Building an iPhone app has never been so easy. That's the pitch from Red Foundry, a new Seattle area startup that claims to help bloggers, athletes, photographers and others build a "killer" iPhone app in a matter of minutes.

The Red Foundry system doesn't require content creators to learn the iPhone application programming language Objective-C nor does it involve the hiring of an expensive outside developer. Instead, the tool walks customers through a few simple steps in a Web browser. A blogger, for example, could add photo gallery or video tabs with a few clicks of a button. They also can pull in content from RSS feeds, and adjust fonts or colors on headlines.

You can get a sense of how the system works in this video as Red Foundry co-creator Jim Heising creates an iPhone app for TechCrunch.

The technology is currently in a closed Beta, but the startup hopes to unveil more details in the coming weeks. The service does allow iPhone app creators to set a price for their apps, with Red Foundry paying out each month via PayPal.

Details on pricing were not yet available, though the company says it plans to charge about the same amount that it costs to host a Web site.

Those charges don't kick in until the app is submitted to the Apple App store, which means there is no initial set up fee.

Other companies also are playing around in this arena, including Swebapps which came on the scene this past summer. It also promises iPhone apps in minutes. Swebapps charges a $50 set up fee and a $25 hosting fee, plus anywhere from $200 for four iPhone content tabs to $400 for eight iPhone content tabs.

Red Foundry is an offshoot of the semantic search startup Sortuv, which emerged from stealth mode earlier this year. Its founders include Jim Heising and Ron Franczyk, with much of the team previously working together at Giant Software (acquired by Microsoft in 2004) and Click Commerce.

Over time, Red Foundry says it plans to roll out the App Builder technology for Android and Windows Mobile phones.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow on Twitter @johnhcook.