Free Stanford iPhone developer course at iTunes U

If you're anxious to develop your own iPhone app, don't know where to start, and find high-pedigree university instruction appealing, consider learning the art of the iPhone from Stanford University. You won't need a high-school degree to take the class--the school's Computer Science Department has begun posting material from its 10-week iPhone Application Programming course in iTunes U.

"There's a lot of interest in the iPhone," said Brent Izutsu, Stanford's project manager for Stanford on iTunes U, in the university's press release. "This course provides an excellent opportunity for us to show the breadth and depth of our curriculum and the innovation of our students."

Videos and slides from the classes will be posted at Stanford on iTunes U two days after each class meeting. You will be given access to the same materials and notes that the students enrolled in the class get. But don't get too excited--iTunes subscribers don't collect college credits upon completion.

Stanford has posted four class sessions as of press time: Introduction to Mac OS X and Cocoa Touch; Using Objective-C, Foundation Framework; Custom Classes, Memory Management, and ObjC Properties; and Interface Builder, Controls, Target-Action. You can find them at iTunes U.