Progress in unlocking the iPhone is proceeding faster than I had hoped, with immediate benefits to users.

There is now an easy unlock tool you can run on your Mac to enable third party software to be installed, such as Doom, a voice recorder, and a NES Emulator. 

Hackers in Europe have also discovered how to unlock the iPhone to work with any carrier.

The speed of development suggests that Apple put fairly little effort into truly locking down the platform.  (Compare with, say, Microsoft and the XBox, which was also cracked in slightly longer time.)

Rather than fighting this trend (in a Sysephean, RIAAish struggle), Apple would do well to open the platform just a bit in a safe fashion. 

It occurs to me that Apple should partner with Adobe to create an iPhone-optimized version of Flash.  Flash and the iPhone would be an excellent match, especially with multi-touch support.  (Pinch events could be mapped into mouse wheel events, perhaps)

Flash has a secure sandbox model, and its scalable vector graphics and visual effects are well suited to a device like the iPhone and would go beyond what could be accomplished in AJAX browser apps.

This blog and Beyond411 are now back up after being taken down by a failing disk. There might still be lingering issues, so please let me know if you spot anything wrong.

This was a pretty good fire drill– several of the sectors on the disk started going bad, including some overlapping database tables, which meant that mysql marked the tables as crashed and was unable to recover them. Since the disk appeared to be on the verge of total failure, I had ServerPronto put in a new primary disk and OS install.

Luckily a combination of backups and surviving sectors retained pretty much everything important… I did temporarily lose some autocompletion data but this can be rebuilt and most folks probably won’t notice. I’ve improved my cron backup jobs to make sure that this is saved in the future.

It was a bit of drag (though still much better than in Windows) having to reinstall the necessary linux services as well as Rails, gems, etc.; I would really like to see future distributions of Linux include an easy to use system snapshot features. That’s one of the big draws of virtualization but it seems even without virtualization this is something that could be provided out of the box. (For all I know someone has created such a system snapshot tool already but it doesn’t seem to built into any distribution.)

I am pleased to announce a new beta release of Beyond411 that supports location based search using GPS. For example, you can do yellow page searches and get driving directions from your current location, wherever you are.

Update 2008-4-20: I am currently investigating some issues with the reverse geocoding service on geonames.org, this is is causing many GPS Lookups not to resolve.

This release retains the customary Beyond411 focus on performance. I use background GPS lookups and incremental location updates while the app is running to minimize the time that users spend waiting for results.

You can install the 4.20.3 release over-the-air from http://thebogles.com/beta/b411.jad.  Please note this is a beta release and you may encounter bumps in the road; let me know of any issues.

Of course GPS functionality is only enabled on Blackberries that support GPS, e.g. the 8800 series. To turn on GPS search mode, select GPS from the location drop down at the top right of the search screen.

Thanks to geonames.org for a reverse geocoding web service licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Note: Please note that the Blackberry Curve doesn’t support GPS. Some programs like Google Maps do “pseudo GPS” by figuring out which cell-phone tower you are communicating with, but Beyond411 does not have this capability.

I recently described Steve Jobs comments around iPhone openness as FUD, scaring users away from the concept of third party applications with threats of security and compatability nightmares.

Adam left a well thought out comment on that blog post.

You’re right, this isn’t really about security. It’s about controlling the user experience by keeping it pure (and just how Steve says it should be). I don’t think this is totally evil though. There’s a reason the iPhone will blow the user experience of other phones out of the water, just as the Mac does to the PC: it’s consistent and reliable. Microsoft OEMs put so much third-party crap onto their PCs and devices that no matter what Redmond, does the end product is going to suck.

Most of the Java apps I’ve used are sluggish, ugly, and frequently hang my phone (ok, this is a problem with the JVM, but most just aren’t up to the task). Look for a simpler web-like, widget-focused(?) third-party development story. Sure you can’t build more advanced apps with the environment, but most users won’t care.

I disagree with the assertion that JVM apps have to be slow and crappy, but more on that later.

