Path was uploading iPhone users' address books to its servers without asking. Today's update, version 2.0.6, now prompts users to opt-in to the "Add Friends" feature, which is not mandatory. Path has deleted all the existing contact info from its servers.

There are some additional security measures Path could use with this contact information, as Matt Gemmell suggested in yesterday's thread with Morin. The app could hash the information locally and then upload it. Path hasn't taken that step yet, but it assures users that the connection is encrypted, and the data are stored behind a firewall. And now that it's all opt-in, users are in control again.

So Path recovered as gracefully as possible. Do you accept its apology? Or did yesterday's revelation do too much damage for you to trust the company again? It's important to remember that you pay for free apps with your data. They're going to do what they can to collect it, because that's how they make money.

They should always ask the user for permission first. Apple requires app developers to ask the user for permission before gathering location data, and perhaps it should do the same for contacts. But the bottom line is that responsibility for user data starts with the user.

How much do you care about privacy when it comes to data like this? Is the price of free apps worth it? Share your responses in the comments.

"Facebook will always be free," it tells us, so free is now the standard. Free apps are expensive, though; we pay with our data. Whenever Facebook or Google messes with our privacy, this is the cost of doing business for free. Path is no different. It's already using our personal data in ways we didn't expect. Arun Thampi discovered today that it uploads the entire iPhone address book to its servers. Surprised? Don't be.

It's a secure exchange of information between Path's servers and your phone, and it's not necessarily doing anything flat-out wrong with the information. But Path never asked its users if it can do this. It may be using our contacts for the benefit of our user experience, for finding friends on Path, for example. But we need an explanation.

Why didn't we know about this until an enterprising hacker stumbled over it by accident? Is this a sign of how Path will treat user data in the future? What do Path's adoring users do now? Well, they should get used to it. This is the price of free.

The functionality is opt-in on Android, and CEO Dave Morin says it will be opt-in on iOS soon, but the fact is, the app added it before asking.

All I want @Path to say is "Oops, our mistake. We'll update the app and our servers to keep only hashes, and be opt-in. We're sorry."

— Matt Gemmell (@mattgemmell) February 7, 2012

UPDATE 11:53 a.m.: Path CEO Dave Morin replied to Thampi's post in the comments:

"We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.

We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval."

Translation: We did it first, and we'll ask you for permission in a little while. Also, this makes clear that Path uploads Android contacts as well.

Developer/blogger/legend Matt Gemmell raises three questions missing from Morin's explanation:

"1. Why are you uploading the actual address book data, rather than (say) generating hashes of the user's email addresses locally, then uploading just those hashes? You'd be able to do friend-finding that way, and similarly if you uploaded hashes of all email addresses in the user's address book, you'd be able to do your notifications of when a friend joins. At no point would your servers ever need to see the actual email addresses or phone numbers from our contacts.

2. Why wasn't this an opt-in situation to begin with? Isn't that against Apple's own T&Cs?

3. How can we have our contact information deleted from your servers, if we wish to do that?"

UPDATE 12:22 p.m.: Morin responds to Gemmell's questions point-by-point:

"1. This is a good alternative solution which we'll look into. Thanks for the idea.

2. This is currently the industry best practice and the App Store guidelines do not specifically discuss contact information. However, as mentioned, we believe users need further transparency on how this works, so we've been proactively addressing this.

3. As I mentioned in the previous answer, we are rolling out this functionality for 2.0.6. In the meantime, if you would like your data deleted from our servers please contact our service team at service@path.com. We take this same policy for any of your data, if you'd like your account deleted, including all data, we're happy to do this as well. We fundamentally believe that you as a user should always have control over your information and data and you can always email our service team and we will remove anything you'd like from our servers."

The response is in the right spirit, but Path should now see the repercussions of setting it up this way. The only opt-out for users is to manually email the support team, and the opt-in version is coming to the App Store after the fact. If Path had just asked its users before adding this functionality, and if the app hashed the sensitive info locally before uploading it, everyone probably would have said "yes," and this wouldn't be a story.

Are you using Path? What do you think about this news?

