To web developers, scripting is the glue that connects web pages and back-end systems. For example, PHP is a very popular scripting environment that has been used to write web apps like WordPress and phpBB. For those of you who use PHP, you know that it is a dynamic, weakly-typed hypertext preprocessor. In other words, it's a scripting language that is embedded in the HTML code that makes up a web page.

Inspiring Applications, Inc. hopes to catch the imagination of web developers with Yuma, their new strongly-typed, object-oriented scripting tool that is being released today. Rather than the confusing syntax of PHP, Yuma uses a simple REALBasic-like syntax. It is natively compiled to machine code on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows for high speed.

Yuma Development Server for Mac OS X is available as a free download, complete with example code, a full developer reference, language definition files for BBEdit, TextMate and Text Wrangler, and more. When you're ready to deploy your Yuma web app, you can purchase and install Yuma Enterprise Server ($149). It's a command-line app and may be set up as a daemon.

To run either Yuma Development or Enterprise Server on Mac OS X, you need to be running OS X 10.3 or later on a G4, G5, or Intel-based Mac with at least 1 GB of RAM.

Thanks to Brad for the tip.

There are historic days, people. The App Store went live, and all of a sudden, we're drowning in new things for the iPhone. But it's not just a big deal for iPhone owners -- this is a huge day for society and technology in general. While there have been lots of PDAs, and lots of apps to run on them, there's never been anything like the App Store before -- here's five ways that Apple's platform for iPhone application distribution will change our world.

1. Ubiquitous computing.

Any science fiction writer will tell you that we're already living the future -- we can teleport things, robots are easy to make, and almost anything dreamed of can be done if you have enough money to do it. But a technology really doesn't move from fantasy to reality until it's everywhere, and thanks to the iPhone 3G, computing has become just that. You can't take a laptop around with you all the time (as in, to a fancy restaurant or to the movies) to edit photos or post to your blog, but you can bring the iPhone. It's the ultimate ultramobile platform, and it's now cheap enough to be everywhere, and powerful enough that almost any common computing task can be done.

Four more huge changes after the jump.

Nate True, iPhone developer extraordinaire and friend of TUAW (but who isn't, really), has sold off his Tap Tap Revolution game to a company called Tapulous, and they're renaming it Tap Tap Revenge and are going to try selling it in the iPhone's (and iPod touch's) App Store. The game isn't much tweaked from its jailbroken incarnation, but there is a chaotic two-player mode, seen above, that could be a lot of fun. I've never played the original version, so I have no idea what's up with the shaking, but it looks like it incorporates some accelerometer fun as well.

If you're a super TTR fan, Tapulous tells us that they've got a wallpaper to download on their site right now, and that more videos will be coming out over the weekend, so stay tuned. All these games are looking terrific, but of course the one thing we haven't heard confirmed from any of them is when and if they'll be showing up on the App Store. That, it seems, is up to Apple. It doesn't matter how many games you've got ready to go -- if Apple doesn't have them set for download right away, both the devs and iPhone owners will miss a nice opportunity.

As we get closer and closer to the App Store launch (I'm still holding out for seeing an updated iTunes on July 8th, one week from today), a few big name game developers have announced that they're checking out the market for gaming on the iPhone.

First up is Bioware, one of my favorite developers and makers of the classics Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and the recent Mass Effect. In an interview with Patrick Klepek over at MTV Multiplayer, Bioware's CEOs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk said that yes, they are watching the iPhone as a game development platform, but they're mostly keep an eye on "what type of consumer buys games on it and what type of experience they're looking for." I worry a bit that they mean that if only casual games sell big they'll stay away from it, because gentlemen, I'm playing games on the iPhone, and I would love a solid, in-depth RPG to play. Who wouldn't, really?

And former EA exec Neil Young has split from the company to form his own development house, called "ng:moco" ( we have no idea what that means, either). They'll focus exclusively on making games for the iPhone -- Young says that they want to step up to be the "spiritual first-party" for the platform. He points out that the iPhone has the power of a PSP, except that it's also got a camera, an accelerometer, a multitouch screen, is location-aware, has all your media on it, and is always on and always connected. Just like we've always said, that's a great gaming device, and it's exciting news that a former EA exec like Young is going to work on getting some great games developed for it.

Sure there are way too many social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but what if you want to find and connect to indie Mac developers and only indie Mac developers? Well, that's where MacYenta.com comes into play. MacYenta is a one-stop way to connect directly with your indie dev peers (maybe some that you met at WWDC '08).

