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.

New Features: Here's What We Know

Yesterday, Apple seeded the beta of iOS 4.3 to developers for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. In it are the following new features:

• Wi-Fi Hotspot: As we already knew, the personal hotspot capabilities are present for GSM devices, although it's up to individual carriers to implement this setting. It's doubtful that AT&T will be one of them. Verizon, however, is.
• AirPlay support for third-party native and Web applications: Previously in iOS 4.2, AirPlay, the feature that lets you stream video from your mobile device to an Apple TV or other third-party AirPlay-enabled hardware, was only available to the built-in Apple apps. With 4.3, any third party app can offer this functionality, too.
• A redesigned FaceTime icon: A minor change, but it looks good.
• Support for fullscreen iAd banners on iPad: A new iAd format which Apple says is "easy to implement," allows its users to collect 60% of the revenue generated.
• Multitouch gesture support for the iPad: More on this below
• Configurable switch for the iPad, as mentioned above, the toggle can be used as a mute button or orientation lock
• HTTP Live Streaming Statistics: This allows developers to track their video streams' popularity and measure their performance.

New FaceTime icon; Credit: 9to5mac

The Biggest News: Multitouch Gestures

The multitouch gesture support is probably the most interesting of all the known additions. When the update goes live on the iPad, you'll be able to use four or five fingers to pinch to the homescreen, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar and swipe left or right between apps.

The gestures will have their own panel in within the Settings application on the iPad, where they can be switched on or off.

Multitouch Gestures Switch; Credit: Engadget

For some reason, the Internet rumor mill has decided that this (arguably somewhat advanced) feature means that Apple is intending to do away with the Home button on its devices. We'll go just ahead and opine here: that's crazy talk.

As Apple insider John Gruber explains, "these gestures do mean that you don't have to use the Home button. But there's a serious discoverability problem with them. The physical Home button is impossible to miss. That it is the one and only button on the faces of these devices is a big part of why normal people are able to pick them up, start playing with them, and figure out how to get around with no help...I don't think the iOS Home button is going anywhere."

Agreed.

However, they look like great fun to try.

Find My MobileMe Friends?

A more curious development is the reference to a "Find My Friends" setting within Apple's MobileMe service. MobileMe, a premium service providing email, calendar, contacts, file and photo sharing and more, appears to be adding a social element, too. In the developer build, this feature was spotted in strings related to the Settings app, but what it means is still unclear.

One line of speculation is that this may be the start of a location-enabled service, which will help you find your friends near you.

And perhaps, as Engadget recalls, it's related to that Apple patent application which showed plans for a location-based social networking app called "iGroups." As described, iGroups would let people share data with each other using a service like MobileMe.

Find My Friends, Credit: Engadget

Finally, iPad Gets Its Orientation Lock Back

If you're a regular iPad reader, especially one who lounges in bed, reading the iPad at odd angles, you know that the device's orientation sensor is easy to trigger. Just a slight move, and the screen flips from portrait to landscape. Fortunately, the built-in toggle switch made keeping the screen locked into place a breeze. But in iOS 4.2, Apple decided to make the toggle switch function more like it does on its other mobile devices - the update turned it into a mute button.

Now, it's not like you couldn't use orientation lock feature - it's still there - it's just that process became a bit more cumbersome. You have to double-tap the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar, swipe right to reveal the player controls and then tap the orientation lock icon. Three steps when it used to be one.

And yes, this was my own personal pet peeve, I have to admit. If you at all felt the same here, you'll be pleased to know that the toggle switch will now be adjustable. If you're dying to have it return to its old ways, that will be possible: orientation or mute, it's your decision. For once, Apple isn't telling me what's best, but is giving me a choice, and for that, I'm grateful.

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.

Two of our favorite new features, however, are "smart cross-posting for longer tweets" and support for t.co, Twitter's new URL shortener that is about to become the default across the network.

If you want to post an update that's longer than Twitter's 140 character limit, TweetDeck will let you, as long as you have a Google Buzz account. It will automatically truncate your update to 140 characters and include a link to the full text on your Buzz account. The only thing we wish here is that it would do the same with Facebook, instead. As for t.co, hovering your mouse pointer over a shortened link will now show the destination URL, taking away the mystery of clicking on a shortened URL.

In addition to all of those, TweetDeck has also added the ability to post photos directly to Posterous - a much requested feature - and support for logging in using a TweetDeck account, which helps to automatically add your accounts if you ever need to re-install.

A full list of additions and bug-fixes is available in the full changelog.

We have to say, though, that Twitter's new explanation of itself sounds a bit odd:

"Twitter is a rich source of instant information. Stay updated. Keep others updated. It's a whole thing. You choose and customize every aspect of the service. Lots of people like it. We'd love it if you joined us."

