Apple has seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2 and has enabled google maps street view.  Also included in this beta is line-in audio accessory support.

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

At the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference in Brighton, Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem, confirmed that Adobe is indeed developing a Flash Player for the iPhone. However, Apple calls the shots as to when it'll be available.

More details here.

Registered developers have been given access to an iPhone 2.2 beta or preview.  As seen here, Safari is receiving a bit of love.  There is now a search text edit box and a page refresh at the top.

There is no sign of Cut and Paste.  Cut and paste has been getting a lot of press resently, I'd guess that Apple will do something about it eventually, but not in 2.2. 

Apple is now giving free access to the iPhone Developer Program.  The program is available to accredited, higher education institutions in the U.S. and allows universities an avenue to provide official courses that do not violate Apple's iPhone SDK non-disclosure agreement.   Stanford has announced a new class this fall titled "iPhone Application Programming."  You can safely assume other schools will follow.

Apple posted OS X 10.5.5 update.  Looking at the release notes there are a few improvements targeting the iPhone, including:

• Improves iPhone sync reliability with iCal and Address Book.
• Improved Wiki, Blog and Podcast compatibility with Safari and iTunes on iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Time Machine can now back up iPhone backups that are on your Mac, as well as other items in (~/Library/Application Support).

Links to the release notes:

iPhone OS 2.1 software allows for multiple applications to be installed on a device built with separate provisioning profiles and containing the same certificate. Wildcard App IDs should be replaced with application specific, explicit App IDs in provisioning profiles.  In the past developers were forced to use wildcards to allow for multiple applications.

Apple has made iPhone firmware update 2.1 available for download.  This is a 237.8 MB download through iTunes.  Apple is stating that there is a new SDK to download, although it is build 9M2517 (which I think is the same as the old SDK), there is a new developer download iphone_sdk_for_ iphone_os_2.1_final.dmg.  It remains to be seen what (if anything) has actually changed in the SDK itself.

Apple announced yesterday that iPhone firmware 2.1 will be available Friday (September 12th).   On Apple's Developer site they are stating that iPhone SDK build 9M2517 is to be used for both 2.0 and 2.1.  This is pretty significant as it means there are no new features being exposed via new versions of frameworks, i.e. no new SDK.  What features *are* in the new firmware?