By registering for a free account on MacYenta, you can instantly see the many indie developers that have already created profiles. Not to mention that you can create your own profile that lists who you are and the current projects you're working on. It's similar to what you might expect from LinkedIn, but on a much smaller scale. So, if you're an indie Mac dev looking for a job, looking to hire, or just looking to connect and talk with other indie Mac developers, be sure to check out MacYenta.com.

Roughly Drafted has an interesting (and long) article that discusses Apple, Adobe, Google and Microsoft, and their different approaches to developing rich applications for the web. The article is very readable for a non-technical audience, and well-researched, too.

The article contrasts Apple's mature development tools and platform frameworks with Google's new open-source tools (like Google Gears). Further, it discusses closed frameworks like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, and why Apple is ignoring those in favor of open-source, standards-based development for both apple.com and support for the iPhone.

Then it gets good. Daniel Eran Dilger writes about Charles Jolley's SproutCore, a JavaScript framework that Apple has adopted for its own rich web apps, based on a Cocoa-like model-view-controller foundation with bindings, key value observing, and view controls. Think JavaScript on Rails. SproutCore bares its teeth at Adobe's development tools, all ready to show off in Apple's upcoming release of Mobile Me.

"That makes SproutCore a light Cocoa alternative for deploying web apps that look and feel like Mac OS X desktop apps," Dilger writes.

It's a good read for a Sunday afternoon, and will get you thinking about the kinds of apps that you can build (more easily than ever) for the web. If you enjoyed Brett's earlier video about 280 North, you're sure to love this.

Thanks, William!

Does "Free" mean junk? That's the question that this Apple Insider report has had me pondering this morning. According to AI, lucky companies are being assigned iPhone development partners who are encouraging developers to charge for rather than give away their wares. As Apple is due to receive 30% of all sales, they have a vested interest in encouraging commerce but I think the issue goes deeper.

To distribute widgets, you don't need to pay $99/year and you don't have to apply for a program. Apple has the experience of Installer.app to go by, where gems can quickly get lost among other people's "Hello World" applications. I think Apple wants to keep the signal quality high and the noise level low. Perhaps that's why they're pushing for paid serious apps rather than free frivolous ones.

Thanks, Sam.

Let's face it - my development skills suck like an out-of-the-box Dyson vacuum! Back in prehistoric times when I was a Newton developer, I started by using the standard Newton dev tools but quickly learned that my programming skills were stuck in BASIC and Fortran 77. Pathetic, huh?

Fortunately, a small Canadian firm called NS Basic came out with a development kit based on BASIC that was easy to understand and use. Since then, George Henne and the NS Basic crew have kept up with the handheld world by creating dev tools for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and (soon) Symbian, as well as providing the only remaining Newton development tool.

So what does this have to do with iPhone? NSBasic let us know about a video on their website that shows a small "Hello, World!" app and a stock quote application running on an iPhone. They're using NS Basic/Palm to write the applications, then running them in the experimental StyleTap Platform for iPhone and iPod Touch. While the apps look frighteningly like Palm OS apps, it's cool to see an easy and powerful set of dev tools that even beginners could use to write iPhone apps.

NS Basic is quick to point out that this is not a shipping product, nor do they have plans to port NS Basic to iPhone. Of course, perhaps a lot of interest in the video will convince them of the viability of the iPhone / iPod Touch market...

Apple's iPhone-based AppStore is sure to debut sometime in the next month or two. My guess is that it will launch at WWDC, with select close partners at the launch and then a general opening to the rest of the third-party developers. I'd be quite surprised if AppStore launched and allowed immediate access to everyone who wanted to post an application for sale.

Follow the jump for more thoughts and questions.

Apple's Science page has a profile up for the folks over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- apparently two MITers, Deb Roy and Rupal Patel, are using Macs, including "five Apple Xserves and a 4.4TB Xserve RAID," to record and track every single moment of their son's early childhood.

Not only are they assured to get his first few steps on tape, but they're also studying early development and how young children gain the skills to interact with other human beings. In order to do this, they're dealing with huge amounts of audio and video data -- about 250TB. And they're also building an analysis application on the platform called TotalRecall to scan through all the audio and video and pick out interesting parts and patterns (creating the kind of image seen above -- apparently that means something to them).

