VentureBeat

Yesterday, I expressed surprise that Apple would allow Wallpaper Universe, an iPhone application with racy pictures, to get into the App Store. Sure enough, today, it’s gone.

The removal once again calls into question Apple’s application reviewing process. Apps such as Google’s new brilliant voice search application get delayed because of the process (which, despite some conspiracy theories, is what Apple confirmed happened), but apps like Wallpaper Universe still manage to get through only to be pulled hours later. I have to wonder what exactly Apple is looking at/for while assessing apps.

To be fair, hundreds of apps (if not more) get submitted every day for approval, but Wallpaper Universe should have been an extremely easy one to reject. (Certainly easier than say, a podcasting app that had already been in the App Store but got rejected for an update.) It had one screenshot filled with girls in their underwear striking seductive poses. While I may personally have nothing against that, Apple has said it would keep this kind of material out of the App Store. And it seems like it would be hard to find a more obvious example.

While some don’t like the fact that Apple has approval rights for what apps make it into the store, I’m fine with it — it is their store after all. I just think the process should be more transparent and less porous considering the lengthy approval times.

Some days I like to check out what new applications are being released in the App Store. But seeing as there are usually well over a hundred (and sometimes several hundred) each day, it’s hard to pick out individual ones. But Wallpaper Universe got my attention today with something very obvious: Pictures of scantily clad women staring at me.

The app, which I assume has a large selection of wallpapers for your iPhone and iPod touch, chose only one screenshot to represent its product — and that screenshot contains 8 pictures of girls in their underwear, striking various poses, looking at the camera. The app’s maker, FunMobility, clearly isn’t planning to sell this app based on merit.

Some would argue there’s a tasteful way of doing these pictures, but Wallpaper Universe takes the opposite approach. It’s actually somewhat surprising Apple let this screenshot slide by the notoriously stringent and presumably prudish App Store approval process.

My favorite part is that one of the pictures has the caption: “i lick this one of me.” Another is labeled “Juicey” (yes, misspelled). Yet another is “innocent” (naturally). “Dirty” is the word that comes to my mind.

But what’s even dirtier is the price: $5.99. This is certainly one way to get people to pay more for iPhone apps. But considering there are plenty of other wallpaper apps out there, and some of them are free, why would anyone pay $5.99 for this? I’ll tell you why. You’re looking at it.

For those titillated, find the app here.

People actually pay $0.99 for ringtones on the iPhone. I have to write that out because it still boggles my mind. It’s a clip of a song up to 30 seconds long, and yet people pay the same amount as they do for the entire song itself. I don’t care how badly I want a T.I. song as my ringtone (the hip hop artist has seven of the top 50 ringtones), I’m not paying one dime for one. So what to do?

Well, you could use a shady method to create your own from music you have, or you could get creative and use FunMobility’s new YouTones iPhone application. The app lets you record your own voice (or I suppose you could record a song through your phone’s receiver if you were really creative) and edit it with special effects to make yourself sound like a chipmunk, a space lord (Darth Vader) or other weird creations.

Lame? Kind of, but at $4.99 for the app, it beats paying the same amount for a grand total of two and a half minutes of incomplete music. You’ll also be able to do things like share ringtone creations with friends.

YouTones has already had some success on other carriers where it sells premium ringtones. The company cites research stating that the user-generated content market is going to grow from $1.1 billion in 2007 to $7.3 billion in 2011 — no word on if that takes into account the United States’ collapsing economy.

It’s all kind of a scam in my opinion, but at least making your own ringtones with an app is less of one.

Mobile startup FunMobility is releasing a new product dubbed the MoMoney content widget to help bloggers make money by selling mobile content.

Granted, widgets for selling content for your mobile phone like ringtones and wallpapers aren’t exactly new — StartMobile, for example, announced a similar widget more than a year ago. But FunMobility has added some features that should make its widget particularly attractive to publishers. For one thing, it can be branded and customized — see, for example, the mock-up of a VentureBeat-branded widget below. The content is divided into 20 channels, including celebrities, travel, politics and sports. So there’s a good chance there will be something that’s particularly relevant to your readers. And it’s free for the publisher, while adding to their revenue on either a per-click or a per-impression basis.

There does seem to be a lot of noise in both the widget and the mobile content space, and limited ways for companies to stand out. But Pleasonton, Calif.-based FunMobility seems to know what its doing, having served more than 1.2 billion pieces of content since 2001.