Let the developers' race for a piece of applications action on iPhones begin.

A New York-based startup, Instinctiv, on Thursday became the latest example of just how big development considerations are for Apple's wildly popular phone. The Ithaca company picked up $750,000 in funding for its music application that is supposed to intuit users' music interests at a given moment. The funding comes from Rosetech Ventures, Cayuga Venture Fund, and a group of angels.

Instinctiv also launched version 1.0 of its music application, Instinctiv Shuffle. The application can be downloaded to Apple's iPhone and is intended to guess what music listeners want to hear in their iTunes libraries based on songs they skip in the shuffle mode as the app learns what the user is in the mood for.

"People's musical moods are not random and therefore we felt like their shuffle experience shouldn't be either, which is why we created the Instinctiv Shuffle," Instinctiv CEO Justin Smithline said in a statement.

Apple's iPhone kicked off a wave of smart phone copycats from launch and attracted a $100 million iFund from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for app development toward it and the iPod touch. The Cupertino, California, computer maker plans to sell 10 million of the phones in 2008. Version 2.0 of the iPhone, which adds GPS and 3G, will be available July 11 for a starting price of $199.

Instinctiv was formed in 2007 by Justin Smithline and Peter Brodsky, who met while attending graduate studies at Cornell University.