Adam was right on about the web-like third party development story, although Apple took that direction a little too literally.  Third party apps are strictly limited to browser applications. 

True, it’s a full featured Safari implementation that can support AJAX, but applications built on this platform will be distinctly second class citizens compared with native phone apps, and are also limited by a much narrower and unreliable network pipe compared with PCs.

Macworld describes the iPhone platform announcement as going over like a lead balloon:

The iPhone runs a version of Mac OS X. And since the day it was announced, Mac developers have wondered: will there be a way for them to write software that runs on the iPhone, much as they do for the Mac?

Apple’s approach to the subject has evolved over time. In January, it all sounded quite unlikely. By early May, the company was “wrestling” with the matter. By the end of May, Steve Jobs was suggesting that Apple would find a way to let developers write software for the iPhone by the end of the year.

In that encouraging context, the announcement that Jobs made Monday at WWDC went over like a lead balloon. To be fair, the suggestion that anxious would-be iPhone developers can write snazzy Web applications that would work on the phone’s built-in Safari web browser isn’t a bad one — it’s actually a clever workaround that most developers would have suggested themselves if they had gotten the chance.

No, the problem is that as snazzy as Web applications can be these days, they’re still not a replacement for the real thing. If they were, why would Apple bother writing full-blown programs for the iPhone? Why convert Mail to run on the iPhone if Google Mail in a browser will work just as well? Because it won’t.

Applegazette calls the browser only announcement “phenomonally insulting” to third party developers and “anti-Apple” in terms of the simplicity possible with third party apps.

What I find phenomenally insulting is the constant mention of keeping the iPhone safe and secure. The way that it keeps being said makes it sound like developers have the plague or something. It seems , to me anyway, to be disrespectful to the developers that make the Mac so great.

I love my Mac. I love the Apple software on my Mac too…but part of what makes my Mac so great are the Applications that Apple had nothing to do with (Quicksilver, anyone?)…and I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want the same style of innovation on the iPhone.

This web based concept, at least in its current form, is also very anti-Apple from a simplicity standpoint. Instead of pressing a button to launch the application you need, you’re going to have to open a web browser, open your bookmarks, then click on the application you want - then (in most cases I would assume) you’re going to have to log in to said application.

That’s turning what should be a one button press process into a three button press (and a log in) process. I don’t believe that’s the right way to go about this. If they’re going to require that all applications be web based, they could at least allow you to have an icon on the screen that links directly to the website and stores your log in information. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

(If Apple were to a build extended browser platform that retained the advantages of browser based applications while adding offline/async support and participations as first class iPhone apps, that would be far more interesting.  Thus far there are no signs that they plan to do this.  Perhaps Adobe or some other third party partner will build such an application with Apple and AT&T’s blessing?)

I also believe that if Apple wanted to, they could produce a JVM implementation that offers good performance, deep integration with OSX, and security. Sure, there are underpowered phones and crappy JVM implementations out there, but it doesn’t have to be that way, especially on hardware of the iPhone’s caliber.

A good case study is the Blackberry. The Blackberry and all of its applications are built in Java and offer snappy performance and good stability on relatively lowe end hardware. Third party apps like GMail and Google Maps are also snappy and offer good usability. 

I imagine that Apple has both extended browser models and JVM solutions in progress, and are adopting FUD strategies because they need to buy some time while they get these platforms in place. Developers need to exert continued pressure to make sure that these platforms are open as they ought to be, and so that Apple doesn’t place undue constraints over third party innovation in the name of “security”. 

The new version 4.10 of Beyond411 features significantly faster web searches and greater protection of end-user privacy. It is now available for OTA install. 

Using the Yahoo web search API and Beyond411’s internal markup language BML, web searches are now roughly twice as fast as before; these speedups are similar to those already achieved in 4.0 for local search.

Context menus allow the user to choose between visiting the original and mobilize-optimized versions of a page, with optimization performed by Skweezer.

End-user privacy is significantly enhanced. Unlike Google mobile search, Yahoo’s search service does not correlate end user search using cookies or rewrite links to track the user’s browsing history.

