How far can Web apps take the iPhone?

What if Dell released a new computer with nothing but a Web browser on it? Well, as slick as the iPhone is, if it's missing an application you need -- instant messaging, for example -- a tiny PC with a browser is really all you have. But as today's explosion of Web-based applications demonstrates, you can do a lot with just a Web browser.

Eager developers are already creating new Web-based applications for the iPhone (see some of our favorites), and high-profile sites like Facebook and Netvibes have gone a long way toward making themselves more iPhone friendly. But questions remain about how much the iPhone's current incarnation can really do and what that means for the future of mobile computing.

Citing security and reliability concerns, Apple opted against releasing a software development kit, or SDK, to allow the creation of native iPhone programs. Instead, Apple provided hooks to let developers access many of the iPhone's basic functions, such as sending e-mail, dialing a phone number, or tying into the embedded Google Maps through Apple's Safari browser. Ideally, developers would use those capabilities to build Web sites and apps that behave just as native iPhone programs do.

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What if Dell released a new computer with nothing but a Web browser on it? Well, as slick as the iPhone is, if it's missing an application you need -- instant messaging, for example -- a tiny PC with a browser is really all you have. But as today's explosion of Web-based applications demonstrates, you can do a lot with just a Web browser.

Eager developers are already creating new Web-based applications for the iPhone (see some of our favorites), and high-profile sites like Facebook and Netvibes have gone a long way toward making themselves more iPhone friendly. But questions remain about how much the iPhone's current incarnation can really do and what that means for the future of mobile computing.

Citing security and reliability concerns, Apple opted against releasing a software development kit, or SDK, to allow the creation of native iPhone programs. Instead, Apple provided hooks to let developers access many of the iPhone's basic functions, such as sending e-mail, dialing a phone number, or tying into the embedded Google Maps through Apple's Safari browser. Ideally, developers would use those capabilities to build Web sites and apps that behave just as native iPhone programs do.

So how is the effort going so far? Just one week after Apple shipped the iPhone to droves of drooling early adopters, Richard Herrera traveled to Adobe's San Francisco office for iPhoneDevCamp, a three-day event where Web developers and designers brainstormed ideas for delivering applications to the shiny new device.

Just four hours into the first day, Herrera and three other developers he barely knew delivered Pickleview, an iPhone Web interface that shuttles real-time, interactive baseball scores from MLB.com to a live Twitter chat stream.

"When Apple said that any application fully compatible with Safari 3 would integrate perfectly with iPhone, I knew it would be real easy to build some fun apps," Herrera says. "It's only been a month [since the release of the iPhone], and I've seen some really interesting things being done."

While coders are still getting a handle on what they can and can't accomplish through Safari, impressive applications are already starting to emerge, and events like iPhoneDevCamp have produced some fun new features. But several developers believe that many serious business programs will require an SDK.

Early applications

Raven Zachary, open-source research director for the technology-analysis company The 451 Group and one of the organizers of the iPhoneA-DevCamp, says he was blown away by some of the creations that came out of the development event.

"I saw a voting application that was motion controlled, where you could vote 'yes' if the iPhone was horizontal or 'no' if it was moved into a vertical position. That was neat," Zachary says. "Pickleview's interface was really impressive," he adds.

Other software coming out of the camp provides an early glimpse at what can be ported to mobile devices. Telekinesis, for example, turns the iPhone into a remote control device to access Mac OS X computers through a collection of mini Web applications on the phone. There's even an iPhone-specific social network called iRovr that offers MySpace-like functionality for groups of iPhone-using friends.

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