Where are the 3rd party hardware accessories for the iPhone?

Okay, here's another question. What happened to the Apple/Kleiner-Perkins iPhone fund?

There's a blog at http://ifundvc.com/ but it's been updated once in the last 12 months. They promised $100MM in funds, but it looks like only 5 companies and $30MM was set up.

Anyone else know anything? Did the App Store just take off faster than expected and this all became moot?

Excellent question! After the keynote presentation where this was introduced, I was really looking forward to see what would be invented. I thought it could open the door to a lot of cool things. An iPhone could basically become the interface to anything.

I looked at the program to see if I could just kind of play with it and see what could be done, (maybe not do anything but at least start imagining projects) but as seiji is saying, it's not as easy as the iPhone SDK where a free account and a download allow you to give it a try: you need a real company behind it and hobbyists have no chance.

Does anybody know if anything is possible through the jailbroken community? Can one do something on their own with the iPod/iPhone adapter?

If you want to make your own iPod/iPhone hardware, apply at http://developer.apple.com/ipod/

Last I check it requires multiple in-company points of contact and legal contacts before you start.

You are charged a licensing fee for each unit sold and they revoke your access if you don't renew your contract with them. There are some iPhone in-car systems that stopped working because the manufacturer didn't continue paying Apple the appropriate licensing fees (so in the next software update, Apple disallowed that device from talking to the phone).