Interestingly, Twitter de-emphasizes the social networking features of the service here and stresses that Twitter is a source of "instant information." The old homepage simply said: "Share and discover what's happening right now, anywhere in the world." According to Twitter's own announcement, the company wants to stress that Twitter is "not just for status updates anymore"

The new homepage also now feature a link to Twitter's FAQ for business users.

A Better Homepage for Novice Users?

Given that Twitter has always had a hard time converting new users to regular users, this new homepage is clearly an attempt to better explain the service's features and functionality to new users. We will have to wait and see if this new homepage will do a better job at converting visitors to regular users.

One of the main new features of the revamped LinkedIn is the global navigation bar at the top of the page which links to all the site's features including profile, contacts, groups, jobs, your inbox, and more. Click on any of these items and a drop-down menu will appear providing you with further options. This gives the most important navigational aspect to the site a more modern look than it had before when each section was displayed in clickable tabs of different shades of blue.

The company also touts how the new look and feel also makes room for more page content with less scrolling needed in order to see everything on the page. This is also true to some extent. However, on your homepage where network updates and group updates are featured, the amount of scrolling depends on the size of your network and how active the network members are. For example, under the "group updates" section, updates for the past seven days were posted followed by a section that included updates from the prior week. That actually led to quite a bit of scrolling to see them all. It's not necessarily a bad feature, though. After all, LinkedIn isn't the sort of site we're logging into on a daily basis so it's nice to be able to catch up when we're there... even if that means the homepage screen extends downward forever.

Also new on the homepage are moveable, collapsible sidebar modules which can display things like who's been viewing your profile, events, job listings, applications you've added, and more.

Cleaner Look Highlights Ads

One downside of the site's "cleaner" look is how much more noticeable the ads are now. Of course, to LinkedIn this may be an upside. Although the ad placements are no different than before, the new look makes them really stand out. Since everything is now black or blue text on a white background, the full-colored ad at the top of the screen is the first thing to draw your eye upon login. There's also a text link ad directly below the global navigation that demands your attention. It's in the exact place where a company message would normally appear and the font used is a darker, bolder blue than anything else on the site. Both of these elements are somewhat distracting, but we suppose there's nothing that you can really do about ads. Still, we wish that the network had taken a page from Facebook's book when it came to ad placement - when you log into Facebook, the first thing you notice is the content and the updates, not the ads.

LinkedIn says the updated design was based on years of data from usability research but what you're seeing now isn't necessarily the final product. They're still iterating and, based on user feedback about the new look, they may make some additional changes in this and other areas.

Still Needs Improvement: the LinkedIn Inbox

One thing that still hasn't improved, sadly, is the LinkedIn inbox. Although the homepage view of the inbox provides a handy "take action" button which lets you quickly accept, reject, or archive requests, the full inbox view still forces you to click each message to accept or reject requests - there are no bulk actions you can take from the inbox screen besides archiving or marking messages as read or unread. Even worse, after accepting or rejecting a request, the message remains in your inbox until you manually archive it, necessitating quite a bit of additional work if you've let those invites pile up.

What Do You Think?

Are you impressed with the new look for LinkedIn? Or did you prefer the old tabbed interface better? LinkedIn obviously hopes that by simplifying the navigation and site elements which help to better engage users that they will spend more time exploring and interacting with the various site elements. Do you think that will be the case? Or do the underlying features of LinkedIn need improvement as well?

In the App Store on the phone, Apple will now also give users recommendations for other apps. We only got a short time to test this feature, and it seemed to work well so far, but we will hold back our final judgment until we get to test it for a bit longer.

Other new features include the ability to save videos from the Mail and MMS app. MMS, of course, isn't available in the US yet, though according to some reports, options for MMS are now available in the settings in anticipation of AT&T's launch of MMS for the iPhone.

Also new in 3.1 are the ability to use voice control for the iPhone 3GS over Bluetooth, calendar notifications that now display a 'location' field, and the ability to pass phone numbers into the phone app's dialer (the app will automatically convert alphanumeric numbers like 1-800-CALLRWW into real phone numbers). The phone now also vibrates while a user moves icons around on the screen.

What About Augmented Reality?

As for Augmented Reality, Apple gave users (and developers) the impression that the 3.1 firmware would provide support for AR apps. However, as Orin Inbar points out on Games Alfresco, 3.1 only brings 'semi support' for AR apps. Wile developers can now overlay graphics on a live video stream, it is still not possible for developers to actually analyze the live video stream. Many AR apps like ARSights track markers or objects and then replace them with their own info. On the iPhone, this is currently only supported through a private API and, as Inbar notes, chances are that Apple won't allow such an app into the store.

On the other hand, though, apps that don't need this functionality and only need to be able to overlay text over a video such as Layar or Wikitude should now be a possibility on the iPhone after they already made their debut on Android quite a while ago.

