The small screens of mobile devices are blurring the lines between webpages and widgets. So it should come as no surprise that MuseStorm, hitherto a platform for developing widgets for syndication across the web and onto desktops, is coming out with a tool for making iPhone-ready websites.

To be precise, MuseStorm isn’t exactly debuting a new product. Rather, it’s adding iPhone support to its existing Widget Studio, which can be used for a variety of environments ranging from the Facebook platform to the Mac dashboard. But unlike these other environments, the MuseStorm Widget Studio will be free for iPhone developers.

This is a peculiar departure for MuseStorm, which makes its money from charging large corporations on a per-impression or bulk campaign basis. In contrast, widgets made for the iPhone won’t even display advertisements or branding – just the MuseStorm URL.

The creation of MuseStorm widgets for the iPhone consists of the same PowerPoint-like interface users have come to expect. It’s not terribly novice-friendly, since there’s very little in terms of visual aides, and any moderately advanced customization requires knowledge of CSS and access to a server that will host your image and style files (MuseStorm offloads most of the content within its widgets).

I created a test widget for TechCrunch that exhibits the ever-so-stylish “Lazy Day” theme (one of 5 that come pre-packaged) but looks pretty crummy in a desktop browser. Pros of the tool include the ability to work on a live widget and publish changes in bulk. Deep analytics also tell you how many people have viewed your photos, watched your videos, clicked on your RSS feed items, etc.

On the con side of things, the fade and slide transitions chug slowly and there’s no way to have a fixed header (every user interaction involves a complete page change). It would also be good to have a point-and-click CSS editor and custom URL mapping.

If you’re a publisher or marketer looking to reach iPhone-empowered audiences, signup for the service’s private beta period here. The first 250 registrants will get in before public release.

Also see MoFuse, a service for porting websites – and blogs in particular – to the iPhone. More serious developers can also use frameworks like Safire

Consumer-oriented alternatives to MuseStorm include WidgetBox, Wix, and Sprout (although good luck getting the latter two working on the iPhone; they’re based entirely in Flash).

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While you can get all the technical improvements from Yahoo’s own upcoming announcement. The highlights are support for Flash and HTML and the addition of some new partners. Flash and HTML support mean that widget development won’t only be more familiar to web developers, but also more easily support new applications such as video.

Yahoo is also following through on some previous partnership announcements, making Netvibes UWA available as desktop widgets as well as adding the widgets from widget analytics services Clearspring and MuseStorm.

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The new offering which MuseStorm is officially dubbing a “content engagement platform” provides four widget syndication aspects: Authoring, Distribution, Analytics & Monetization.

The highlight of the platform is the authoring functionality. First, it provides non-programmers the ability to develop rich media (audio, video, photo, text) widgets. Second, MuseStorm’s platform instantly exports the “source” into a variety of Web formats, including MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle, Netvibes, PageFlakes, etc. Desktop widget export currently features Windows executable, but support for Google, Yahoo, and Mac will be added in the near future. Updated are propagated seamlessly to the universe of deployed widgets, regardless of format.

The distribution aspect of the platform includes Web and Desktop widgets as noted above and will be expanded to IM and mobile. From the analytics standpoint, the MuseStorm platform provides distribution and user interaction analytics which should help publishers optimize their offerings. Publishers can monetize their widgets by integrating ads using advanced features such as event triggers, location of the ad within the widget, and more.

MuseStorm is targeting its offering toward high-end publishers requiring a complete widget strategy. This is in contrast to offerings by Widgetbox and Clearspring which are geared at publishers that are in need specifically of distribution power.

Several publishers have already given the nod to MuseStorm’s new platform. These include Simon & Schuster (BookVideos), CBS (The ShowBuzz), and even MicroSoft which launched a Halo 3 FaceBook app powered by MuseStorm.

Founded in 2005, MuseStorm is based in Sunnyvale with R&D in Or-Yehuda, Israel. Dr. Yossi Vardi provided seed funding in the low six digits. In July 2007 $1M in Series A was provided by Elron (NASDAQ: ELRN). This is Elron’s first Internet investment.

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