Just in case you have lived under a rock for the last year, the Apple’s App Store is kind of a big thing. So big, that there have been just under 1 billion apps downloaded from the store. Apple announced a couple of weeks ago this milestone was about to be passed and announced a contest – as did we – that involved giving away a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, along with a ton of Apple hardware.

What’s this, the iPhone actually being used to improve people’s lives? I’m speechless. There’s a new App in the App Store called Allscripts Remote that allows doctors to remotely access a patient’s medical records right from his or her iPhone (or iPod touch). The idea is that, in an emergency, a doctor won’t have to wait around while the hospital staff pulls up a patient’s records. So if you’re allergic to *whatever*, the doc will now know, immediately, not to give *whatever* to you. Handy!

If you and a friend could stitch together an iPhone application, one that brings in thousands of dollars of revenue per month, would you quit your job? (/me Raises hand, and I’d leave the country—hello, endless summer!.) That exact scenario occasionally happens, truth be told, as the Times points out today. Spend s few months coding an App, then you’re on Easy Street thereafter.

Vice president for Nokia media Marco Argenti outlined the plans for the Ovi Store they are preparing to launch next month. According to him the store will be an entertainment channel with applications and other content such as video, audio and games.

Are iPhone app developers getting paid on time from Apple? Not all of them. On this iPhone developer forum, there are numerous threads from developers who are complaining about delays in payments for January and not being paid the amount of money the developers are in fact due from sales. And we’ve received one complaint directly from an iPhone app developer that Apple is late on its payments for January. Apple’s contract, which is embedded below, says that payment will be made to developers within 45 days of the end of the month. That would have been a week ago.

Developers are expressing a number of gripes with Apple that extend beyond just being paid on time. We also hear (and read) that reaching Apple by phone is a complete nightmare. Emails to Apple go unanswered and customer service reps put developers on hold for 30 minutes to an hour and sometimes hang up on callers after they’ve waited to speak to an agent. Email seems to work best.

Apps, Apple’s or otherwise, make the world go ’round, and now Nintendo wants some of the action. Allegedly. Apparently there was a super-secret Nintendo developer conference in London last week, and the company told its developers, in so many words, “Please make other, general purpose applications for our upcoming DSi App Store.” So goes the rumor, at least.

Have you guys used Plex lately? We’ve written about the application, which is a Mac-optimized fork of XBMC, in the past, but didn’t mention its latest update. It’s now known as Plex Media Server, and it’s really a great way to watch movies on your Mac. And now with the Media Server update, it can be outfitted with all sorts of plugins that greatly expand its functionality.

Rumblings of a Dexter iPhone game emerged last March and Icarus Studios is still twirling on its thumb a year later. We just got word that it will hit the App Store this summer.

The Network (that’s what I’m going to call all the “Crunch” sites from now on) covered the private beta launch of ZumoDrive last month, so there’s no need to get into details again, but we wanted to inform you that the service is now available to the public.

Update: Seems we jumped the gun on Monday, but everything is now live. Hit the jump for screenshots.

At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move as the rumors about the Finnish mobile juggernaut’s mobile applications store already spread last week; they were late confirmed to Reuters by industry sources.

Here’s how they pitch it:

“Offering a range of content including applications, games, videos, widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalised content, Ovi Store will be available on S60 and Series 40 devices. The first device to include the mobile storefront on board will be the Nokia N97, set to launch in June. Meanwhile tens of millions of existing S60 and Series 40 devices will be able to take advantage of the store from May. Ovi Store is unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when you’re there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content.”

Ethan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, quit his day job the day his app rose to No. 1 in the App Store (it now sits at No. 7 as of this writing).

I’d quit my day job too if I was making $37,000 in a single day from my app.

Robin “Sassafrass” Wauters at TC is comment on the idea that Nokia could be opening an app store. Our take? Bleh. But that didn’t stop Robin from thinking about how dreamy it would be.

Our sister site MobileCrunch may be convinced that not every company needs an app store, but for Nokia to launch a central platform for distribution and sales of micro-programs developed for the Symbian OS, it would make a whole lotta sense.

And if what Eldar Murtazin, editor of Mobile-review.com (both blogs are in Russian) writes is true, then that’s exactly what the Finnish juggernaut in mobile is going to launch at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. I concur with Engadget who says launching an application portal/store is a logical step to take for any mobile handset maker these days, but if Nokia is in fact going to launch one it will be worth taking a look at, and not only from a consumer or developer standpoint.

A lot of the companies that came to our Tokyo meet-up earlier this week were generally online service oriented folk, so I mostly drank in the corner, but a few gems stood out in the crowd of Japanese nerds. One of those companies was Conit whom you might know from their wildly popular Samurai Chess and Melody Bell apps that currently occupy Apple’s App Store. Oh, who am I kidding? Those apps aren’t my cup of tea, but the President of Conit, Kentaro Hashimoto, showed me a little something that did pique my interest.

Fancy listening to Backspin on your iPhone? Or maybe you’d like to hear the comedy stylings of Christian Jimmy on The Virus? Soon, friends. Soon. Supposedly. On the way to the App Store, the uSirius StarPlayr, an iPhone app that lets you listen to Sirius XM on your iPhone. Fancy that.

Vudu’s iPhone app is now available from the App Store. You can now browse, purchase and rent movies from your iPhone so when you get home you won’t have to wait around. That is all.

iTunes link

The end of the world has come early, friends. FunMobillity has finagled their way into Sanrio’s good graces and unleashed Hello Kitty for the iPhone. For five whole dollars you can get 50 wallpapers of the 35-year-old cat from Japan. The real shocker here is that it took this long for HK to make her way into the App Store. Why didn’t Sanrio just do this themselves?