In other words, if you're the owner of a jailbroken phone, you should now be concerned.

Unlike the relatively innocuous iKee worm which the creator designed more as a "public service" to alert users to the potential for malware on the iPhone, the new hacker tool, dubbed "iPhone/Privacy.A," is the real deal. Where iKee simply switched the iPhone wallpaper to display a photo of singer Rick Astley (a nod to the internet meme of rickrolling), Privacy.A gives the user no indication that it is running on the device.

The new hacker tool also operates a bit differently than iKee does, as it doesn't have to sit on the iPhone itself in order to inflect its damage or spread. The hacker can either load the worm onto their personal device and then monitor the network for jailbroken devices to attack or they can load the malicious program onto a computer. As Intego points out in their post, this computer could be on a public network at an Internet cafe or retail store. In that scenario, the tool would then scan for any other jailbroken iPhones that came within range of the Wi-Fi network and attack them.

How to Secure your iPhone

Although many jailbreakers are tech-savvy enough to know how to lock down their devices to protect themselves from attack, there are quite a few who have simply followed online instructions such as these to perform the jailbreak. This group, while arguably somewhat tech-savvy, doesn't necessarily know all the nitty-gritty details about the iPhone filesystem or its security mechanisms.

To make it easy on these users, we've provided steps on how to change your iPhone's root password - the common denominator required in order for the malware to gain access to your device.

While some may argue there's no need to change your root password if you haven't also installed the SSH program, another necessary element for these attacks to work, we think that's a little short-sighted. It would be easy enough for a malicious hacker to trick jailbreakers into installing SSH by bundling it with some other third-party application offered through underground App Stores like Cydida or Icy. By masquerading as something innocent like a wallpaper-changer or ringtone bundle, a hacker could easily set up a number of jailbreakers with SSH without the victims even being aware that it has been installed. Although we haven't heard of anything like this happening yet, if we thought of it then you can bet that the hackers out there have thought of it too.

Changing the Root Password

The best protection is to simply change your iPhone root password. That will keep you safe from the current iPhone malware...as least for now. Here's how:

1. Install the MobileTerminal application from Cydia.
2. Reboot your iPhone.
3. Launch MobileTerminal and type in the command: passwd
4. At the prompt which asks for the "Old Password," type in: alpine
5. At the new password prompt, type in a new password of your choosing, making sure to pick something strong.
6. Re-enter the password to confirm.
7. You'll then be returned to the Mobile$ prompt which means the change was successful.
8. Now you'll need to change the password for the secondary admin. Type in the command login root.
9. Again, you're prompted for the old password. Type in alpine.
10. Now type in the command passwd
11. You'll then go through the change password routine a second time, entering in alpine as the old password, creating a new password and then re-entering it to confirm.
12. When you are finished, close the application.

Note: these instructions assume you are running iPhone OS 3.0 or higher.

While we wondered if Google was getting ready to make extensions a part of the stable series soon, it now turns out that this feature won't arrive in the stable version of Chrome until version 4.0. If you feel adventurous, you could always switch to the dev channel.

In part 1 and part 2, we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication, creates a new body of content, is real time, is public, and has an explicit social graph associated with it. A final characteristic of the real-time Web is that it carries with it an implicit model of federation.

It's hard to say whether this model has arisen because of a conscious strategic effort to build a new industry, or because building a fully closed world would have required just too many resources, or because of a collective effort among business friends and acquaintances to develop open products and open interactions so that cool new things could be created. It's probably a combination of all three, but considering the history of the people at Twitter and FriendFeed (Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed's founders, is credited with coining Google's unofficial "Don't be evil" slogan), the open and cool factors are probably a big part of the equation.

At this point, there seems to be a general willingness to accept and transmit messages from outside sources (carrying costs are not significant, and transmission is automated via APIs, and so overhead is minimal). That said, infrastructure costs are bound to increase, competition will heat up, illegitimate companies will spot opportunities, and monetization strategies will be devised, which will all put strain on this truly open exchange.

As in the past, formal carrier agreements could be set down, governments could decide to regulate markets, or other forces could come into play that would transform what is now essentially a free-for-all bazaar into a marketplace with hierarchy. All the same, the expectation of openness and transparent transmission will be difficult to counteract or stop. So, new companies that enter the space, even bigger and better funded ones, will have to adhere to the same model of federation that these pioneering companies have established.

Summary

Whether Twitter will remain the focal point of the real-time Web or be supplanted by another or several companies (as happened in the social network space, first with Friendster, then MySpace, and now LinkedIn and Facebook) is unclear. The underlying characteristics of the real-time Web, however, are defining the next major stage of the Internet and will spread throughout its infrastructure in years to come.

Broader trends on the Web point to users having discrete data and services follow them as they move around the Web. Fred Wilson, a principal of Union Square Ventures, has called this the "de-portalization of the Web," and John Borthwick, CEO of betaworks, has co-opted Chris Anderson's phrase "small pieces, loosely joined" to describe the fast-moving risk-taking small companies that work in the space. Both individuals are leading investors in Twitter and other real-time Web companies.

