The biggest concentration of developers for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is in Northern California, as a story in The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco Bay Area section points out. But the ubiquity of the Internet makes it possible for a software developer anywhere in the world to make apps.

According to Mobclix, which operates the largest ad exchange network on the iPhone, the largest number of app developers come from the U.S., followed by the U.K., Canada, Germany and Australia. But there are developers in such far-flung countries as Malta, Reunion, Brunei, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

One example is Sameer Jain, the 39-year old founder of Net Solutions in Chandigarh, India. He established an iPhone app team alongside his mainstay Web app business almost a year ago. Of about 170 employees, about ten of them work on iPhone apps.

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One of the frequently heard complaints about iPhone applications is that with more than 85,000 options, finding good ones can be tricky and time-consuming. Could the answer be yet another app?

Envio Networks on Tuesday is launching Chorus, a free app that shows users the ones their friends are trying out and suggests ones that might interest them. The Andover, Mass.-based company, which has received funding from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, specializes in social-networking technology and saw the Apple (AAPL) device as a good showcase for what it can do.

“We think that shared discovery is a very powerful concept,” said Manish Jha, Envio’s chief executive, who ran ESPN’s mobile unit previously.

To use Chorus, you register and add some friends, which you can do by inviting phone contacts, Facebook friends or even contacts in your immediate vicinity, who must also be Chorus users. You can then see apps they’ve added in an “activity feed,” which looks and behaves similarly to Facebook’s news feed.

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Facebook Wednesday threw its software developers a bone, releasing a “roadmap” of forthcoming features to help them plan their products. They include new ways for software applications, like games, to messages Facebook users when their friends want to play Scrabble, for instance.

The company also said it will be releasing a new navigation menu to allow users to gain quicker access to hundreds of thousands of applications from the left-hand side of their screens.

At the event at its Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters, the company also snuck in some news of a slightly different flavor. The social networking site said that it plans next year to release a tool that will allow any Web page to show up in Facebook search results.

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Steve Demeter seems like the perfect poster boy for Apple (APPL). Two years ago, the 30-year-old computer programmer became one of the first people to sell his product–a puzzle game called Trism–through Apple’s App Store, a virtual marketplace where third-party software developers connect with customers wanting downloads for their iPhones. He pulled in $250,000 in just two months and quit his job writing code for ATMs.

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Samsung Electronics Co.’s profits are on the rise again as its chip and display businesses recover from operating losses earlier this year. The turnaround recently helped push its market capitalization past Intel Corp.’s (INTC) for the first time.

But amid that success Samsung also is trying to address another concern: matching Apple Inc.’s ability to sell content and software that run on cellphones and other devices.

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone has led the way in demonstrating that consumers are becoming more interested in devices that can tap the Internet or run clever applications. The same phenomenon is spreading to TVs and DVD players, which increasingly will be connectable to the Internet in coming years.

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Money. Would you spend it on apps? It seems apposite to ask, since something of an argument has blown up inside the blogosphere over the upcoming release of Tweetie 2, a Twitter client (Twitter haters, your work is done) for the iPhone for which the developer, Loren Brichter, says–gasp!–that he will be charging $3 for the paid-for version, just as with the first one.

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As iPod sales ease, the company is focusing more and more on software–to the dismay of the record labels

Right after unveiling new iPods and iTunes software at an event on Sept. 9, Apple (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs invited singer Norah Jones on stage to perform for the assembled tech and media pundits. “Like you, we love music,” he told the crowd. “That’s probably the primary reason we do this.”

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Had the urge to abandon city life and tend a cornfield instead? Millions of others are getting their agricultural fix on Facebook, thanks to the fast-growing game FarmVille.

FarmVille, which social-gaming company Zynga launched on June 19, is a free Facebook app that lets members grow produce and raise animals. They can harvest fruits and vegetables, collect milk from cows and wool from sheep, and expand their farm by selling the goods. They can help other players’ farms and exchange gifts with them, and enterprising players can get bigger by buying more land for their plots. While there’s no “game over” point, negligent farmers wind up with wilted crops.

Farming apps are popular on Facebook, with others including Farm Town, Barn Buddies, Country Store and Farm Life.

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Nonprofit organizations seeking to harness Facebook can get the most bang for their buck by using fan pages in addition to groups, streamlining their app usage and livening things up, one of its marketing execs said Friday.

Pages operate like profiles for organizations or businesses, can only be created by official representatives and can add applications, while groups are unofficial and can be created by any user. Relying on groups, which have been available longer, is one of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make, said Randi Zuckerberg, who works on marketing and nonprofit initiatives and is co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister. “You lose a lot of the incredible viral power.”

Because fan pages are official, it’s also easier for Facebook to take down fake ones, she said, as opposed to groups, which can be run by enthusiasts.

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In a megastore as big as Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone App Store, the secret to success is getting noticed. With more than 65,000 apps in 20 categories, app developers have come up with different strategies to accomplish that.

One focus is getting on Apple’s ranking lists, which people regularly comb through to find apps they want. Apple ranks free and paid apps based on the number of downloads. Developers say the ultimate goal is to be one of the top 25, which are listed on the first page of the online store when someone accesses it via his or her iPhone. The next 25 can still be viewed on iPhones, but numbers 51 through 100 can only be accessed through computers. Apple doesn’t rank beyond that.

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“Boring! Can we fast-forward?” my daughter asks as Joan Baez warbles “Joe Hill” at Woodstock. We are “sharing” the newly released 40th Anniversary DVD of the Woodstock documentary, but she is doing here what she also does when we run my iPod through the car stereo.

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David Lin is traveling lighter for business lately. Ever since the software marketing exec bought an iPod Touch, he’s often able to leave his notebook computer behind. “My goal is to replace the laptop,” says Lin, vice-president for marketing at Denali Software, makers of electronic design-automation software.

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Apple (AAPL) is about to remove the shackles from developers of applications for the iPhone.

While iPhone users have mostly praised the steady stream of games, guides and other programs released thus far, many developers have been frustrated by their inability to do more, such as allow users to purchase digital content within an application. Until recently, Apple Inc. has been slow to give them the tools or a blueprint with which to make that possible.

Now the company says it is on the verge of launching a new iPhone operating system — and a toolkit to help developers of new applications for the handsets. Apple says the new operating system itself will add more than 100 features, including the ability to cut and paste text, and a virtual keyboard for use when the phone is turned sideways, making it easier to type emails. The toolkit is expected to add about 1,000 functions to help developers come up with new applications.

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