There seems to be application marketplace options popping up all over the place, mostly looking to deviate (or at least try to) from the mainstream app stores of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. Aside from trying to be the next cool app store model or design, I think it's a great way for new, small-time developers to get a start. One place that may be worth looking is appbackr. Launched this week in beta, appbackr is a wholesale marketplace for iPhone and iPad applications.

Since a lot of new developers usually don't have the funds to promote or market their apps (or could be having a tough time getting into the sea of 300,000 apps in the App Store) this may be worth a look-see.

Following a traditional wholesale model, "developers agree to sell a certain number of units to wholesale buyers at a discount. Wholesale buyers purchase those units in bulk and profit when the app sells through iTunes. Developers get the cash to support their app, and a 'backr' with a vested interest in promoting their iPhone or iPad application. Wholesalers get involved in the promotion of emerging apps, and earn 27 to 54 percent return once the app sells at the retail value," wrote Sarah Cornwell of appbackr in a blog.

As this may be one way to get into the iOS application ecosystem, there are other avenues to check out. One mentioned in my previous blog is Mozilla's proposed system for open Web apps. This design could lead to some real interoperability across a number of different app stores, although you can more than likely count Apple and Google out of this one.

Mozilla introduced a prototype yesterday, calling it a system for open Web apps, which would allow developers to install, manage and launch Web apps in any modern desktop or mobile browser (Firefox 3.6 and later, Firefox for mobile, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 6, Safari 5, Opera 10 and WebKit mobile), wrote Mozilla Labs in "The Mozilla Blog." Alongside the developer preview prototype is the technical documentation of the proposed system.

The proposed design would create a new category for what Mozilla calls "'Open Web Apps' - apps that are truly of the Web."

According to Mozilla, Open Web Apps:

• Are built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Can be “installed” to a dashboard within your mobile or desktop Web browser, or to your native OS desktop or mobile home screen.
• Work in all modern Web browsers, while enabling each browser to compete on app presentation, organization and management user interfaces.
• Support paid apps by means of an authorization model that uses existing identity systems like OpenID.
• Support portable purchases: An app purchased for one browser works in other browsers, and across multiple desktop and mobile platforms without repurchase.
• Can request access to one or more advanced and/or privacy-sensitive capabilities that they would like access to (like geolocation) which the system will mediate, giving the user the ability to opt-in to them if desired.
• Can be distributed by developers directly to users without any gatekeeper, and distributed through multiple stores, allowing stores to compete on customer service, price, policies, app discoverability, ratings, reviews and other attributes.
• Can receive notifications from the cloud.
• Support deep search across apps: Apps can implement an interface that enables the app container (generally the Web browser) to provide the user with a cross-app search experience that links deeply into any app that can satisfy the search.

Marshall Kirkpartick of the technology blog RedWriteWeb wrote that this is a "decentralized challenge to both Apple's closed app store and Google's centralized strategy...The Store Framework will enable an unlimited number of interoperable App Stores to be hosted by anyone, and compete based on quality of user experience...Decentralization of the App Store experience across many different stores is very promising, however, if you believe that interoperability yields competition and competition yields better software."

On Monday, an alliance of 24 cellular service carriers and device makers announced the Wholesale Applications Community. The community is an effort to enable developers to write applications that run on as many phones as possible. While laudable, reducing fragmentation is a very ambitious goal, and I don't think that it will be easy.

The alliance has decided to use Web applications that are written to the JIL and BONDI specifications to achieve compatibility. That's great, but it doesn't cover the last mile; developers will still need to target many devices. Devices have different sized displays, some have track balls, and others use touch screen navigation - you get the picture. Then there is the issue of accessing native resources and applications such as address books and dialers.

Nokia has already gone down this path. It is a microcosm of the industry, having an incredibly diverse line up of products sold throughout the world. It really had not other option than Web applications. Either does the Wholesale Community (it would be worsening fragmentation if it tried to establish a standard package).

Nokia uses porting kits for its own OS with APIs for customizing applications for its phones. The Wholesale Applications Community will need to built similiar kits for developers. The user experience will be very limited otherwise. It will be interesting to see how appealing the final product is to developers. The last mile should be included.

I spent the day touring Microsoft's Cambridge office to learn more about the nature of its relationship with Novell. In the coming days I'll be writing about a new project that the companies have jointly developed, and will examine how they work together in their interoperability labs. Expect a few surprises.

Over the past several months, I wrote a series of articles about cloud computing. The main idea was to get cloud providers to answer tough questions about concerns our readers have raised about outsourcing their IT. We learned what some of the challenges are and gained clarity about the benefits that cloud computing brings to the table. Here are those stories:

Cloud providers vow interoperaiblity

Taking steps to clarify cloud governance

Cloud providers answer the tough questions

Seeking compliance in the cloud

Reality check on cloud portability

Today I had lunch with Microsoft's Jean Paoli (co-creator of XML) and Craig Shank, the general manager of Microsoft's interoperability group. Jean is the technical guy and focuses on lower-level work; Craig sets up plugfest and determines

Microsoft's participation in standards groups.

They did not come to discuss any big news, but they did reiterate that Microsoft has a structured approach to "pragmatic interoperability" that enables scenarios that its customers are asking for. They provided me with numerous examples of Microsoft's work to share documentation for its products and protocols, as well as its lab work with its competitors—most of which I had already heard.

Paoli indirectly responded to recent criticism that Microsoft was engaged in a FUD campaign against ODF (I forgot what the criticism was exactly) by pointing out that Office 2007 adds support for the format, and that Microsoft has included ODF in its developers' tooling and plug fests.

He also stated that Microsoft would not add secret sauce on top of standards (Windows Azure comes to mind). He told me that people were making the same accusations when Microsoft built its XML parser, but that in the end, Microsoft didn't change XML. I will be writing more about my conversation with Microsoft tomorrow.

A well-placed source has told me that Microsoft will be discussing interoperability at its JavaOne keynote on Thursday. Allegedly, the announcement will revolve around the Apache Stonehenge project, which Microsoft participates in. 

Stonehenge is made up  of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations. Project contributors are expected to provide sample code for applications that work across platforms, and to work around differences in their respective standards implementations. Microsoft donated some code to the project in January.

The Stonehenge incubation project was announced in November 2008 at ApacheCon. Apache, Microsoft, Red Hat and WSO2 are listed as contributors. Word is that Oracle/Sun may be jumping into the mix. I'm not certain that is the full extent of the news or what Sun's participation will be. I look forward to learning more from Microsoft. More interoperability is good news for customers.

Rarely do I ever hear anyone praise a Service Pack, but I am hearing great things about Office 2007 SP2. A friend even randomly IM'd me today saying that Excel is noticeably peppier.

More importantly, SP2 makes great strides toward interoperability with non-Microsoft document formats including OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, and PDF/A. It also adds support for XML Paper Specification, an XML-based fixed-document format created by Microsoft. Support for ISO standard OOXML will not arrive until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future.

Microsoft also announced last night that the code has been finalized for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack. I'll check in with what MSDN and Technet subscribers are saying once the code becomes available and revisit those soon.