We've compared Showyou's previous versions to Flipboard and Instapaper, which is pretty esteemed company for an iOS app. As a set of features, those comparisons are apt. But the interface takes it a step further. The app takes full advantage of the touchscreen. It's a better interface than TV has ever had. And you don't just watch on your device; you can AirPlay it to your Apple TV and just use Showyou as the remote. Whatever it was about TV that Steve Jobs said he "finally cracked," it was probably something like this.

Showyou has this figured out in so many ways. No other app has this grid interface, for one thing. The main screen of all your videos flows under your fingers like Microsoft's Surface or something out of Minority Report, except this is something you can have right now.

When you go further in to the app, whether you're browsing a category or a friend's videos, the interface is reined in a little, going to a simpler, scrolling column. The new navigation drawer helps you get reoriented quickly and easily.

The sources of the videos in Showyou are your friends and the people you follow. It connects to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Vimeo and Vodpod, which is a video curation site by Remixation, the company that makes Showyou. There are also some publisher channels, like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, TED and more. The main grid shows videos from all the sources you're following, and you can narrow down by source, by topic or hashtag, or by the person sharing. It even has pretty fast search using all that social metadata, with an index of nearly 30 million videos so far.

Showyou is free, and it will become ad-supported as it grows. It's also considering a subscription service for certain shows or publishers. The big question is whether Showyou will get licenses for major TV shows or movies. "Not yet," its people say. "Maybe soon." But YouTube viewing is eclipsing TV, anyway. For iPad or Kindle Fire owners, or even for iPhone and iPod Touch, Showyou should be in your living room.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.

How Lanyrd Uses HTML5 for a Great Mobile Web App

Lanyrd's new mobile web app, released today, is a great example of how the HTML5 spec can be innovated upon. Taking advantage of offline caching, if the phone and browser support it, the app allows for a mobile conference experience that isn't at the whim of the very fallible Wi-Fi offerings at so many events. Dan says that there is great potential for an app like this, especially in regards to how they might package the app.

"It can offer this functionality to conferences as a backbone service and help organizers put together dynamic cross-platform apps with offline caching. Or it could lend its mobile Web app to conferences as a partner app. This is not just cool technology being put to use. With a little creativity, Lanyrd could build a business model around its HTML5 offering."

More Must Read Stories:

[Infographic] The Rise and Fall of Megaupload

We're not even two weeks into the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown, but the saga seems to unfold with a new angle or detail everyday. From Kim Dotcom's colorful personal life to questions about the fate of non-infringing data uploaded by former Megaupload users, this story is far from over. (more)

How to Take Better Food Porn Photos

Admit it. You're an amateur food porn photographer. But don't worry, you're certainly not alone.

Last week, my esteemed Internet ReadWriteWeb-y colleagues Jon Mitchell and Curt Hopkins cooked up this insanely hilarious story about the grossness of amateur food porn. Amazingly, every single photograph in his story was shot by an amateur. And every single time, the food looked totally disgusting. (more)

How Pinterest Uses Your Content Without Violating Copyright Laws

Pinterest, the increasingly popular pinboarding social network, is able to present a visually arresting interface in large part by using copyrighted images pinned by users.

"It's a huge concern for creative bloggers," said Amy Anderson, who blogs on the arts and crafts site Crafter Minds. "I don't think Pinterest does anything to help protect copyright besides removing content when people ask." (more)

Not So Fast: Teens Aren't Fleeing Facebook For Twitter

Contrary to an Associated Press report implying otherwise, teens are not shutting down their Facebook accounts in favor of Twitter.

Emil Protalinski has a much more thorough analysis of what is happening, which includes the Pew Research report AP used, as well as a July 2011 Pew report that focused solely on teens and social media use. His conclusion? Teens are definitely using Twitter more, but they are not giving up their Facebook accounts to do so. (more)

Startup's Petition Raises $3M in 24 Hours if Senate Passes Crowdfunding Act

"We can gamble in Vegas. We can donate on Kiva or Kickstarter. But it's illegal to purchase $100 of stock in a job-creating business? That makes no sense."