The Internet is shifting from discrete units of websites and Web pages to discrete units of information (e.g. people, organizations, articles and videos, product offerings, store listings, and blog posts) and associated meta data (e.g. images, addresses, reviews, ratings) that move seamlessly around the Web, being slotted where appropriate. These units of information can be organized in ways that are relevant and personal to each individual, using data gleaned from social graphs as well as recommendation and personalization services that allow users to set their preferences.

In some cases, locations are integrated into these units as supplementary information. For example, Google and Yahoo now include map locations and reviews as part of their search listings. Their search engine algorithms read markup formats in the form of microformats and RDFa that are embedded on Web pages. These formats contain tags denoting names of people and organizations, geo-locations, and ratings and reviews. Both companies report great results from the inclusion of this data, both in increased click-through rates and reduced bounce rates. Support for other structured data is almost sure to follow. Reading tags on a page and doing something useful with them in a search result is not a novel concept, but the rapidly growing support of these tags across the Web is a clear sign that data is becoming much more identifiable and actionable.

This trend towards open and accessible data is even more obvious when you consider the real-time stream for all of the reasons mentioned above: atomic real-time messages, public accessibility, attached social graphs. In a sense, this is similar to the vision of the semantic Web. Tim Berners-Lee said at the TED conference in the fall of 2008, "Twenty years ago, I asked everyone to put their documents on this Web thing... Now I want you to put your data on the Web." The difference is that the effort to make data accessible and more actionable on the real-time Web is being made through methods and interactions not necessarily prescribed by the W3C.

Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C use the term "linked data" to refer to the latter's initiative to expose data and make it accessible. "Actionable data" might be a better term to use for the real-time Web because it doesn't imply a particular approach but merely refers to the concept of making data more identifiable and independent. Linked data refers specifically to using RDF and other W3C protocols to link important concepts, a prescription that is overly complex and not likely to address many of the usage cases on the Web.

The real-time stream is a massive body of continously created and authentic content that by itself would be significant. But when it is added to and integrated with other information on other sites, and when derivatives can be created in a number of dimensions, this concept of actionable data reaches the tipping point. In non-Silicon Valley business circles, Twitter is criticized for not having a solid revenue model. Those on the inside (investors and advisers), however, believe the criticism is short-sighted. As with most communication platforms, the value of the network increases exponentially as the size of the network increases.

By having a low barrier to adoption, the network is able to grow quickly. Only after a critical mass has been reached, and after other companies and communities of interest have helped shape how the platform is used, will it become clear what people are willing to pay for. While they may not have a solid grasp yet of exactly how to make money, those who are building companies and investing in the space do know there will be opportunities. In their minds, the real-time stream is at an early stage in its cycle, one that will likely last 5 to 7 years.

If the real-time Web and its fundamental characteristics are widely understood, its benefits and opportunities can extend throughout the Internet and across all industries.

Read part 1 and part 2 of this series.

Guest author: Ken Fromm is a serial entrepreneur who has been active during both the Internet and Web 2.0 innovation cycles. He co-founded two companies, Vivid Studios, one of the first interactive agencies, and Loomia, one of the top recommendation, discovery, and personalization companies. He has worked at the leading edge of recommendations and personalization, interactive development, e-commerce and online advertising, semantic technologies and information interoperability, digital publishing, and digital telephony. He is currently advising a number of startups and looking at the next big thing in Web 3.0. He can be found on Twitter at @frommww.

In part 1 we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication and creates a new body of content. The immediacy of the Twitter channel is a third fundamental characteristic of the real-time Web and one of its prime currencies, not surprising given the name of the space. Because of demand within the eco-system, quite a bit of effort is being made on storing, slicing, dicing, and disseminating information as quickly as possible. The fundamental implication of this activity (without any explicit markers being laid down) is that the velocity of information within the Web data system has just increased by an order of magnitude.

As Eric Marcoullier of Gnip Central points out, this is not unlike how stock and options trading has been conducted for years, where micro-seconds in receiving and processing data make a difference in gaining competitive advantage. The difference here is that, instead of real-time trading data, we have real-time social Web data: data from individuals and companies about events, theories, products, people, articles, videos, and other things and ideas, all getting passed around and publicly available.

This facet of the real-time stream is having a profound impact on the infrastructure of the Web. New storage and retrieval methods are being developed to overcome the time lags of writing not just to disks but to traditional databases. Adaptations to traditional structured query languages are being made to index items directly from the stream. Search engines and search capabilities are being modified to make use of real-time inputs to influence the search results. This isn't just a Twitter effect. This is an effect across all uses of the Web, because the expectation of access to real-time information is now permeating all websites and the infrastructure of the Web itself.

Unintended Consequences

The use of and overlay of real-time commentary and reaction with news and events is bound to have many useful benefits, as well as interesting and perhaps adverse side effects. Several news outlets have been quick to point out how a mob mentality can take hold when opinions on emotionally charged topics are instantly disseminated. Additionally, many attribute the severity of the 1987 stock crash to the lack of regulators that prevented automated systems from reacting to ongoing market conditions through an integrated loop of feedback. Even now, 20+ years later, unintended and unforeseen events continue to happen when derivatives and automation come into play.

