odd ball, Where To? will be sold off by Tap Tap Tap and has already been removed from the App Store.

Tap Tap Tap has a few other projects in the works, though no details have been released.

For more info on this, see the latest Tap Tap Tap blog post here.

What’s going on over at Tapulous? They have now lost two more employees, Sean Heber (engineer, employee #1) and Louie Matia (designer/UI) has left as well. They must be down to 3 employees now after losing Mike Lee and most recently Tristan O’Tierney.

Originally, the future looked so bright for Tapulous as they had built the top notch development team. But losing the majority of the company in just over a month can’t signal good things for their future.

In another sign that Tapulous is having some internal problems, Tristan O’Tierney sent a tweet tonight that he is no longer at Tapulous. No reason has yet been given nor any indication if the parting was amicable, though a blog post has been promised by Tristan.

You may remember that Tapulous also lost a co-founder Mike Lee just a few weeks ago. Does this latest loss show continued signs of problems at Tapulous or just a direction change? It has been speculated that Tapulous is looking to VCs for money, a decision that could easily change the direction of the company and it’s products. A change that could disagree with some of the original employees.

Tristan is the developer of Twinkle, Tapulous’ first officially released application in the App Store.

Tapulous, the developer of some of the most popular free applications in the iTunes App Store has lost a prominent engineer and co-founder, Mike Lee. Mike Lee, self designated toughest programmer in the world, was asked to resign from the company over voicing concerns the engineers had on the direction of the company.

This is a rather shocking turn and points to obvious strife in the company. Something that can destroy a young company like Tapulous. Especially so in such a rapidly growing industry like iPhone development where talented people are at such high demand. With the current boom in iPhone app development, the engineers at Tapulous can all pretty much name their price at dozens of companies.

Consider this a turning point for one of the brightest stars in iPhone app development. From this point they either get stronger or implode.

Tapulous is a development company behind Tap Tap Revenge (iTunes) and Twinkle (iTunes).

[via Mike Lee's Blog ]