That is the tagline to a new project called WeFunder from three TechStars Boston alumni who are trying to garner support for the "Democratizing Access to Capital Act" (S.1791) that would allow entrepreneurs to crowdfund startups. (more)

"Anonymous" Fights the Drug Cartels and the Movie Moguls: Reaction

It's being called the "Mexican SOPA," especially by press sources wanting to place highly with Google News. Last week, Mexican Senator Federico Döring announced an anti-piracy bill, which that country's justice ministry describes as establishing a notification service for suspected content pirates, one which would enable the authorities to obtain those suspects' identities. (more)

The Other 99% of Entrepreneurs

In my recent piece Reengineering Capitalism I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is "fundable."

The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the venture. They seldom ask how much revenue the company has or if it is profitable. (more)

Surprise, Surprise: Amazon Doesn't Say How Many Kindle Fires It Sold

Amazon is notorious for sharing very little information about how its products and business units perform. Its new Kindle Fire tablet is no different.

Amazon just reported its fourth quarter financial results, and, shocking no one, it doesn't disclose how many Kindle Fire tablets it sold. Or even how many total Kindles it sold. (more)

Blogger.com's New Takedown Policy Thwarts Censorship

Google's Blogger has found a way to handle local government takedown requests similar to the way Twitter now does. It will now start redirecting readers to country-specific top-level domains (TLD) instead of the usual blogspot.com domain. It does so based on the location of the user's IP address, just as many other Google services do. This gives Google the "flexibility" to comply with removal requests according to local laws. (more)

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To a hardcore iPhone user, it seems like it should be relatively easy to explain what Launch Center does. But as the many meditative blog posts show, there's more here than meets the eye. Launch Center's creators at App Cubby are still figuring out for themselves what they're onto here. They've broken into something fundamental about iOS that it doesn't have yet, and they've made a $0.99 app we can all use to figure out together exactly what that is.

Launch Center is one app for launching tasks across many apps. It can be a simple speed-dial-Mom or text-my-girlfriend launcher, or it can hook deeply into an app and, for example, go straight to Instagram's camera screen. You can also link to any Web URL, which it will open in Safari. It also comes loaded with some neat shortcuts like a "Flashlight" button to turn on the phone's LED. An update last week added scheduled tasks, so you can now associate an in-app action with a timed reminder. This all sounds so useful, but it's surprisingly hard to figure out how to work it in.

@JonMwords hmm. I have "call girlfriend" and backup website.

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) January 29, 2012

I talked to App Cubby founder David Barnard today, and it sounds like he and developer Justin Youens are still figuring it out, too. Barnard says they only put Launch Center in their iPhone docks themselves in the last week or two. They're experimenting now with different kinds of interfaces, beyond a simple list of actions, as well as different kinds of tasks to launch.

They're also working with developers of other apps to create good URL schemes for inclusion in Launch Center. iOS apps have URLs for different screens or actions, just like websites. For example, to launch Instagram straight to the camera screen, the URL is instagram://camera. Launch Center users can input URLs themselves, and developers often make these publicly available. But it also comes loaded with some easy and common ones for users who don't want to get their hands too dirty.

But is this something users want? Is the convenience of going straight to a common action, rather than swiping around for the app you need, tapping it and then acting, important enough for most users? Barnard and I discussed that at length, and I think we concluded that there's no way to know without trying. So they went ahead and launched Launch Center at the unbelievably good price of $0.99, and now we can all try it. Barnard says that they're getting about 1,000 downloads a day, and they're especially big in Japan.

A Better Mental Model

Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a thoughtful post last week about the shortcomings of Apple's iOS home screen. The problem is that its "badges on a table" approach is not quite flexible enough sometimes. It forces users to think about launching an app and then finding a task, even though one or two taps might seem like enough to cut straight to the action. Apple has had to hack its own interface with features like Notification Center to speed things up.

Launch Center started as a way to extend Notification Center, but the first version was rejected by Apple. The Launch Center of today is like a shelf containing its own list of actions chosen by the user. Barnard says they're considering making an "experimental" version for pro users, letting people choose from a variety of different launcher styles to see what works for them.