For those prone to theorize, there are many fascinating questions to ponder. For example, the uncertainty principles states that the position and velocity of an atomic particle becomes less certain as that of another becomes more certain. If the analogy holds true, then does the veracity or truthfulness of news become less certain as the velocity of interest becomes more measurable. Likewise, what effects will the integration of the real-time stream have on the outcome of events, and how can conditions be influenced to ensure specific outcomes.

Public Conversations with Explicit Social Graphs Attached

Another characteristic of the real-time Web is that, unlike other real-time communication streams such as instant messaging, email, and the telephone, it is largely public. Also unlike these other channels, conversations within the real-time stream carry with them an explicit social graph. The audience of someone who publishes information on the real-time Web is not unknown, as might be the case in the blogging world. Each person (or company or organization) communicating on Twitter has followers, who in turn themselves have followers. Each message thus has a social graph attached to it, as does each echo or retweet of that message. Messages and message flow are for public consumption.

These social graphs also contain a fair amount of information identifying each user within the graph. The majority of Twitter profiles include a name, website, and short description. Additionally, third-party directories contain self-tagged categories, roles, interests, and specialties. (Profiles are identifiable because followers need enough information to be able to identify users within the public space.)

So many people and companies are interested in developing on top of the Twitter platform (and for the real-time Web in general) because of these characteristics (i.e. the openness of the channel, the availability of rich meta data, and the explicitness of the social graph) as well as the value derived from the content and interactivity. The value they get is in being able to monitor these streams and produce derivative value for Twitter users and news organizations, brands, retailers, organizations, politicians, and others who have an interest in what's being said, who hears it, what they do with it, and what others do with that.

In a strange twist, unlike the unregulated derivatives markets on Wall Street, which have run into skepticism and calls for greater regulation, the derivatives markets in technology and social Web circles operate freely and are booming.

Social Graphs, Reputation, and Trust

Social graphs provide mechanisms by which to infer reputation and trust. Because the graphs of followers on Twitter are public, Twitter and third parties can employ algorithms to identify which profiles are legitimate and which are spam or cons.

Algorithms based on the page-ranking algorithms that Google uses, for example, can be used to rate users not just on the number of their followers but also on the strength of their followers. It's almost a given that Twitter and other players in this space will have serious challenges in dealing with spammers and other disreputable users, but public social graphs are a great advantage in defending against these threats.

Read part 1 of this series, and stay tuned for part 3.

Guest author: Ken Fromm is a serial entrepreneur who has been active during both the Internet and Web 2.0 innovation cycles. He co-founded two companies, Vivid Studios, one of the first interactive agencies, and Loomia, one of the top recommendation, discovery, and personalization companies. He has worked at the leading edge of recommendations and personalization, interactive development, e-commerce and online advertising, semantic technologies and information interoperability, digital publishing, and digital telephony. He is currently advising a number of startups and looking at the next big thing in Web 3.0. He can be found on Twitter at @frommww.

The difference, claims Eqentia, is that "with Evri or OpenCalais, the onus is on the programmer." Eqentia says that with its product, "the content is already semanticized and all you have to do is to place it on your portal while preserving your SEO." The other two companies may disagree with that, but let's take a closer look at Eqentia.

At its heart, Eqentia is an aggregation platform. It promotes itself as "an aggregator of context, not just content." The way it does this is to add context in the navigation. Each portal has its own taxonomy, which Mougayar described as "a bit like a hierarchical tagging structure." He said that "we basically wrap any content with a semantic wrapper."

How it Works

Under the hood, Eqentia does "content harvesting" from social media sites such as Twitter, blogs and more. Currently Eqentia is getting content from over 13,000 feeds, collecting an estimated 65,000 articles daily.

Eqentia told us that it's indexed 20 million articles so far. The largest topic currently is Outsourcing, with 90,000 articles. Other topics include: Cloud Computing: 60,000; Supply Chain Management: 40,000; Twitter: 20,000; Social Media: 11,000.

Eqentia then does "text mining and filtering" and the results are run through an "Aggregation Engine" (which has rules for sources and filters). Finally there is what Eqentia calls "Semantics Management" - including entity extractions, taxonomy definition, controlled vocabulary.

What The User Gets

Eqentia is starting off with a focus on "professional" content topics. It will target business and technology content, ignoring more mainstream topics like current affairs, sports, entertainment.

Eqentia is launching with 3 products:

1) Out-of-the-box portals. These will give general users free access to topic streams (of which there are 12 at launch, with more coming). There will be email options, widgets and RSS feeds available.

2) Personalized portal. These can be private or public. [note: this is what ReadWriteWeb has signed up for]

3) Enterprise. A SaaS platform that can be customized. A stated use case is for large companies to "disseminate organized news intelligence for their employees across distinct groups or market segments."