Apple's List

Here is Apple's own list of all the other updates in iPhone 3.1:

• Improved syncing for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and photos
• iTunes U content organization
• Redeem iTunes Gift Cards, codes, and certificates in the App Store
• Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
• Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll
• Option to "Save as new clip" when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
• Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
• Remotely lock iPhone with a passcode via MobileMe
• Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
• Paste phone numbers into the keypad
• Option to use Home button to turn on accessibility features on iPhone 3GS
• Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing)
• Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling
• Fixes issue that causes some app icons to display incorrectly

There are several reasons to believe why the upcoming iPhone OS 3.1 update will include MMS. Most importantly is the fact that the update firmware actually includes the functionality switched on by default. There are changes AT&T will have to make in order for it to work, of course, but now all that's left is for AT&T to "flip the switch," so to speak.

Although Apple hasn't officially confirmed a release date for the OS 3.1 update, it's expected to arrive sometime in September. That timing nicely coincides with AT&T's public statement that MMS will arrive "later this summer." (September is still summer, right?) An anonymous commenter on iPhone-watching blog FSM said that a rep told him the release date is September 6th and, at the latest, September 8th, but obviously, you can't put any weight behind those statements (you can only hope!).

When we spoke to an AT&T rep ourselves, we were told to wait until the "end of August or beginning of September" - which isn't really new information, unfortunately. However, the rep also said that Apple "has the update already" and that AT&T is "just waiting for Apple to release it." This statement could easily be construed to mean that when Apple releases the updated firmware that is OS 3.1, AT&T will be ready to turn on MMS functionality. Another reason why this seems plausible is because the rep said you'll be alerted to the update via a text message - the same procedure they've used in the past to alert you to new iPhone firmware releases.

All Signs Point to MMS in OS 3.1

Then there is the fact that multiple blogs are reporting news from anonymous AT&T tipsters saying that MMS will be enabled via the next iPhone OS update. In fact, according to iPhone Hacks, there have been a couple of instances where developers reported that they already had MMS working, although somewhat sporadically. Take that with a grain of salt, though.

Finally, there are reports that the latest OS 3.1 beta is disabling the hacks that made tethering and MMS possible via unsupported methods on AT&T iPhones. Some of the hacks even allowed you to enable these functions without going through the process of "jailbreaking" the phone - a special type of hack which enables you to install third-party applications hosted outside of the iTunes App Store. Of course, disabling hacks like this via an update seems par for the course for Apple, but considering all these rumors, it could be another item that points to the possibility of OS 3.1 delivering MMS to AT&T customers. After all, what better way to make sure AT&T customers have to start paying for its use with their text messaging bundle?

Of course, without official statements from either company, there's no way to be 100% certain that the iPhone OS 3.1 will be the vehicle delivering MMS, but considering all of the above factors, it does seem likely.

The Wolfram Alpha team will also make the latest version of its updates available for a limited number of outside testers before it goes live. If you would like to become a test for Wolfram Alpha, you can sign up here.

Here is a more complete list of updates:

• Additional linguistic forms for many types of data and questions
• More comparisons of composite properties (e.g. "US military vs. UK")
• Combined time series plots of different quantities (e.g. "germany gdp vs population")
• More complete handling of government positions (e.g. "chancellor", etc.)
• Updates to country borders for India, China, Slovenia, Croatia, and others
• Updates to naming for certain politically sensitive countries and regions
• Additional subcountry regions (e.g. "Wales"); many more to come
• Additional support for current and past fractional timezones (e.g. "Iran time")
• City-by-city handling of U.S. states with multiple timezones
• Updates to certain European currencies (e.g. for "Cyprus" and "Slovakia")
• Some additional historical events; many more to come
• Additional probability computations for cards and coins (e.g. "2 or 3 aces")
• Additional output for partitions of integers (e.g. "partitions of 47")
• Implicit handling of geometric figure properties (e.g. "ellipse with area 6 and major axis 2")
• Additional support for Mathematica 3D graphics syntax
• Additional support for stock prices with explicit dates
• Support for planet-to-planet distances and "nearest planet", etc.
• Extra information when comparing incompatible units (e.g. "ergs vs. newtons")
• Improved linguistic handling for many foods (e.g. "love apple")
• More mountains added, especially in Australia
• Support for many less-common given names (e.g. "zebulon")
• More "self-aware" questions answered (e.g. "how old are you")
• More consistent handling of sidebar links to Wikipedia, etc.

Are You Using Alpha?

When we first reviewed Wolfram Alpha in early May, we gave it a mixed review, based on how uneven its search results were when looking at some topics outside of the engineering and live sciences. Alpha got a lot of hype before and right after its launch, but things have been relatively quiet since then. According to Compete, which just uploaded its data for May today, Alpha had around 1.5 million unique visitors last month (as always, we recommend you take these numbers with a grain of salt). We will have to wait and see, of course, how many of these visitors just went to the site out of curiosity and how many will become loyal users.

Have you gone back to using Alpha after the initial release, or are you waiting for a better version to come around? Let us know in the comments.