Whether or not we're conscious of them, I believe these kinds of time-savers and mental models are important to everyone with a smartphone. RWW fans almost certainly don't know this, but I co-host a weekly podcast with my friend Jamie from App Advice about what to do with all these devices. We discussed Launch Center when we first heard of it and again in great detail two days ago, because we're both frantically searching for ways to work this app into our lives. For now, I think we've both decided to just stick it on our docks first and find a way to use it over time.

In my Launch Center right now, I've got the Instagram camera launcher, "compose tweet" in Tweetbot (my Twitter client of choice), and a few Web bookmarks I use all the time, like my Kippt inbox. It's still very much an experiment, but that's the fun of Launch Center. If you're looking for ways to get a little more oomph out of your iPhone, check out Launch Center and share what you come up with.

Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we thought it might be helpful to wrap up some of the most talked about stories. Assuming this goes over well, we're going to give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus as well. This is a new feature at ReadWriteWeb so we covet your feedback. If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments below or reach out to me directly at robyn at readwriteweb.com.

Many of you expressed a significant lack of interest at the fact that your Klout score may have dropped recently. However, due to the veracity of your non-feelings, we thought it might be fun to wrap up your responses.

Whether this relates to your feelings about Klout specifically, or if you just have too many other things to occupy your brain than a popularity metric, I'm not sure. At least one of you thought the apathy was a bit manufactured.

One of the best comments I saw put it all into context:

Since many of us at ReadWriteWeb were interested in why the scores decreased but did not feel overly excited one way or the other once we knew the reason, we'll take your word for it. Perhaps the scores themselves are much less important than the relative placement of a profile within the Klout ecosystem.

Blogging Is So Over: Jux Comes To The iPad

Jux made the leap to the iPad today, and the app is gorgeous. While some of you experienced intermittent issues with the site, due to server overload, the overall impressions were mostly favorable from the ReadWriteWeb community.

Android version requested, stat!

Still reading?

Then read on and check out some of the other stories you shouldn't miss from today:

Microsoft's Bing Partners with Mozilla's Firefox

Found App Impresses Without Tracking and Check-Ins

Nokia's Lumia Windows Phones Not Coming to U.S. in 2011 and more Nokia news from today here and here

Twitter Embraces Its Social Role in TV

Do You Know Your Neighbor? Nextdoor Wants to Make Sure You Do

Who Are The Top Tech Lobbying Firms?

What Mobile Businesses Can Learn From Spanish Consumers

Who Creates High-Tech Wealth in Africa? The Case For (& Against) Government and more reporting from Kenya today

RIM on the Next PlayBook OS: 'We're Still Working on It'

Can the iPad Save Magazines and Newspapers After All?

Skype Launches Expanded App Platform, Aims High With New Video Calling & More API Offerings

Mint.com's New iPad App Offers Better Engagement

Interested in a chance to win an iPad? Send in your question, by October 31, 2011, for our next Live Chat coming up on 11/1 at 10:00am PST. The topic? Intelligence Matters: Virtualize your Business Critical Workloads with Confidence (rules)

As you can see from a snippet of its dashboard, you are informed about friends who haven't recently used their accounts in some time (that could be possible spammers, or it could just be a false positive and someone who has grown disenchanted with Tweeting); any links that point to nasty places on the Net; other obvious threats that are detected; and other warnings. You can set it up to warn you weekly, or let your friends know that they accounts have been compromised (I would suggest not doing that for the moment, until the tool is further developed),and to scan your private messages. It will take several minutes to process your entire Twitter stream, depending on how many followers and messages you have.

It certainly can't hurt to have someone of BitDefender's caliber looking over your shoulder at your Tweets, and it can help in some cases to have this form of protection. And it is free.

Cyrus Farivar has done much the same thing with his book, "The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World."

Instead of focusing on the capital of the Web, Silicon Valley, or even on one of the Silicon Valleys outside of the original, like Bangalore, India, Farivar has taken a look at our wired world through the lenses of South Korea, Senegal, Estonia and Iran.

There is a tendency to think of the Internet as being a priori and sui generis. This is a new world so powerful and so game-changing that it effects history and culture, no matter where one stands. Farivar's argument, and it is a well-made one, is that like any other element of the human experience, the Internet is effected by history and culture. If we ignore that fact, if we let ourselves believe that the Internet, not history, is more of a determining factor in our future, we are liable to be surprised by it to an excessive degree.

