If you would kindly forgive me for mixing my Futurama and Simpsons references, I shall provide you with a list of a few articles that I read this week that I found interesting, and maybe you will too:

Paypal to offer in-App Purchases on iPhone (and Android)

Wondering if this is going to be as awesome and revolutionary as it sounds – although buying stuff via Apps is already possible, I wonder removing the requirement of needing a credit card, or using iTunes Account/Google Checkout for purchases is going to really make much of a difference.

We’ll see.

How important are Mobile App Stores?

A very well written article about the role Apps and App Stores are taking when considering the purchase of a mobile phone. Honestly, I think that ‘what App store does it work with’ is going to be as critical a feature as some of the tech specs that new shoppers are considering when comparing one device to another.

Google Tries Harder

This article is about how the so-called ‘Android Advocacy Group’ are approaching popular iPhone App Developers and trying to coax them to bring thier Apps to the Android Marketplace by promising a free Nexus One and, perhaps even more tempting ‘Open Communication’. Everyone knows Apple’s App store is notoriously secretive about submission approval/dissaproval information , most certainly dealing with them is one of the most anoying aspects of being an iPhone App Developer, so this is obviously appealing.

Although this sounds like something I should deride, I’m actually quite impressed. They’re being pretty smart about luring developers to an alternate platform, and that’s great for developers, and those are the little guys that I’m watching out for.

So that’s a bunch of news that I read last week, in between all the iPhone Prototype gossip. (Seriously, I’m not even going to link to an article there, you know what I’m talking about).