I have had every version of the iPhone since it has come out, and let me say the latest design mockup they they are talking about on macrumors has me extremely excited.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/03/07/iphone-5-to-get-aluminum-backing-redesigned-antenna/

Now this may not be what the iPhone 5 actually will look like but due to the change in the design of the recent iPad I can definitely see this happening.

Now I love the new design of the iPhone 4 versus the design of the iPhone 3′s curved back. The problem was the thickness and I don’t think that will be the issue with iPhone 5.

Another benefit with the new potential deisign is that with the oringinal iPhone didn’t have to worry about the death grip, which crippled the antenna and left you saying “Can you hear me now?” So it makes sense to bring this design back.

I also think all of you Apple lovers out there will rejoice as much they did during the iPad release when they mentioned that the white version would be released at day one. I see the same thing happening with this launch.

I guess time will tell.

what other features would you like to see on the new iPhone 5?

Feel like hacking your phone today? If you’ve got about 10 minutes to spare, you can turn your iPhone into a Wi-Fi hotspot using a combination of the latest “jailbreaking” software and an app called MyWi. The app takes your iPhone’s 3G data connection and shares it out so other computers can connect to it as if it’s just another Wi-Fi network. You can even share your 3G connection with your iPad, if you’d like.

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Before You Get Started…

A few caveats:

• Jailbreaking, the process of opening up your phone to allow for the installation of unapproved 3rd-party applications, voids the warranty on your phone. If you’re a stickler for these types of things, this may not be the hack for you. (If you really want a phone that functions as a Wi-Fi hotspot, maybe you should wait for the Evo instead.)
• That said, jailbreaking is reversible in the sense that you can always return your phone to factory settings then reapply your backup and no one will be the wiser. Your iPhone is automatically backed up every time you sync with iTunes, but you may want to double-check that your contacts, photos, calendar items and any other critical information is safely stored somewhere else…just in case.
• The MyWi app is buggy. Really, really buggy. Upon first launch, it crashed repeatedly in our tests. The issue seems to be with the “Rock You” sign-in/registration process. But I got it working and you may be able to as well. In fact, it’s the crashing problem that makes the entire setup process take so long – not the jailbreak itself. That’s downright speedy.
• MyWi isn’t free, but comes with a trial period (thank goodness!). The app costs $9.99 when you’re ready to purchase.

How to Turn your iPhone into a Wi-Fi Hotspot

1. The first step is to jailbreak your phone. If you’ve never done this before, you can follow our guide here for the iPad – it’s the exact same procedure, from start to finish. For those who are familiar with jailbreaking and just need the software, go here: spiritjb.com.
2. Once your jailbroken phone is up-and-running, launch the Cydia application store.
3. In Cydia, search for “MyWi.” There are two apps listed, but the one that says “No Rock” next to it never installed for us. Grab the other one instead.
4. Tap on the search result for the app, tap the “install” button in the upper-right corner, then tap “confirm.”
5. When installation is complete, tap the “Reload SpringBoard” button. (If this part gets stuck, just reboot your iPhone).
6. Launch the MyWi app. Accept the agreement and tap “OK.” Now comes the tricky part. In our tests, the app would barely stay open for more than a couple of seconds at this point. In fact, we were about to write it off as a total loss. But after a bit of perseverance, we got it working. It appeared as if the problem was with registering for a RockYourPhone account via the app. (RockYourPhone is a paid application store for jailbroken phones where MyWi is sold.)
7. Instead of registering for an account via the app, we went to RockYourPhone.com and signed up there instead.
8. Before returning to the app, we copied our registration email address to the clipboard so we could quickly paste it in instead of typing it in.
9. Re-launch MyWi. Tap “sign in.” Paste in your email, type in your password. The app will check for your registration (and probably crash again).
10. The app will check for license updates and then allow you to use it on the “trial” license. If you can’t get past this step because the app continues to crash, we’re sorry. We can’t help you. Like we said, the app is buggy. You may be able to get it going, but we’ll make no promises. Hopefully, a future version will be more stable.
11. Assuming you do get the app to (finally!) launch, you’ll see the option to turn Wi-Fi Tethering on via a toggle switch at the top. You can also turn on USB and Bluetooth tethering using the toggle towards the bottom. With tethering on, your phone’s Internet connection, 3G or otherwise, is made available as a Wi-Fi hotspot to nearby computers. You can even use WEP security if you’d like.
12. When you’re finished, you can switch tethering off and close the app.

Note: Problems Sharing 3G?

If you run into problems with MyWi not being able to share your 3G data connection, a simple reset of your network settings may resolve the issue. Go into the Settings app -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings. Reboot the phone and try MyWi again.

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Insider Pages, which was acquired by CitySearch in 2007, just announced the launch of its new Doctor Finder tool. While there are already a few doctor review sites available on the Internet, most people in the U.S. still mostly base their choice of doctor on the location of the doctor’s office and the insurance the doctor accepts. To find these doctors and dentists, most patients still rely on the insurances’ online directories, which usually don’t feature any patient feedback.

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800,000 Doctors – 1.2 Million Reviews

Insider Pages currently has more than 800,000 doctors in its system. To get started, Insider Pages has partnered with HealthGrades.com, which syndicates about 1.2 million patient surveys to Insider Pages. While most of the company’s competitors offer extensive databases and reviews, this cooperation with HealthGrades.com also gives Insider Pages access to the HealthGrade’s database of doctors’ records. Thanks to this, users can also check if their doctor is board certified and has a clean record. For more details about a doctor’s records (including malpractice and sanction records), Insider Pages refers its users to HealthGrades. Insider Pages also allows its users to refine their searches based on other criteria like the doctor’s gender, experience and ability to speak certain languages.