Conclusion: Tough Competition, But Important Market

The proof will be in the pudding as to how Eqentia compares to OpenCalais and Evri. We've been very impressed with both OpenCalais and Evri in our previous coverage, so Eqentia has high standards to live up to. In particular Eqentia is going to have to nail the User Experience, because it is relying on its interface a lot to give value to the user.

Finally, Mougayar noted to us that "if web 2.0/social media rewarded the socially savvy user, the semantic web/web 3.0 will reward the research oriented user." It's a nice marketing line, but we are apt to agree that products like Eqentia, OpenCalais and Evri are bringing much needed smarts to the oceans of content in the Web.

Like cloud computing less than a year ago and social networking two years ago, the real-time Web is the new black on the tech circuit. The trend has been publicly bandied about this summer, starting with a few industry get-togethers, followed by several enthusiastic testimonials from investors (notably angel investor Ron Conway's widely posted list of ways for Twitter to monetize). It was then capped by a glowing report in BusinessWeek in early August.

The trend is not with Twitter alone. Just as the social Web was more than Friendster, then MySpace, and now Facebook, the real-time Web is more than just 140 characters bursts about what your friends and acquaintances are thinking and doing. The number of people using Twitter (44.5 million in June 2009) and the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook for $47.5 million are eye-opening figures alone, but the number of independent developers building on top of and alongside the Twitter platform make it something worthy of close attention. Unlike the social networking space, these are not "Me too" networks or a mess of widget applications. The depth and breadth of the problems that independent developers are addressing are clear evidence that a serious trend has formed, one with significant implications for both the technological infrastructure of the Web and for the companies that rely on the Web.

As with other recent waves of innovation (Web 2.0 and cloud computing, for example) there is no single definition of what the term "real-time Web" means. As a result, it is used as a catch-all phrase for a number of developments underway. At this point, we can identify that the real-time Web...

1. is a new form of communication,
2. creates a new body of content,
3. is real time,
4. is public and has an explicit social graph associated with it,
5. carries an implicit model of federation.

A New Form of Communication

One obvious way of looking at Twitter is as a new form of communication, with its own protocols and ways of doing things, and with similarities to instant messaging (IM) and email. The timing of communications on it is near synchronous (i.e. it is a continuous stream of up-to-date messages), and its tone is conversational and authentic (marketing messages and ghost tweeting are frowned upon, at least for now). Like IM, email, texting, and even the telephone, technical constraints (in this case, a 140-character limit) create a rather special conversational structure, giving Twitter-speak its own distinct mode of communication.

This arbitrary limit also simplifies its usage, which has had a tremendous effect on the adoption rate. For one, the limit makes it easy for adopters to pick up the general etiquette, and thus the barrier to participate is much lower than it is for most things tech. Plus, the technology threshold is low: no authoring software or templates (as one might have for a blog) are needed, nor do you have to create an extensive profile, as you do with social networking. Figures suggests that many independent bloggers, especially in technology, media, and political sectors, have dramatically reduced their blogging schedules, preferring instead to publish their thoughts, or refer to the thoughts of others, in 140-character segments throughout the day, rather than regularly come up with 500-word blog posts.

One consequence of the 140-character limit (and a key reason why the real-time stream is so easily adaptable to other uses) is that messages are largely atomic in nature. Each refers to an individual item: a thought, link, event, product, person, or company. They also typically contain some evaluative or emotional component, such as "Look at X because it's cool or interesting" or "I support Y" or "I disagree" or "this is no good."

This discrete nature of Twitter messages means that items, and the sentiments attached to them, can be extracted and then aggregated, allowing us to measure the activity being generated around a particular subject and, in some cases, the general feeling about it. This is not unlike the way buy-and-sell orders signal interest in a stock; but in this case, any popular subject matter can be tracked. In combination with other factors, this discrete nature and emotional component allow for some interesting usage and applications.

This deconstruction of content is not limited to Twitter. The movement to expose underlying data and make it more actionable is gaining momentum across industries and platforms. One example is the move to report financial data in XBRL format (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). Another is the growing use of microformats and RDFa, which are small patterns of HTML that represent data on commonly published subjects on Web pages, such as people, events, blog topics, reviews, and tags. Twitter's character limit and accessibility, however, are the simplest and most recognized example of how elements of connected data can provide value both individually and in aggregate.

The Power of Constraints

One of the more magical aspects of Twitter is that it reminds us that arbitrary constraints can have a liberating and profound effect on creativity. It sounds counter-intuitive, but coming up with a host of examples doesn't take long. If a group of high school students were given the choice between writing an essay about their summer vacation or writing a 300-word essay on the funniest thing that happened in the last three weeks, we could easily guess which would get their pens moving faster and lead to more imaginative results.

Poetry shows a similar relationship between constraint and inspiration. Whether having to keep to a certain meter or follow a particular rhyming scheme, poets come up with turns of phrases and ideas that they might not have otherwise happened upon if they did not need to fit words into a pattern. The limitations also give them license to play with language in a way that would not make sense or be valued in other modes. The same goes for music, with its meter and form, and even TV shows and movies, whose time restrictions and story constraints can make for enjoyable, funny, scary, or moving experiences.

