txtWeb, which offers a unique SMS based application service, has launched a developer challenge called App2Fame, in which developers, including students and professionals, can win big prizes. The contest is free to enter.

The developer contest is aimed at developing more mobile apps. The winning entry will win a travel voucher worth Rs 100,000; and the second and third entries will win travel vouchers worth Rs 50,000. Student developers will also, get a chance to win internships with txtWeb’s partners and the sponsors of the competition.

There are several other prizes to be won as well. Developing for txtWeb is easy and free, and participants will be provided with kits containing training manuals.

This is the second edition of this contest and some startups who will participate in the contest will also get a chance to present their idea to a panel of experts to get investments.

The txtWeb service allows users to send their queries and get answers through SMSes. It is a kind of internet based on SMS.

There are almost 800 applications on txtWeb, which include one wherein a user can search for a word on Wikipedia simply by sending an SMS “@Wiki” (the word) to 9243342000.

The user will then receive an SMS with the Wikipedia entry for that word.

There are other applications that allow users to look for restaurants around them, or look for movie timings, or find exam results, or PNR status and so many more applications.

Users can send an SMS with a keyword related to anything they are looking for to 9243342000, and can get the results immediately through SMS. The service is free but you need to pay SMS charges depending on your plan. You could also opt for an SMS pack to make the service completely free.

Internet giant Yahoo has released a new application that will help iPhone and Android users find the right apps for them. Named AppSpot, it supports only iOS and Android platforms for the time being but Yahoo plans to extend its support to Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry devices as well.

Thousands of applications are listed on the iOS App Store and on Android Market, but it is difficult to locate and narrow down on one app that will suit your needs. AppSpot locates the matching titles and related keywords using Yahoo search technology. Once you get the app of your choice the interface offers other details of that application, such as description, price, rating, screenshots and reviews.

Yahoo announced AppSpot via a blog post and stated, “Searching for the right app out of the tens of thousands of possibilities requires multiple searches, downloads, and (there is) general uncertainty about the quality of app you download. Yahoo AppSpot offers a new way to take the guesswork out of finding relevant and interesting apps for mobile users.”

Users will also get to see the related apps that match or are similar to the ones they have searched for. Basically, Yahoo AppSpot aims to provide a seamless and user friendly app search-discovery experience to iOS and Android users.

A similar service was recently launched by Microsoft’s Bing, using which people can search for specific applications.

Facebook is planning to launch a new photo sharing App that will allow users to upload, share and tag photos via the social networking website, according to TechCrunch. Initially, the app will be available to iPhone users only.

According to the report, the application is likely to be a combination of existing photo-sharing apps such as Path, Instagram and Color. There will be a camera button, a photo notifications icon, and a menu at the bottom left.

The interface revolves completely around photos, compared to the photos section of the current Facebook app, which only shows thumbnails of images on the interface. The editing features which are there in Instagram are not likely to be present in this app, which is therefore not likely to be a threat to Instagram yet.

TechCrunch called the app ‘awesome’, though users would definitely like to reserve their judgment until they actually take a look at the app. The project has been internally codenamed “Hovertown” or possibly “WithPeople”, and it seems to be a stand-alone app at the moment though in future it may go on to become a part of the Facebook app and probably of the Facebook website as well.

There is no reason for users to be surprised by the development since Facebook has already become a huge repository for photos uploaded by its users. Mobile users have, however, quickly adopted apps from other developers such as Instagram and Color, which had the first mover advantage in the mobile space. Facebook probably felt concerned by it since it would like to have as much control over the sharing and social networking space as possible.

A lot of iOS users often make use of Google Sync on their devices to synchronise with their data on Gmail and Google Calendar. To enhance their user experience, Google has given some tweaks to the Sync service.

Google Sync service now comes up with an improvised email search facility. Users can now search not only the mails residing on the phone itself in the iOS app, but even mails residing on Google servers. In simpler terms, users will now be able to search their full email history.

Another improvement in the email is for those users who have more than one email accounts. Those who send mails from other addresses than Gmail through their Gmail account, can ensure that their iOS App allows them the same facility.

Explaining the improvements, Google in a blog post said, “Send email from the address you want. We recognise that some of you manage multiple email addresses from a single Gmail account. Gmail’s “Send Mail as” feature lets you send messages with another email address listed as the sender instead of your Gmail address, e.g. joe@altostrat.com instead of joe@gmail.com. Now the iOS mail app will respect these settings.”

Other users who are more interested in the Google calendar, would be glad to know they can accept or decline event invitations from the iOS calendar app directly.

Steve Hardt, software engineer, Google, adds, “Workforce is increasingly mobile, and workers on the go expect to be fully productive on email and calendar from their mobile devices. But we do want to tell you that we have a few new features for Google Sync users that will help employees work efficiently from anywhere on their iPhones and iPads.”

Popular social network, Facebook is said to be working on HTML5 based web app, currently codenamed as Project Spartan. MG Siegler, an author with TechCrunch, claims to have seen the web App and states that Facebook has roped in 80 developers to create the mobile web version of Facebook.

In a way, Facebook is creating a custom wrapper around the other web applications so that the service can circumvent the Apple’s App Store.

Facebook has an eco-system of its own where in developers and advertisers make the best of the platform offered. With the Apple App Store, Facebook has to sacrifice certain privileges and also adhere to the policies laid down by Apple for its application (Facebook App). Since the Apple iOS platform doesn’t support Adobe Flash, several developers have to submit their apps to Apple.

Now the social network is working on a secret project that will bring a Facebook web app platform based on HTML5. With this HTML5 based web app platform, the Facebook wrapper will further integrate the micropayments and purchases system – Credits.

One must not forget that mobile Safari version for iPad, iPhone and iPad will never run Adobe Flash. Instead the game developers will take route of HTML5 and re-code their games to work in mobile Safari. That sounds like a good option.

With this, users would be free from installing a Facebook app on their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Also avid Facebook users may be able to purchase and spend their “Credits” on other Apps or games. That’s one plausible option and we will have to wait for the official word from Facebook.

The Android Market Webstore has got a new feature which allows users to know if a particular App will work on their handset or not.

Now, on the web page of every app, a list will appear on the left that will say which of the devices registered by users (via their Google account) are compatible with it.

This is a big help for people who find it difficult to know which apps will work with their devices. The Android Market has about 200,000 apps in the market all spread across different versions of Android. It’s obvious that the apps will not be compatible with all the devices so the new source of information will come in handy for users.

The Android Market Webstore allows users to discover and download apps from their desktop and install them on their Android devices.

The company has also added in-app purchase support and application download stats as improvements.

Apple’s App store is still way ahead in terms of number of applications and is generating a good amount of cash for iOS developers.

People can still use the 15 minute grace period within which they can get a full refund if they do not want an application they’ve bought.

However, there has been no official announcement from Google about the new Android Market feature.