Each of the places he covers are important to our understanding of the Internet because their histories and cultures have influenced how they have embraced it. In a way, the countries he has chosen to profile are reflections of each other, Senegal of South Korea and Estonia of Iran.

South Korea

South Korea has innovated two things: professional gaming leagues and citizen journalism. With a block on much of the tech coming out of Japan (given how Japan treated Korea in World War II the restrictions are many), Korea's game of choice is StarCraft. Ohmynews was like a new planet when it burst on the scene in 2004.

Both of these things are direct results of the history of Korea, that is, its past (its geopolitical position and struggle with Japan) and its present, where it is one of the greatest providers of free broadband Internet access to its citizens.

Senegal

Although Senegal is the most wired country in Africa, it does not have the infrastructure in Korea, meaning that most computing is done inefficiently in Internet cafes. Like Korea, the country's leadership is pro-Internet and focuses a great deal of attention and emphasis on it. But this attention is top-down and insufficiently distributed. No matter how much a country's upper echelons believe in something, if they do not have the capacity to make it possible for everyone to contribute to building that belief, there is a good chance it will die. Even if it does not, it is destined to stagnate, or at least plateau.

Despite being a politically stable, relatively prosperous country, Senegal's reality is Africa's: a raft of intelligent, interested people working against a history of compromised infrastructural elements.

Estonia

Where Korea has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced broadband, Estonia has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced (often free) Wi-Fi. This in part explains the success of Estonian companies, with Skype in the lead, only 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The half-century occupation left Estonia an apparently broken country.

But its history of facing, and considering itself part of, the West, was not easily expunged. When the opportunities were available again, mostly when the obstacles were removed, Estonians went crazy innovating Web tools and companies. Now it has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the world, as well as a lot of time to make up. Like South Korea and Senegal, this access to an almost complete national Wi-Fi blanket is both an expression of citizen will and an expression of political will at the highest levels.

Iran

Although China probably has to receive the Palm D'Or of online repression, Iran is competing in the same league. Using the same combination of tools pioneered by the Chinese - laws, social checks and technological filtering - Iran's Internet has been rendered a third-class communications network. The Iranian leadership recognized early on that they had a citizenry with a long history of intellectual and technological competence and that the Internet was going to prove important in the future. Members of the Iranian leadership began to utilize social media to promote their points of view and continue to do so today.

Big Three

The three big ideas I took away from this book were these.

1. History matters. As "disruptive" as web technology is, the history of a country or region, right down to the present moment, profoundly and tangibly affects how that place and its people will respond to that disruption. Farivar did a particularly good job of outlining the relationship between each of these countries' histories and their relationship to the wired world.
2. Political will. The will of a country's leadership is important but it is not enough. The innovation of a ruling group must either reflect its people's will, or inspire their imagination.
3. Opportunity. Human beings are experimental and (in the broadest sense) entrepreneurial. If their impulse toward giving the Web a go are checked, due to lack of connectedness, unaffordability or overt limitation, it will check intellectual and financial prosperity. Individuals, whether app programmers in Senegal or dissidents in Iran, will move forward, but the society as a whole will not.

One of the bigger problem areas for Android users has always been the Android Market. As a matter of fact, Google didn't even provide a Web-based interface until just three months ago, meaning users could only browse apps directly from their phones.

While the website was certainly a welcome addition it still had plenty of room for improvement - especially in terms of app discovery - and this week Google launched a number of new features to help users find new apps.

First, Google has added a number of new "top app" charts, revamping the old lists and adding top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists. It has also added an "Editor's Choice" section, which highlights apps chosen by the Android Market staff themselves. If having apps picked out by the people who matter most is what you're looking for, then you'll also enjoy the fact that 150 developers - who Google says are "creating the highest quality, most popular, and most notable apps available on Android Market" - will now be highlighted with a special icon wherever the developer name appears.

The final two additions will hopefully leverage some of that special Google juice that helps Google identify trends and buzz. First, Google will now suggest related apps whenever you view a specific app's details, showing apps frequently browsed by people who viewed the app, and apps that people tend to install alongside the app. Next, Google will show trending apps, so you can jump on the bandwagon before it's too late and you're the only one without the coolest app on the block.

