The race for the ultimate iPhone Twitter app did not slow down after Twitter.com purchased and relaunched Tweetie. No, no, no… now there is a Hello Kitty iPhone Twitter client in the marketplace. This absolute game changer is probably making Tweetie managers cry at their desks.

The app was developed by Digital Garage–makers of the free Japanese Twitter client Tappit. Images of the cute cat were licensed by Sanrio.

The price of the novalty app is: $3.99.

hellokitty.tappit.net

Features:

• Ability to switch between four different backgrounds
• Ability to change the color of text (helpful if you are changing the bg color)
• Japanese language support
• Retweets handled just like main Twitter
• Ability to search by geolocation
• Custom gestures allow you to set actions

Time Magazine recently published a list of the “Top 50 Worst Inventions” and the list included both mega-hits: Zynga’s online game Farmville and the location-based social application Foursquare.

The buzz for both these web applications has been extraordinary. Foursquare for instance has almost 1 million checkins per day. Farmville now has 30 million virtual farms run by 2 million users in the U.S.

A United States piracy list pointed to China, Russia, and Canada as the top three worst governments for enforcing copyright policy in the world (in respective order). China’s Foreign Ministry stated that these claims were “groundless” and says that China is doing a lot to combat piracy in copyrighted films, music, video games and other media products.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance, representing U.S. copyright industry groups, estimated that US trade losses due resulting from piracy in more than three dozen countries exceeded US $15.8 billion in 2009. The losses attributed to China were estimated at US$3.5 billion by the International Intellectual Property Alliance.

The Federal Trade Commission approved the Google AdMob deal, saying that the deal “is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks.”

AdMob has seen great success in advertising for the iPhone platform. Yet, even with the $750 million dollar deal to buy AdMob, Google will not have a confident guaranty of success within the mobile environment.

Growth in mobile advertising will certainly continue. The market will face greater competition with both Apple acquiring Quattro and iAd and Yahoo announcing the ‘Project Nike’ with Nokia.

Google is now going to allow third party web developers to build apps that work within their Gmail service. This new plan will allow Google Apps customers add various third-party applications. Yahoo mail already has a few limited third party applications that integrate with it’s web mail application from PayPal and Facebook.

The goal in doing this for Google is to attract more corporate clients by integrating specific productivity tools into its general purpose email service.

Webdesigner-newyork.com, a subsidiary of Ironpaper, Inc. launched today. The site will focus on NYC market for web design and development and content management. The site will market to small and medium sized businesses with a less-is-more approach to design.

Visit: Web designer New York

The popular online classified ad service, Craigslist, has been subpoenaed by Connecticut’s attorney general over sex ads that appear in it’s listings. The attorney general says that Craigslist is not doing enough to stop prostitution online, and that the company is even profiting from the sex ads. Currently, there are 39 states looking into the matter with Connecticut taking the lead.

The company’s $36 million or more a year in earnings may result from prostitution and human trafficking, the attorney general contends. The NY Times reported in April that Craigslist’s earnings will raise 22 percent in 2010, largely from its controversial sex advertisements.

Some anti-trafficking organizations say that Craigslist remains the largest online hub for selling women against their will. This made the recent news when in April 2010, the FBI arrested 14 members of the Gambino crime family on a slew of charges that included selling the sexual services of girls ages 15 to 19 on Craigslist.

Israel confiscated iPads brought into the country within the initial weeks of the product’s launch. Now, after intense technical scrutiny, the iPad is no longer banned from Israel.

The initial concern regarding the iPad centered around the whether or not the wireless signal could disrupt other devices. The new Apple product can now be imported into the country with a limit of one product per person. Confiscated devices will now be returned to their owners.

Apple will begin taking international preorders on May 10.

Ironpaper recently launched Webintel — a blog that focuses on web development, security and online marketing topics. Webintel will answer common questions for web-based businesses and provide code help for web developers as a kind of share-and-tell knowledge base.

The publishing frequency of Webintel will be less than the primary Ironpaper blog /CURRENT/, which gives industry updates and news on related topics. The articles will be more instructional however and less time sensitive than /CURRENT.

Google is expanding the business opportunities for local search by offering a suggestion technology for Google Local. For users in Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, United States, and United Kingdom–and in eight languages will see suggested search results highlighted below the search input above just above the interactive mapping view in Google Local. The goal seems to be to make users be able to connect with businesses and results quicker and with less steps, which will obviously make the tool more useful for users.

Source: Ironpaper, online mapping for local businesses