The good news is that as promised phone-maker HTC has launched a new web tool that you can use to unlock the bootloader on selected Android smartphones. The bad news is that right now selected smartphones means the European version of the HTC Sensation… and that’s it.

Soon HTC plans to add the HTC Evo 3D and HTC Sensation 4G phones from Sprint and T-Mobile in the US to the list, but for now US customers are going to have to stick with unofficial bootloader unlocking tools.

The bootloader is a program that loads the operating system on your device. By locking the bootloader HTC could tighten security on a smartphone. But by giving users the ability to unlock their own bootloaders, HTC is making it easier for customers to load custom software such as CynaogenMod or other complete operating system replacements onto their phones.

While HTC is making it easier for users to unlock their bootloaders, the company is not officially supporting phones once the bootloader is unlocked. In other words, if you use the HTC tool to unlock your device you’ll void your warranty.

The unlocking process is a little complicated, and requires you to have the Android software development kit installed, Java running, and HTC Sync software.

The Nokia N9 is the first and last phone the company plans to make running the MeeGo Linux operating system. That might be enough to convince you not to buy the phone, since any apps you purchase probably won’t be able to run on the next phone you buy in a few years. But it’s still nice to have a chocie, because the N9 looks like a pretty awesome phone.

Unfortunately if you’re in the US, the choice is pretty simple — because Engadget reports Nokia won’t be offering the N9 in the States. There’s also mounting evidence that the N9 won’t be available in the UK either.

The Nokia N9 has a 3.9 inch, 854 x 480 pixel curved AMOLED display and a 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 processor. The phone’s camera has an 8MP sensor and a wide-angle 28mm lens.

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The folks behind e-commerce site Alibaba have announced plans to launch an operating system called Aliyun OS designed for mobile devices including phones and tablets. The new OS will hit China by the end of the month. One of the first devices to run the operating system will be the K-Touch smartphone from device maker Tianyu.

Aliyun OS is based on Android, but it’s designed to run web apps using HTML5, JavaScript and other web-based technologies rather than native apps. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s very similar to the approach Apple took when first launching the iPhone. But it wasn’t long before it became clear that the iPhone was a big paperweight if you didn’t have an active internet connection and Apple launched software developer tools to enable third party apps. The App Store was born, and the rest is history.

Alibaba isn’t the only company banking on web apps though. Mozilla, the makers of the popular Firefox web browser, recently announced a project called Boot To Gecko which is also designed first and foremost to run web apps.

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Tweetcaster already offers one of the most popular Twitter apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Now the developers have introduced a new version of the app which plays well with the iPad as well.

The iPad user interface was designed to utilize the iPad’s 10″ screen, meaning you’ll find Trends, Nearby, Who to Follow and Search boxes all in the real estate of a single screen. The phone-sized app requires you to switch between views one at a time.

TweetCaster also developed a unique feature called Smart Filters, which filters your timeline in a single tap to show only tweets with photos or tweets with links.

Besides a clean, visually-impressive interface, you’ll find support for multiple accounts, Facebook integration, ‘advanced’ profile editing, and all of Twitter’s standard features (such as URL shortening and multimedia uploading.) Other features include custom color coding (for specific Twitter users, including yourself), multiple themes and font sizes, and Instapaper support for offline reading.

You can download TweetCaster for iOS from the App Store for free if you don’t mind seeing advertisements in the app. If you want to go ad-free, you can pick up the TweetCaster Pro for $4.99.

Remember when Apple introduced the iPhone and insisted there was no need to let developers write third party apps in native code because they could just write web apps? Yeah, that didn’t work out so well and it didn’t take long for Apple to offer a software developer kit, launch an App Store, and change the face of mobile computing.

But that was a few years ago, and HTML5 and other web technologies have come a long way in blurring the lines between what you can do with a native app and what you can do with a web app. In fact, web pages can now access you’re phone’s hardware to do things like track your location, automatically rotate when you move the screen, or record audio or video. So maybe it’s time to take another look at the web app-only idea. At least that’s the approach Mozilla seems to be taking.