A New Body of Content

Another characteristic of the real-time Web is that it gives the world a new body of content, one that, unlike IM or email's, is largely public. Plus the underlying APIs allow third parties to make use of the data through programs, thus extending the reach of the content. (Only 20% of Twitter traffic comes from the site itself. The other 80% comes from users accessing the platform through APIs.) Ron Conway and other proponents of the real-time Web see this new body of content as a great opportunity for investment, with the potential for companies to shape, extend, present, and amplify it in any number of ways.

On the surface, people consume this body of content simply by reading messages from people they follow. Much like a stock ticker, these messages scroll across whatever client they use to access it. When it first launched -- without the scale, celebrities, and business leaders -- many people failed to see the value of this mode of interaction. It was interesting, but not compelling. Now with its scale, the personalities using it, and a better general understanding of how to use it (less about your breakfast, more insight, reaction, and commentary), the channels have become fascinating -- overwhelming if you follow a lot of people, but fascinating nonetheless.

The tipping point in Twitter's adoption rate came when its stream became searchable. This happened in July 2008, when Twitter purchased a tiny search company called Summize and renamed it Twitter Search. The acquisition made it easier for users and third parties to pull specific words and tags from the Twitter stream.

This new capability revealed another layer of value, because it enabled people to access particular threads of information. Users could now search for other users, words, and specific topics. An example from earlier this summer was the aggregation of the steady stream of messages about the green revolution in Iran. With APIs, we could create filters to keep constant track of a person, item, or topic. Real-time search and filtering are still primitive, though, and a tremendous effort is being made to improve them. As one investor puts it, a lot of investment is being made "to build filters that give you only the portion of the firehose that makes sense to you."

Content in digital format is not really new. We saw this with early Web pages, then MP3s, blogs, videos, social network profiles, and so on. The difference is accessibility. Web pages have to be crawled and indexed, which limit the derivative use and retransmission of their data. RSS provided a revolutionary way to syndicate content and made it much easier to process by machine. The accessibility of the Twitter stream via APIs extends this syndication idea even further by providing much greater immediacy and fidelity. As Twitter and third parties introduce better filtering mechanisms, that stream and, by extension, other content formats on the Web will be able to be more effectively harnessed and extended.

Inside Baseball Twitter

More advanced uses of Twitter, such as retweeting, direct messaging, and thread tagging, make it a bit more of an insider's game, but even their limits makes them not all that difficult to pick up. The interesting thing is that these uses (RT for retweet, @username for mentions, and #keyword for hash tags) can be followed mechanically and used to capture these derivative streams.

Read part 2 of this series.

Guest author: Ken Fromm is a serial entrepreneur who has been active during both the Internet and Web 2.0 innovation cycles. He co-founded two companies, Vivid Studios, one of the first interactive agencies, and Loomia, one of the top recommendation, discovery, and personalization companies. He has worked at the leading edge of recommendations and personalization, interactive development, e-commerce and online advertising, semantic technologies and information interoperability, digital publishing, and digital telephony. He is currently advising a number of startups and looking at the next big thing in Web 3.0. He can be found on Twitter at @frommww.

Wikitude is one of the most high-profile augmented reality services on the market. It's a market that's getting crowded fast, and everyone wants to know if interoperability will be a priority or if we're looking at the next browser war.

Last week, what looks like the first AR app to do so snuck into the iPhone app store. Yesterday a red hot app for road conditions in major US cities made an appearance. And now Wikitude quietly let AR bloggers know today about its new release.

Wikitude's application appears to be more user-centric than its competitors. By enabling content creators to add points of interest by simply logging in with their Google, Twitter, Yahoo or OpenID accounts, there will be a lower barrier to entry than there is for creating a Wikipedia entry for a location with proper location markup that can be viewed through other AR browsers.

Hopefully, just like with desktop and other mobile browsers, we'll be able to see all the AR content someday through any AR browser. Probably the market leader right now, Layar told us this week that interoperability is something they are big proponents of, though they haven't done any legal work in that direction yet and seemed to us most interested in their own technology becoming the agreed-upon standard.

Interoperability is a technical, business and legal challenge that's much easier said than done. That work is being done by data portability, identity and open-web advocates on the web at large, but augmented reality appears set to be the new way in which people around the world will view the web of data. We'll be watching eagerly for movement towards a single AR web that browser providers compete on by trying to offer the best user experience.

Urban Airship's primary product prior to now has been push notification provisioning. The company says that both push and in-app sales are complicated enough to warrant outsourcing to specialists like them. We've written about the company's vision at launch and its dramatic success on iPhone OS 3.0 launch day.

As we wrote early this summer:

Push notifications, like when Tapulous now tells users who don't have the app running that they've been challenged to a music playing match by a friend, are something developers believe will increase ongoing engagement long after the initial download of an app. In-app sales will help monetize that engagement, something developers have found challenging after an initial flurry of sales, once they are lost in a sea of options in the app store and no longer making money sitting beside countless other apps on people's phones.

