From Financial Times

Steve Jobs and two of his top lieutenants spent just over an hour last week outlining their plans to allow software makers to create programs custom-built to run on the iPhone, Apple’s innovative mobile handset.

The move could mark the beginning of a new phase in the development of mobile software, as programmers build programs that are not limited by the physical constraints – such as fixed buttons and small screens – that plague many other mobile handsets.

The iPhone’s break-through touch screen means that Apple’s mobile handset is a virtual blank slate, and the ability to write mobile software free from the usual constraints is likely to have software geeks salivating.

“You’ve got the ultimate in flexibility in user interface,” says Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner.

“That, combined with a big, high resolution screen, makes it an intriguing platform in the mobile space.”

John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, underscored the excitement around the iPhone’s potential to emerge as a powerful new software platform on Thursday.

Read more at Financial Times

Update, the two sites below have combined efforts to release a better product.  The new version ZiPhone 2.5 has been released which is compatible with iPhone version 1.1.4.  See this thread for more information.

The time has come where you don’t have to manually unlock your iPhone anymore. The old process was a great and useful tool, but seems very archaic compared to the new software called “ZiPhone” developed at Zibri’s blog.

It is compatible with the latest iPhone firmware and doesn’t require downgrading your iPhone’s firmware version prior to unlocking it. What could be easier than that?

The ZiPhone software can be downloaded from the following locations.

• ZiPhone 2.4 (win+osx) *FAST MIRROR*
• ZiPhone 2.4 OSX GUI Version
• ZiPhone Source (svn)
• ZiPhone OSX Source (svn)
• The new download site is located at http://www.downloadziphone.org/

unlock.no created a version with a graphical user interface for easier operation, and better descriptions. It is available at here at the download location above. See the image below to see what the program looks like.

When using this version of ZiPhone, If you get error “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)” you need to install .NET Framework 2.0.

If you have any problems, have some tips for improvements etc, please post them here