The 4.0 release of the Beyond411 search tool has now left beta and is available for general use. 

The focus of this release was speed and usability of in the core usage scenario of yellow pages searches. Beyond411 4.0 now has the some of the fastest launch and search times among applications in its category.

Context menus simplify integration with the Blackberry address book and email. For more information and download instructions, please see the project page.

A new beta release of Beyond411 is available for over-the-air download at http://thebogles.com/beta/b411.jad; this is a beta 1 of version 4.0.

The new version is faster and easier to use than previous versions. Searching the yellow pages and showing driving directions are typically twice as fast as before (under three seconds on my phone); other operations like adding an item to your address book are also much faster. Context menus on address book items make the new version easier to use.

These improvements are enabled by a custom markup language called BML, similar to HTML. Rather than displaying yellow page results in the browser, the new version displays BML results using a built-in rendering engine.

BML combines the compactness of the custom, fixed feature protocols used in some applications with the flexibility of markup languages like HTML. New features can be added by updating the markup on the server without having to download new bits to the client. Native phone UI like custom context menu items can be specified in the markup.

Because of the scope of the new features, this is a beta release. Keep your hard hats on and please report any issues you encounter. A “Yellow Pages (classic)” menu item returns the old school results in case you are encountering any issues or simply want to compare the speed.

1-800-GOOG-411 is a very cool Google service, currently in Google Labs, that provides free voice 411 using high quality voice recognition and speech synthesis.  To use it, just dial that number from any phone and say the city. state and business you’re looking for.  

Here’s a sample voice session from DownloadSquad:

1-800-GOOG-411 joins 1-800-FREE-411 from Jingle Networks and Tellme’s mobile 411 app. 

1-800-FREE-411 already controls six percent of the US mobile directory market.  Tellme’s application allow users to search using their voice and interact with the results on their phone’s screen; Tellme was recently acquired by Microsoft.

All of these applications are signs of the coming collapse of the walled garden that carriers have traditionally enacted around voice and data services, spurred by advances in mobile phone platforms and the reduced cost of VOIP and voice recognition applications. 

The aggressive positions being staked out by Google and Microsoft in the mobile data services space will undoubtedly disrupt the carriers’ business models. 

That’s great news for customers’ wallets– carriers formerly used their virtual monopoly over the customer to charge $1.25 for directory assistance. 

It’s also great news for innovation and the growth of a mobile services ecosystem. Carriers have the potential to offer tremendously valuable mobile services to their users, and tremendously valuable data to advertisers, but have lacked the technical firepower to effectively do either. In the end, for the more enlightened carriers, the disruption caused by open mobile platforms and data services will work to their benefit as well.

Consider the iPod.  The simple hierarchical drilldown UI popularized by the iPod is well suited to the small screens and limited input options on mobile devices.

If you wanted to create an open platform for building network powered applications based on this style of UI, what would be the best markup language to use?

One possibility would be to redefine the interpretations of subsets of XHTML– perhaps nested lists with the appropriate CSS attribute could be displayed using a drilldown UI, for example.

Another, perhaps better option is to use OPML, which already has a lot of the right semantics and is considerably more constrained that XHTML.  A link node could link to another OPML document, a traditional XHTML document, or perhaps to application specific behaviors that run on the client device.

In the case of Beyond411, things like yellow page category menus and categorized plugins could be expressed very naturally as OPML hierarchical menus.

Ethan writes on the Urbanspoon blog:

We’ve just started covering two more very important cities - or depending on how you look at it, about a hundred new cities.

Urbanspoon Bay Area - from Marin in the North to San Jose in the South, Oakland in the East to San Francisco in the West, with a combined total of 13,528 restaurants.

Urbanspoon Los Angeles - including a swath of other cities stretching from San Fernando to Long Beach, with 18,833 restaurants.

Urbanspoon is a cool search engine for restaurant information and reviews, combining links to newspaper reviews and other online sources with user contributed reviews.

(The founders of Urbanspoon are good buddies of mine, as you might guess from several points of integration.)