Now, if Google could just get rid of that terrible phony Flickr app that nearly destroyed my first experience as a new Android user. (Don't worry, I've since recovered and am learning to love - as I predicted - my fully integrated Android experience.)

The partnership will boost Facebook's system, which already scanned links for spam or malware, by giving it access to WOT's database of websites that its 20 million users have flagged as harmful. If a user clicks on a link that is deemed untrustworthy a warning will pop up notifying the user to avoid the link, learn more about or continue to the page.

"Our community has worked hard for years uncovering scams and threats, reporting bad customer service, dubious privacy practices and protecting kids from unsavory sites. Our cooperation with Facebook validates all the effort WOT users put into sharing information," said Vesa Perälä, CEO of WOT in a blog post.

Facebook scams and phishing attacks are a common occurrence and often see a spike associated with big news, such as the death of Osama bin Laden or the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Japan. Scammers take advantage of these news stories by raiding Google through search engine optimization and Facebook news feeds to try and get users to hand over personally identifiable information or cash. The WOT system should be able to help with this. The company offers extensions for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera that allows users to increase the WOT database by flagging from their bookmark bars if they have visited a malicious site.

Facebook announced a new security feature last month called Login Approvals that will also be going live. Login Approvals is an authentication system that recognizes the devices you use to login in to Facebook and if it does not recognize a device it will send you a text message with a security code to confirm.

The Facebook/WOT partnership goes live for all U.S. users today and will be available globally next week.

If this week's Where 2.0 conference is proof of anything, it's that developers are excited about creating location aware mobile apps. One of the biggest barriers to creating a place-aware app, however, is getting the ball rolling - you need place data.

Place and location, though hand-in-hand, are two different things and SimpleGeo, a geolocation data storage and platform service, announced this week that it has put data for more than 20 million places into the public domain to make it easier than ever for developers to create location-aware applications.

When it comes to location, an app can use any number of signals, from triangulating with WiFi signals to using the in-phone GPS, to determine the device's exact coordinates. But coordinates are just numbers that relate to a point on a map. When we check in to a place on Foursquare, we don't check in to GPS coordinates, we check in to the coffee shop or the baseball stadium. How does Foursquare do this? It takes our coordinates and relates them to place data. Place data can involve a number of different data points, but at its most simple level, place data attaches a name to geographic coordinates. It can go well beyond that, however, including coordinates to define a place's shape and size, the zip code, the city, state and county that place is located within, and so on.

With this week's announcement, SimpleGeo is saying that the data for nearly 20 million places that it owns are now available, to use freely, under the Creative Commons Zero, or "No Copyright," license.

"Developers want to do a multitude of different things with data," explained Galligan. "There is a future we want to get to when facts are free. We're trying to force that hand a bit."

Galligan acknowledged that some of this data, which is often crowdsourced from multiple sources a la OpenStreetMaps, isn't as good as propriety data quite yet, but it's on its way.

Joe Francia, editor in chief of Directions Media, acknowledged the effect this move could have, but also looked to data quality as the primary weakness.

"Certainly, 'free data' under CC0 shakes up the business model of those who for years have invested in collecting data under a proprietary (read expensive) model," said Francia. "What remains to be seen is if their own sourced data can be maintained and updated in a timely manner. People want good data, regardless."

Nonetheless, a 20-million-strong set of place data could be a great jumping off point for any developer who wants to get into creating place-aware applications without being beholden to the terms of service of companies like Facebook or Foursquare. Galligan encourages developers in his blog post to "take our data, use it, make it your own, and make it better."

Today, he told us simply, that "the developer needs to have the freedom to do whatever the heck they want."

Are you one of those people that has spent the past decade walking through life looking for opportunities to squeeze yet another Big Lebowsky quote into a conversation? Or perhaps you feel that the best way to express your thoughts is not with your own words, but the properly woven poesy of Wordsworth?

If you're a quotation maven of the nth degree, then Quotebook could be your new favorite friend for the iPhone.

