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A Wi-Fi hotspot feature which can be turned on by the iPhone's mobile carriers isn't the only new addition expected in Apple's forthcoming update to its mobile operating system, iOS 4.3. A developer build of the OS released yesterday has revealed several notable additions, including support for multitouch gestures, improvements to AirPlay, new ad formats for iAd and even hints of what may be a social networking gambit tied into Apple's MobileMe platform.

However, as a regular iPad reader, I have to admit I'm just as thrilled that the iPad's right-side toggle switch, which begin its life as an orientation lock (locking portrait or landscape modes) before being transformed into a mute button via the latest update, is now going to be configurable by the end user. Mute switch or orientation lock: it's your call. Thank you, Apple, thank you.

Multi-column, multi-platform social network client TweetDeck has issued an update that fixes a few bugs and adds "some small, but important, new features". We're talking support for Twitter's t.co URL shortener, uploading pics to Posterous and even sending out tweets that are longer than the 140 character limit.

The update is just for the standard desktop client, not the "super-swanky User Streams Preview version", but TweetDeck promises an upgrade for that is also on the way soon.

Twitter just launched an updated, more dynamic homepage. The old, static homepage that didn't really explain how Twitter really works and just showed a list of trending topic and a search form. The new homepage, on the other hand, features a scrolling list of trending topics, a constantly updating view of tweets from popular Twitter users, a random sampling of suggested users and a new explanation of what Twitter is.

Some LinkedIn users will have noticed a change to the navigation and user interface of the LinkedIn.com website, announces a company blog post. The business-focused social network is in the process of rolling out an updated design that aims to improve and simplify site navigation while also offering a cleaner, less-cluttered look. Does the fresh coat of paint hit the mark?

At its annual iPod event today, Apple introduced version 3.1 of the iPhone OS for the iPhone and iPod touch. While there are a number of small tweaks and new features in this update, for the most part, the new firmware enables support for the new features that iTunes 9 introduced today, including Genius mixes and premade ringtones. One feature we were really looking for, support for augmented reality (AR) apps, will only be semi-supported in this new version, though at least some AR apps that were previously impossible to implement on the iPhone will now be feasible.

A little over a month ago, the next update to the iPhone firmware - OS 3.1 beta - was released to developers. With the updated firmware, there are a number of bug fixes and a few new features, including voice control over Bluetooth, copy and paste for phone numbers, vibration feedback when re-arranging screen icons, and more. However, the most notable change in the latest OS update is the re-inclusion of MMS. For unknown reasons, this feature was removed from the fifth beta and the public release of the OS, but now it's back and enabled by default. Although the functionality isn't working over the AT&T network yet, there are reports that the next iPhone update will indeed enable MMS. The only question is when?

Wolfram Alpha, the 'computational knowledge engine' from the makers of Mathematica, received its first major update today. According to Wolfram, this is the first broad update to the core code and data of Alpha since its launch, and includes a number of refinements to the way Alpha handles certain types of data and queries. Specifically, these refinements include combined time series plots of different quantities ("germany gdp vs population"), additional linguistic forms of many types of data and questions, and a number of updates to Alpha's data set, so that it now knows more about planets, foods, and government positions, for example. In total, the team touched about 1.1 million data values in this update and made 1,850 code commits.