If you're not clear on what exactly that means, don't feel bad... but don't write them off either. Instead, think of Dorthy.com as a new take on the old 43Things, the site which encourages users to list goals, share progress, and cheer each other on. Dorthy does the same but gets you there by making interesting use of Web 3.0 technologies like AI and natural language search.

According to Jim Anderson, the About.com co-founder who was hired as Dorthy's CTO earlier this year, the site's search engine doesn't use keyword-based search but rather has the user enter a fully formed question, statement, or phrase like "run a marathon in 4 hours." Not only does the search engine parse the semantics of your input using its proprietary algorithms, it also learns from you, incrementally enhancing your results upon every visit.

As an example, Anderson describes how a fictional user named Jennifer might search for information about a trip to Paris. Because Jennifer had previously shared other background information like the fact that she's an avid marathon runner, fluent in French, wants to learn to cook French food, and hates cruises, Dorthy.com will retrieve specific information related to those interests. The results would be filtered to highlight info on cooking schools, shopping, and popular running routes in Paris - things that would be interesting to Jennifer specifically.

This example doesn't even necessarily count as a "dream," it seems - you could plan an actual trip to Paris using Dorthy's technology, too. However, the overall point of the service is to provide you with information about a particular goal or aspiration and then connect you with others who feel the same.

Using Dorthy

When performing searches on Dorthy, you'll have the option to create your own page on a specific topic or view the topic pages others have already created. These pages feature popular articles, videos, photos, and blog entries from the web and are constantly being updated with new content. When you find content you like, even if it's on someone else's page, you can easily copy it over to a page of your own.

After this initial "discovery" process is complete, you can use Dorthy's "Connect" feature to meet others also interested in your topic so you can share your progress and encourage each other, much like how the above-mentioned 43Things operates.

In the future, Dorthy hopes to expand their offering to go beyond simply being a consumer-targeted Web-based service to one that could benefit the enterprise (think "I want to go to a virtualization conference in Las Vegas"), or so reported eWeek earlier this year. They also plan on moving to mobile at some point, too.

At the moment, Dorthy.com is in private alpha, but you can sign up to join here.

While Hewitt admits that the Facebook app's video feature is a last minute incorporation, it will be interesting to see if the decision to add it will cut into the user base of existing Twitter video apps.

To keep an eye on the Facebook for iPhone application process or to discuss the app, follow Joe Hewitt on Twitter (@joehewitt)or check out the Facebook for iPhone page for new photos.

The initial setup can take a while, especially if you are trying to sync a very active email account. ReMail says that it can download and index about 3000 to 4000 messages per hour over WiFi, which, judging from our own experience with the app, sounds reasonable. We would definitely not try to run the initial setup on anything less than a WiFi connection.

After That: Fast and Smart

After the initial setup, however, the app is a breeze to use. ReMail's smart auto-completion makes searching for emails easy and you can reply to emails right from within the application. The real game changer here, of course, is that you can finally search all your email from the iPhone, even if you are offline. What really makes the app stand out, though, is how fast it can search through your emails, even if you have downloaded thousands of emails.

All of these messages obviously take up space on your phone, but according to ReMail, 100,000 messages will only take up about 500 megabytes. That's a small price to pay for having instant access to all of your email.

One limitation we should point out, however, is that the app only supports one email account, so you can't search both your private and business accounts, for example.

ReMail was founded by Gabor Cselle, who used to work on email related products at Google and Xobni. The company raised funding from YCombinator, as well as from Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, the inventors of Gmail and co-founders of FriendFeed.

First a little background. Lippman explained that his Viral Communications group aims to "symmetricize media" - in other words, balance it. He used an analogy of the radio system. The power to broadcast over the radio is still tightly controlled, spectrum is limited. So in that sense it is asymmetrical, unbalanced. The MIT Viral Communications group aims to re-think the way media works. Lippman and his group is asking: does radio have to be like this?

Lippman explained this in an executive summary a while back:

"The communication industry is in an upheaval equivalent to that caused by the advent of personal computers in the early 1980's. In that earlier revolution, traditional giants who held to mainframe technologies and centralized services were outpaced by newcomers with new ideas about individual ownership, incremental adoption and instant turnover. This will now happen with communications."

Examples of new forms of communications are sensors and open 802.11 networks, which are "renegades: unlicensed, personalized, digital, and embedded." [the guy in the glowing 802.11 detector shirt to your right is not Andrew Lippman btw]

This all brings about new types of social interactions with media, which Lippman seems particularly keen on right now. He mentioned the intersection with mobility: "It's not about you anymore, it's about you plus your context."

Fluid Voice: A Mobile Group Communication System

The theory of viral communications is a bit hard for the layman (this writer included) to grok, so I asked Lippman for some examples. One of his group's projects is Fluid Voice, a research project that has been prototyped on the Nokia N810. It runs, initially at least, using the 802.11s wireless mesh.