Quotebook calls itself "an iOS app for collecting and sharing the quotes that matter to you." I might call it the favorite new tool of all you RenFaire loving, Simpsons obsessing, Shakespeare memorizing, D&D playing, literary quotation hounds out there.

So what does it do? Quotebook lets you quickly excerpt quotes from things you read and catalog them in a personal database, offering quick sharing options to Twitter, Facebook, Email, SMS and Tumblr. If you're reading something on your iPhone, you can select the text and the app will detect it in your clipboard upon opening. If you're not entirely sure about the quote, you can even look up Authors on Wikipedia and WikiQuote, where you can browse for other quotes.

Once you post a quote, you can tag it according to author, topic, and even give it a rating - all of which can later be searched. At the bottom of the main screen, you can navigate your quotes by either the quote itself, the author, source or tag. And if you want to hang on to these quotes (and who wouldn't?) you can export, backup and email your quotes directly from within the app.

Last night, an app called Color hit the app stores for both iOS and Android. It made a big splash for a number of reasons, not the least of which being its $41 million prelaunch funding. It has all-star founders who have a impressive track records. It launched days after, instead of before, uber tech conference SXSW. Unfortunately for the company, the app can offer a terrible experience for first-time users and appear absolutely useless to those outside of a densely packed, techie mecca like San Francisco or New York.

Let's put all that aside for a moment, however, and look at how Color works, what it does, and why it could redefine mobile, location, and online social interaction. We took some time to talk with Color CEO Bill Nguyen this afternoon and asked him about the tech behind the most talked about app this side of SXSW and here's what he had to say.

Color hit both the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace last night, bringing with it the promise of real-time, proximity based photo sharing. Using something the company calls a "multi-lens," the app "intelligently identifies nearby smartphones, whether at a local park or at a concert, using advanced proximity algorithms" and instantly shares photos, videos, comments and likes with them.

According to Nguyen, Color is built on some serious technology. The company has six patents pending and sees itself as "much more of a research company and a data mining company than a photo sharing site."

As such, Nguyen explains that Color can ingest and analyze four times the amount of data than Google did in its early days. This, not a tech "bubble" or an early exit, justifies the $41 million investment.

"We have no interest whatsoever in being acquired," said Nguyen. "This is purely what we need to operate. There are real data needs and real capital costs."

What does this tech offer? Among other things, a new way of looking at location and proximity that, while Nguyen wouldn't speculate, could be used in any number of ways including creating a new way of online social interaction.

Research & Data Mining, You Say?

The pictures and videos you take using Color are much more than just that. They're a piece of sharable media around which Color can collect and retain a number of different data points. When you take a picture or video, Color gathers a variety of information. It collects sound levels, Bluetooth readings, light readings, antenna strength, the time - even the direction you're pointing your phone - and more and uses it all to determine your proximity to other users.

This leaves an obvious question - why not use GPS? This is where the tech we've been talking about comes in.

"Lots of people are trying to create location-based services and using GPS," said Nguyen. "The problem with GPS is that it doesn't work."

Color does things differently by collecting these various data points from the phone's sensors and then looking for proximity by looking for identical inaccuracies.

"When you open the camera, that's our big moment," explained Nguyen. "The information we capture in a very short window is probably not that accurate, but when you compare it to lots of other people and it's identically inaccurate, they're probably in the same place."

The problem, of course, isn't how to gather the data, but how to benchmark it, compare it, and accurately determine location and proximity. That's where Color's patent-pending technology comes in, which Nguyen credits DJ Patil, former chief scientist with LinkedIn, with creating. If you've used many GPS-dependent apps, then you know the battery-draining and inaccurate qualities of modern location. Color offers a way to determine location and proximity in such a non-battery draining, accurate manner that an impromptu and "elastic" social graph can be created from the data, without once ever having to purposefully check in.

The 'Elastic' Social Graph

So, is color just another social photo sharing app? No. There are no friend designations in the app.Instead, your friends are people whose paths your own path intersects with, both in location, time and interaction. The more you interact with someone, the more persistent that connection becomes. Over time, it fades away. Ngyuen calls it the "elastic" social graph and he said it's just one of several other ideas the company is working on patenting.

