ReadWriteWeb

Earlier today, ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus examined the future of social objects - that is, the future of the Internet of Things. This slow-growing trend encompasses how real-world objects are connected to the Internet using various technologies, including RFID chips, barcodes, sensors, bots and, to some extent, even mobile applications like Glue, which attaches a social history of sorts to an object like a book or a bottle of wine, albeit somewhat virtually.

While on the one hand, the idea of these self-aware "social objects" is intriguing, especially when you examine use cases like the "social tennis racquet," as MacManus did, there is a flip side. Social objects can tattle on you, reporting data you don't wish to share.

There's an interesting chart making its way around the Net this morning comparing the number of iTunes app downloads to the total downloads of songs. The surprising reveal is that it shows apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs. In only 2.2 years, the iTunes App Store has reached the same total downloads as the iTunes Music Store did after five years. And before the year is out, the two curves on the chart will be around the same height - 13 billion downloads each.

Why is this happening? Why are apps becoming more popular than music?

Nearby Friends is a new Facebook application which taps into the recently launched Facebook Places check-in service to locate all your Facebook friends plotted on a Google Maps interface. The app, a simple tool that places Facebook profile photos as a pin on the map, doesn't limit itself to where your friends are right now, it actually displays their entire Facebook check-in history, as lines traversing the map. With the app installed, you can actually track a friend's travels, easily identifying their favorite hangouts, daily treks, their workplace and more. Is this the first Facebook Places cyber-stalking tool? Or just a handy way to see what your friends are up to?

As news breaks this morning about the Intuit/Mophie partnership that aims to bring a complete credit card solution to the iPhone, the focus has been how this new product - an attachment that snaps onto the bottom of the phone - competes directly with the startup Square, co-founded by Twitter's Jack Dorsey.

Like Square, the new solution allows you to physically swipe credit cards while processing the transaction over an Internet-connected iPhone. But isn't toting around a physical plastic card soon going to be a thing of the past? Maybe, as makers of other new mobile payment solutions, including "contactless" technology and money-transfer apps, would have you believe. Then again, maybe not.

In partnership with Entertainment Weekly, YouTube just announced the launch of a specialized site for getting a sneak peek at the new television season which includes "bite-sized previews of programs, reality TV, comedies, dramas and more."

The site, which is essentially just an EW-branded YouTube channel, isn't all that notable in and of itself . But it's just one of EW's many digital initiatives as of late. This print-mag-turned-media-company has also launched a number of other digital offerings over the past months, including a popular "Must List" app for the iPad and now iPhone, the integration of 2D barcodes into its print pages and experiments with video-in-print ads.

Remember PleaseRobMe.com? The website, which warned of the dangers in sharing your physical location online, now has a successor called I Can Stalk U.

While PleaseRobMe (now shuttered) focused on how publicly broadcasting your location could alert criminals to an empty house nearby, ideal for burglarizing, the new site aims to raise awareness about the dangers of geo-tagged photos, specifically the ones shared from your smartphone to social networks like Twitter.

Engineers at the University of Washington are developing the first mobile technology able to transmit American Sign Language (ASL) over cellular networks. The software called MobileASL currently runs on phones imported from Europe while being tested, but it could be configured to run on any device in the near future.

If you're wondering how the engineers are claiming "first" when video conferencing solutions, most notably Apple's FaceTime and mobile video applications like Fring, already provide face-to-face communications ideal for signing, the difference is in the technology behind mobileASL itself.

A new mobile marketing survey from Harris Interactive says that the demographic group most interested in receiving mobile advertising is mobile owners with children. This group is interested in receiving opt-in alerts from brands, says the study, and the adults in households with children are also generally more "promotionally active" than others, meaning more likely to take part in marketing promotions like couponing, discounts and daily deals

Those with children under 6-years old were the most receptive to this form of advertising, with 35% in favor of opt-in alerts that arrived via their mobile phone.

Latitude and ReadWriteWeb recently published a two-part results series on our open innovation study, "Children's 'Future Requests' for Computers and the Internet," which asked kids 6-12 years of age to ideate future Web technology concepts.

Latitude created this video to sum up the study's key findings and big pathways for research, innovation and the future of the Web.

ThinkContacts is a new mobile application being developed by Nokia which would allow a disabled person to select a contact from a list and place a phone call to that person using only their mind. The app, which is designed for Nokia's N900 Maemo platform, works with an accompanying headset that reads the user's brainwaves to measure attention levels. If the attention level is higher than 70%, the software scrolls to the next contact in the list. If the attention level is higher than 80%, the software makes a phone call to the selected contact.

It's one of the latest developments in making accessible smartphone applications for the disabled, the blind and deaf.