Fluid Voice is described in a white paper as "a proximity based mobile group communication system for opportunistic social exchanges." This makes one think of a mobile app for picking up members of the opposite sex. But being an academic project, I'm sure that's not the point of it. So what is it? Lippman described Fluid Voice to me as a new type of messaging system that engages a group. He said that it's like a telephone system that defaults to a conference call all of the time, which he termed "push to listen." It has similarities to party-line telephone systems, instant messaging chat rooms and conferencing bridges for business people. It's also like the Citizen's Band (CB) radios used by truck drivers in the 1970s.

Fluid Voice can be both a live and asynchronous experience - i.e. you don't need to be participating live to receive and leave messages. It isn't just audio and text messaging either: audio polls and wish lists are a part of the product. Here is a UI screenshot:

Fluid Voice Use Cases

The goal of Fluid Voice is to coordinate people in outdoor settings, using their mobile phones. According to a white paper, use cases include "spreading news during emergency responses and supporting impromptu social exchanges."

The name of the product, Fluid Voice, derives from the fact that "users can transition from live to asynchronous audio communication in a fluid manner depending on the wireless environment." To appreciate what this kind of system might be used to enable, here's a description from the paper of how CB radio was used in the 70's:

"CB radios enabled a cooperative social culture on the highways for friendly conversations in addition to providing road assistance and accident prevention among the drivers. As cell phones and multi-band WiFi enabled cell phones are becoming ubiquitous in the 21st century, an exciting opportunity arises for supporting opportunistic social collaboration within a local area."

One imagines that software like this may become a common feature in next generation mobile phones. I used the example of a sensor-enabled bookstore in this week's post about Cross Reality applications - the store pinging your mobile phone about a book on your wish list that it happens to have in stock. We can similarly forsee that Fluid Voice, on your mobile phone, could be used to meet like-minded people at the bookstore. You could even continue to chat with that group after you left the bookstore.

Social networking 3.0 anyone? Breaker 1-9!

Image credits: get directly down; slworking2

Pizza Hut, a company that apparently understands the difference between an app and a web page, has just released a brand-new iPhone application that puts Papa John's lackluster attempt to shame. We wonder: will this be the start of a new trend in company-branded applications?

The Pizza Hut App

Today, however, a user searching for the keyword "pizza" in iTunes will come across a number of restaurant locator apps and one new one that will jump out at them: Pizza Hut (iTunes URL). That's right, Pizza Hut has released a new application designed specifically for the iPhone. The app will complement their already robust lineup of alternative ordering methods that currently include ordering by text message, web site ordering, mobile web site ordering, and even a Facebook ordering system.

The Pizza Hut iPhone app offers a simple interface that includes a menu and a checkout function, as expected. However, the company has also smartly included a "virtual fridge" where you'll find coupons to add to your order and a free game called "Hut Racer" which you can play while you kill time waiting for your pizza to arrive. Altogether, the app seems to be well-thought out, well-designed, and simple enough for anyone to use.

Will Pizza Hut Encourage Other Restaurants (and Companies) to Follow?

However, the most revolutionary thing about the app may be the fact that it exists at all. No other pizza delivery company has launched an iPhone application yet. For that matter, no restaurants have done so either, not even Apple partner Starbucks. (Correct us if we're wrong about that, we searched for numerous popular chains and found none...but we're sure you'll let us know if there are some out there. At any rate, there are very few if any.)

We once wondered why so few companies, not just restaurants, but also retail stores, travel sites, and other big businesses had eschewed the App Store entirely, opting instead for mobile web sites (or, sometimes no mobile sites at all). Why shouldn't companies build iPhone applications to complement their other online offerings? The cost of development isn't prohibitively high and the iPhone represents a huge chunk of mobile web traffic both here in the U.S. and on the worldwide stage.

Some commenters on that original post argued that an iTunes store filled with branded apps from companies would clutter things up, but as the App Store now offers some 65,000 applications (give or take), is clutter really that much of an issue anymore? Others worried instead about cluttering up their phones' screens and becoming overwhelmed by the number of applications. That issue, too, has now been somewhat addressed thanks to OS 3.0's extended springboard and Spotlight search feature. You can now fill your phones with apps and find them exceedingly fast via search.

Of course, we don't think that users would download and install every single application for every single business they've ever patronized - just those they use on a regular basis, probably only a handful at most. Because really, how many businesses, restaurants or otherwise, do you visit or use multiple times per month that would make a dedicated app worth your while?

Finally, multiple commenters noted that designing a mobile web site made the most sense since it could be used on any platform. Of course we agree that companies should have a mobile site - that should be par for the course these days just as having a web presence is - but why ignore the 59% web traffic marketshare delivered by the iPhone here in the U.S. or the 43% of web traffic worldwide? Why not build for this dominating platform?

It will be important to watch Pizza Hut's success in this space, as they're leading where so few others have so far failed to go. If they see increased revenue driven by their mobile application, other restaurants - especially those that offer delivery and carry-out options - may end up doing the same. We hope this will bring about a new trend of company-branded applications, but it's far too soon to tell. We'll just have to wait and see...I guess we'll play a little "Hut Racer" in the meantime. 

Now it seems Hotz is at it again. Although this time around he's not first, he is claiming that his new software, "purplesn0w," is a better unlocking tool for the iPhone 3GS than what the Dev Team has put out.