The folks behind the popular Firefox web browser have announced a new project called Boot to Gecko, or B2G. The idea is to build an operating system designed to run web apps and only web apps. It will be based on the same operating system kernel as Android, but B2G won’t run Android apps. Instead Mozilla hopes to built tools that allow third party developers to access the phone’s telephone, camera, USB, Bluetooth and other hardware from web apps.

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Alibaba is probably best known these days for running an e-commerce site, but the Chinese company is thinking about moving into the smartphone operating system business. The Wall Street Journal reports that the OS could launch first in China, although it could eventually be available in other regions.

Right now the Symbian operating system dominates the Chinese smartphone market, but Symbian’s days are numbered, which means there may be some major opportunities for smartphone software makers in China.

There aren’t many details about the OS at this point — and the WSJ story is based on information from an anonymous source, so I’d take it with a grain of salt for now. But the Alibaba operating system sounds a lot like iPhone OS 1.0: Instead of downloading native apps to their phones, users would be expected to run apps hosted on a remote server.

It’s not clear from the description whether we’re talking about web apps like those that run on many Android and iOS smartphones today, or apps designed specifically by Alibaba which will run on the company’s own servers.

If you remember your iPhone history, Steve Jobs originally declared that apps would run in the web browser and HTML was the only development tool. It didn’t take long for hackers to start jailbreaking iPhones and installing their own native apps and shortly after that Apple released official software developer tools and then the App Store.

China is a different market though, as evidenced by the nearly 60 percent market share still held by Symbian. So maybe a cloud-based OS without apps you download to your device for offline use could succeed.

Nokia has been working on a new Linux-based smartphone operating system for a couple of years. Originally called Maemo, the project merged with the Moblin netbook Linux project a while back to become MeeGo, a customizable, robust touch-friendly Linux-based operating system. Eventually the plan was to use MeeGo instead of Symbian in high-end smartphones. But then Nokia decided to sign a partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone 7 instead and most people figured that was the end of Nokia’s MeeGo ambitions.

But it turns out Nokia will launch one consumer device based on MeeGo. The company has unveiled a new smartphone called the Nokia N9. It’s a slick looking smartphone with the specs to match including a 3.9 inch, 854 x 480 pixel curved AMOLED display, a 1 GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, and an 8MP camera with a wide-angle 28mm lens.

The phone runs a new finger-friendly version of MeeGo which looks absolutely wonderful in the demo videos (although that’s kind of what demo videos are for). There’s a Webkit-based browser, a maps application with turn-by-turn navigation, and a user interface designed for fingure input including support for swipe-from-the-screen-edge gestures to switch between functions.

Overall it looks like a great phone and it’s a shame that because it’s likely to be the first and last MeeGo phone from Nokia it’s unlikely that you’ll see a huge push for third party apps or other new features for the phone. That said, MeeGo is open source software and it’s possible that we could see other developers pick up the torch and carry on.

Nokia is also releasing a new phone aimed at developers called the Nokia N950. It’s similar to the N9 in many respects, but it has a slide-out keyboard and a 4 inch display. This model won’t be sold at retail, but instead will be made available to MeeGo developers.

via The Nokia Blog

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Songkick is an online service designed to inform you when your favorite bands are playing, and it’s now mobile with a new app for iOS.

As an ideal social network for regular concert-goers, Songkick provides more than just tracking of artists and venues near you. You can also stay up to date with your your buddies for event updates, as well as music from Pandora, Last.fm, and iTunes.

Simply sign in to the app to access all your saved artists, shows, and more. The app will find your current location, scan your iTunes library and compile a list of shows that might interest you.

The app will scan your iTunes, and from that data — taking location into account — compile a list of shows you might be interested in attending. You can check through a list of your favorite artists to see who’s currently touring, and even receive push notifications when they’re playing in your area. Also, you can look up ticket info, venue locations, show times and band lineups.

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