Well, it looks like Apple is starting to seriously embrace the whole third-party web-app development community for the iPhone. While a full iPhone SDK announcement may still be a few days away (“may” being the operative word here), Apple has launched their third-party iPhone web-app catalogue. The new web portal consolidates all the best web-apps that have been developed so far in an easy-to-use, categorized layout.
Now we just have to wait and see what Apple has in store for us with that rumored announcement regarding iPhone application development. With the launch of this web-app portal, we will most likely see offline storage support for third-party web-apps. That seems to be the best compromise from Steve Jobs’s perspective – he doesn’t give up control of iPhone development while still appeasing iPhone fans demanding more applications. Still, a full-fledged iPhone SDK would be sweet.

Check out the web portal here.