"That's the part I've never gotten about an online social network - to say that someone is your 'friend.' It's rather kind of random. Shouldn't relationships based on technology work the exact same as real life relationships?" asked Nguyen.

In the world of Facebook, once someone is your friend, they're your friend until you return and re-evaluate that relationship, regardless of whether or not you've ever spoken to them again. In reality, the relationship could have fizzled long ago, yet it's still a bond as good as any. With Color's "elastic" social graph, these ties can fade and disappear. Color's ability to accurately determine location and user proximity is what makes this sort of social graph - an implied, impermanent and elastic social graph - even possible.

Isn't It All Just Bubble-Induced Hype?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "no." Color may have offered a terrible first impression for folks out in the boonies with nobody nearby, but it says it's fixing that. It may have shot itself in the foot in terms of rising to the top of the App Store and raking in the new users. It may have even confused and annoyed the early adopter set with its puzzle-esque and sometimes serpentine design, but if it can really do what it proposes - change the way our social graph works by way of accurate location and proximity data - then none of that may matter.

Oh, and before you ask, Nguyen said they do have a monetization plan. It hinges on advertising and one simple fact.

"Our data is so accurate that we know where you are," said Nguyen.

Convore, the real-time, Web-based group message system, just went live in the iTunes App Store. Previously, Convore was available only as a Web-based messaging service and this was one of the things that set it apart - though perhaps not in a good way.

"Basically, it's a contemporary version of IRC," said co-founder Leah Culver, when last we looked at the service. Now, the service has hit iOS and taken this new form of IRC on the road. Will an app change anything? Or does this just mean that all of you Convore addicts (and it seems like there are quite a few already) can get your fix from wherever you are?

Before we go to far, I'll admit it - I've become a bit hooked myself. Convore brings me back to the days of BBSes and chatrooms. So yes, I am one of these excited folks who can now obsessively check for new messages from wherever. But let's get back to the task at hand - Convore's iPhone app.

So what does the iPhone app do? Just that. It's Convore, but now on your iPhone. You can view and participate in real-time conversations, star messages that you like, send @reply messages to other users, see who's online and search for new groups to join. I think that's about everything I do on the basic website, as well.

Will the app change anything for Convore, other than the level of addictiveness? So far, I'm using it the same, but it certainly means I can take the Convore experience and user-base and take it on the go. All that needs to happen to turn Convore into a mobile group messaging app like most any other now is to use it for that purpose. Create a private group and there you have it.

Convore co-founder Leah Culver said it not only changed what it could be used for, but how she used it as well.

"Before, we were just a website, but as a website and mobile, it makes Convore more of a service," said Culver. "I'll find myself checking it like I check other apps."

Convore has been lumped together with a slew of other group messaging and group chat apps, such as Beluga and GroupMe, but is inherently more like a public chat than a private messaging service. Yobongo has also been thrown in the same category, and while it is also inherently public, it organizes users not according to self-created groups and subtopics, but according to affinities, relevancy and location. A big distinction between Convore and these other services, however, is that Convore is more of a platform play.

For now, Convore is available as an app on the iPhone. There is also a third-party Android app called Convorsation, and the Convore team is encouraging anyone who wants to to use the Convore API and build an app of their own.

The changes are pretty impressive, and if you're reliant on Evernote for your mobile device you'll find the app faster and the interface more intuitive - all making the app a lot easier for not just note-taking but for note retrieval.

The screen for creating a note has been updated as well. When you go to add a note, you'll see a split screen - with the top half for your data entry and the bottom half with options to attach images, audio, tags, and your location. You can now attach multiple items to a single note, which is hugely helpful if you're compiling various media - pictures, audio, and text - into a single note.

Tagging (including tagging with location data), browsing, and searching are all improved in this update as well.

Evernote releases updates to its mobile and desktop apps quite regularly, but these changes to the iPhone app are pretty significant (and I'd say, once again, puts the iPhone app ahead of the Android app, which saw huge improvements late last year). Evernote says that it has more changes in the works, including the ability to performed in-app editing of notes with styled text and multimedia. These and other changes will also make their way to a new iPad app as well.