Of course, there is one thing they do that Apple can't -- when the time came to figure out how to transfer 200GB a day from the home environment to work, they eventually settled on a "sneakernet" approach, packing up the digital tapes in a case and carrying them to work. Here's hoping Apple will announce their own proprietary version of iSneakernet at the next WWDC (with a stylish design and a reasonable pricetag, of course).

Jake Marsh sent along this neat screencast of an iPhone web app for MySpace that he's working on. Facebook basically seems to be the gold standard of social networking web apps these days, and this looks basically just like that one. It is cool that you can look up people right away, but the real improvements are on MySpace's Music pages -- not only can you subscribe directly from the profile, but he's also got it working to play all the music there (usually trapped in Flash, though there is a less easy way around it already). He also says that it might eventually be possible, for songs that are available for download, to get them with one click into the iPhone's iPod library.

Yes, it looks just like Facebook (in fact, it looks like a rip of the mobile site), but why fix something that's not broken? Unfortunately, Marsh is just showing off -- he says that it's just for him right now and he's aiming for an open beta in August. He should probably aim for a little sooner than that: after June, we might all be saying "what web apps?"

What do Matzoh, Gefilte Fish, and ad hoc iPhone development camps have in common? They're all scheduled for tomorrow. As the sun sets and Jews around the world begin to celebrate Passover, the festival of freedom from slavery, pale iPhone developers will be crawling back to their rocks after joining together at Polytechnic University for a free iPhone development event.

The event runs from 10AM to 6PM at the Brooklyn Campus at 6 Metrotech Center, Brooklyn 11201. Bagels and/or pizza will be served. Note that you cannot just show up at the event without notifying organizers via the website -- security has a list of attendees.

You'll remember that one of the game demos on the iPhone SDK was Sega's Super Monkey Ball franchise -- Spore got all the headlines, but Sega did show up with a pretty nice port of a game that could do very well on the iPhone. And when producer Ethan Einhorn sat down to talk to GameCyte about the port, he said all the things I want to hear: casual, pick up and play gaming on the iPhone, with interface innovation akin to the Wii and gaming performance comparable to other handheld gaming devices, even with a team that had never touched Cocoa and Open GL before.

There are some nice promises from Sega here for at least one cool game in the App Store in June. We'll continue to hope Sega (and Apple, and all of the other companies stepping up to develop games for the iPhone) can deliver.

Roughly Drafted has a nice, long analysis of the iPhone as a gaming device, and they hit on a lot of great reasons why the iPhone seems destined to be a great gaming platform. Not only will it have the hardware chops to play games (including a few input devices that no other handheld gaming consoles have ever had), but Apple's SDK implementation, when it finally gets off the ground in June anyway, seems poised to let almost anyone develop any game ideas they have for the device.

Throw in a great distribution platform and a relative lack of competition on the handheld platform (Nintendo is undoubtedly working on a successor to the DS, but other than that, there are no real next-generation contenders so far), and Apple apparently has the potential to do very well in the gaming market.

In fact, the only problem that Apple might bump up against in building up in the iPhone as a gaming device is the cost -- at $400, it'll be the most expensive gaming handheld out there. But given that it's actually a smartphone, and thus actually benefits from an already installed user base (people who have the iPhone may very well be people who will have never purchased or used a handheld gaming platform before), the price may not be that big an obstacle to ownership.

And if they can build up a respectable library of game titles, they could even brand an iPod touch/phoneless iPhone as a gaming unit, and sell that at a price that would compete with Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS. Apple has never historically pushed for the forefont of anything in gaming, but if their showing at the SDK event is any indication, they may be lining up to make the iPhone the place to play handheld videogames in the future.

[Via IMG]

The rumors are apparently true, after a fashion -- despite reports of Jobs' opposition to the idea, Adobe has told the Wall Street Journal that after reviewing the iPhone's SDK, their CEO says they can bring Flash to the device all by themselves. It'll be super interesting to see if Adobe tries to make an end run around Apple to get their platform on the iPhone via the SDK, or if Apple cooperates to let them do it (Flash, for all of its foibles, is definitely a big part of the current internet).

But at this point it seems like Adobe is dead set on getting Flash on the iPhone whether Apple consents or not. We'll watch this one as it develops obviously -- by the time the rest of the SDK-driven apps come around in June, browsing Flash sites might be the last thing on everyone's minds.

[Via Engadget]