Unlocking vs Jailbreaking

In case you're unfamiliar, jailbreaking and unlocking are two entirely different things. Jailbreaking is simply a type of hack that lets you install unapproved third-party applications on your iPhone or iPod Touch from searchable repositories provided by apps like Cydia and Icy. Unlocking, on the other hand, is a hack that lets you use your iPhone on another cellular network. Here in the U.S., that means you can use the iPhone on T-Mobile instead of AT&T. You have to first jailbreak your phone before you can unlock it, but you don't have to unlock a phone in order to jailbreak it.

How to Unlock Your iPhone 3GS in 4 Steps

In order to unlock your iPhone 3GS to work on another carrier's network, you have to first jailbreak your phone. The instructions below assume you have already done so. Because jailbreaking is a more involved process, we won't document it in this post. (Note: you can read our online guide "how to jailbreak your iPhone to OS 3.0" to jailbreak your phone).

In this case you'll want to use the software "purplera1n" to perform the jailbreak before using purplesn0w.

As always, it's a good idea to have a current iPhone backup in place in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong and you have to restore your device to factory settings.

Also note that at the present time, your phone will have to already be activated in order for this unlock to work. However, it sounds like a "hacktivation" is in the works -meaning that, in the future, you won't need to officially activate your phone with AT&T (or your country's default carrier) first.

1. Disable 3G: Go into "Settings," "General," "Network," and then tap the slider that reads "Enable 3G" to set it to the OFF position. Exit back to the main screen when finished.
2. Add the Geohot Repository to Cydia: Again, since you've already jailbroken your phone, you should have the Cydia app on your iPhone's screen. Launch the app and select "Manage" from the set of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Tap "Sources," "Edit," then "Add." Type in apt.geohot.com and hit "Add Source" when done. Tap the "done" button and exit out of the "Manage" section.
3. Install Purplesn0w: Do a search for "Purplesn0w" using Cydia's search utility. (Actually, since Cydia updates results as you type, you really only need to enter the first few letters.) You're looking for the package com.geohot.purplesn0w. Once you've found that, tap it to see the details. Next, tap the "Install" button and then the "Confirm" button just as if you were installing any other Cydia app. Wait while it installs and watch for the success message output in Cydia. Tap "Return to Cydia" when it's finished installing and then exit from the Cydia app entirely.
4. Reboot Your iPhone: Press the power button (at the top of the device) until you see the message "slide to power off" appear. Use the slider to power off your device then turn it back on. Once rebooted, your iPhone 3GS will be unlocked.

Note: You can follow the same steps as above to install the ultrasn0w unlock as well, if that's your preference. The only difference is that the repository to add to Cydia is http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com and, obviously, you'll be looking for the ultrasn0w app to install.

Juan E. Vargas, who works at Google's University Relations department, says submissions to the company's University Research Awards program are at an all-time high. He summarized some of the most interesting scientific work the company has seen lately in a blog post today; the projects range from using Street View to construct semantically-marked up 3D models of cities to sending camera kits to kids in developing countries so they can learn some engineering and share photos with the world online. These are the scientific projects Google believes could make the world, and its business, better.

Thomas Funkhouser of Princeton University is working to "develop methods for automatic construction of semantically-labeled, detailed, and photorealistic 3D models of cities from Street View data." Robots reading street signs via Google Maps? More like recognizing fire hydrants and parking meters for now, it seems. Funkhouser's research is all about 3D search and could contribute to the kind of searchable "internet of things" we've been hearing about.

Michael Wellman of University of Michigan is working on a game that will simulate advertisement auctions so as to learn from bidders' strategies. Sounds atrociously boring to anyone outside the ad world, but if you're Google then this is the kind of thing you're into.

Adnan Yahya, at the Birzeit University in Palestine is doing research on systems aimed to tackle the unique challenges of analyzing and searching Arabic textual data. He's starting with local news.

Allison Druin at the University of Maryland is doing research titled "When Children Search: Understanding what they do and what they could do with Google Search." Druin wants to figure out how to help children ages 5 through 13 find what they are looking for better on the internet.

Shree Nayar is working at Columbia University on a project that will send "camera kits" to children in poor communities around the world. The kids will learn some science and engineering in assembling the cameras and then they will upload photos from their lives to Picassa for sharing with others around the world. One part art, one part science, one part empathy - sounds great.

Bernt Schiele, of Technische Unversitat Darmstadt in Germany is doing what might be the most far-out research discussed here. He's a wearable computer and sensor geek and is developing a system to measure distances in large collections of images, both automatically and with limited human intervention.

Michael Franklin, of the University of California at Berkeley, is developing a framework for measuring improvement in the integration of different kinds of data. Sounds like fun!

These all sound like important and interesting research projects. Machine discovery and markup of physical objects from map images; distance discernment from large collections of images - if those don't sound like projects pointing to the next step of the web then we don't know what does. It's nice to see that not everything being considered is so bleeding edge technically, though.

It's got to be a thrill to have your work highlighted by Google. May these brave scientists build a better web for us all!