As Insider Pages’ general manager Eric Peacock told us when we talked to him earlier today, rating doctors is different from rating a restaurant. While Insider Pages allows its users to write regular freeform reviews, the company also asks every reviewer 10 questions about their experience, ranging from how much time the doctor spent with the patient to how well they listened to the patient’s complaints.

Privacy, of course, is a major concern when it comes to doctors. As Peacock told us, the company gives users the freedom to share as much information as they want to, but by default, these reviews are never shared on the patient’s Facebook feed.

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Google is getting ready to launch its own e-book store and challenge Apple and Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chris Palma, Google’s manager for strategic-partner development, announced the timetable for the launch of the company’s e-book store during an event at Random House’s Manhattan offices earlier today. Google Editions, as the new store will be called, will launch in late June or July.

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Google will allow book retailers to sell Google Editions on their own sites and, according to the Wall Street Journal’s report, “keep the bulk of the revenue.” Google, of course, also plans to highlight these e-books on its own book search engine. It’s important to note that Google is also still trying to win the right to distribute out-of-print books, but the Google Books Settlement that would give Google the rights to do so is still caught up in various legal challenges.

When we first heard about Google Editions last year, Google’s plan was to offer around half a million books at launch. At the time, Google also noted that it wants its books to be compatible with any device, whether that’s a laptop, phone or dedicated e-reader. Apple’s tablet wasn’t on the horizon back then, but chances are that Google will also want its books to be compatible with this new platform. Given that Google is already using the ePub standard, we can only hope that Google’s plan is to sell DRM-free ePub books.

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Spotify, the red-hot European music service that’s like iTunes, Pandora, MOG and more combined, released a new version last week that integrates with Facebook last week. I’ve been hearing about Spotify for months but hadn’t actually seen it before – it’s not available in the United States yet and no one knows when it will be. Even traveling to Europe, downloading the app and then coming back to the States will get your account shut down after a grace period streaming from a US IP.

Thanks to a friend though, I got a copy of Spotify a few days ago! I can report that it is simply awesome, and I’m just using the free version so far. Here’s an annotated screenshot below, in case you’re as curious as I was. This may be old news for some uber-hip types, but I’m guessing most readers haven’t seen the interface before. I hadn’t.

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Here’s the company’s official screencast below about the latest version. Dear Spotify: please launch this in the US as soon as possible, please!

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Do you remember Google Wave? After a lot of hype around the initial launch of Wave – which some pundits billed as an “email killer” at the time – things have been rather quiet around the service. The latest update to Wave, however, could push the service back into the public eye. Publishers can now easily embed waves on their sites and readers can see them without having to be logged in to Wave, which makes Wave a great live blogging platform.

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Wave for Live Blogging (and more)

At first glance, this looks like a minor update, but for the first time, you can now easily embed waves on your own site. Google notes that you could use Wave for real-time RSVPs with the Yes/No/Maybe gadget and to publish documentation via embedded waves. For us, however, the real potential here is live blogging with Wave.

The interesting thing about using Wave as a live blogging platform, of course, is that readers can see what a blogger is writing in real time. Live blogging doesn’t get more real time than that.

Wave allows users to easily style text and embed images and videos. Adding additional writers to a wave is also as easy as adding another contact to the wave.

Wave Elements: Embedding Waves Made Easy

Until now, embedding Waves took a bit of work and users who weren’t logged in to Wave weren’t able to see your updates. Thanks to the newly released Wave Element tool, however, embedding a wave is now simply a matter of copying and pasting a snippet of JavaScript into your site or blog post. To make a wave public, you also have to add the public@a.gwave.com account to your wave.

You can see an example of what an embedded Wave looks like below.

One Caveat: Doesn’t Work With Internet Explorer Yet

The Wave team, however, also points out one major deal-breaker: the embedded waves don’t work with Internet Explorer yet (even with Chrome Frame). The team plans to resolve this issue soon, however.

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The hyperlocal news site Fwix launched a revamp to its service yesterday, allowing readers on its website to customize and socialize their news feed. Fwix users can follow local and hyperlocal topics, as well as follow other readers who share their interests. Taking advantage of Facebook’s recently released Open Graph API, Fwix now allows likes, comments and sharing of news stories. Noting that Facebook currently doesn’t “do location,” Fwix founder and CEO Darian Shirazi said that the updates to Fwix allow them to connect local data to the social graph, creating an ecosystem of real-time local and hyperlocal news.

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“Linking ‘social’ and ‘news’ has been a goal since the beginning,” said Shirazi. “Now that we’ve built a robust and well-trafficked content network, we are making that goal a reality. The next step for local news is making it social, and we’re excited for this launch.”

Fwix aggregates local news articles and blog posts, and delivers content to readers based on their geographic and topical interests. The San Francisco-based company is less than two years old and in March inked a deal with the New York Times Company to deliver its content to its regional news sites. Initially covering 80 cites, Fwix now boasts a network of more than 200 markets worldwide.

While major newspapers have cut thousands of jobs, the rise of hyperlocal news services like Fwix, Outside.in, and EveryBlock demonstrate that readers are keenly interested in tracking local news, but want to be able to filter that information based on the topics and neighborhoods that matter personally to them.

As we wrote last week, the hyperlocal is already an important site for new startups. The updates to Fwix point towards more services that are not just acutely hyperlocal, but deeply socialized.

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Dutch mobile augmented reality (AR) developers Layar announced today the launch of the world’s first mobile marketplace for AR content, bringing a new model for the monetization of mobile AR to the Android and iPhone platforms. Anyone looking to take advantage of the excitement behind AR experiences can now create AR content, syndicate it on Layar’s platform and benefit from its use by charging users a small one-time fee to access it.

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The Layar Reality Browser is accessible on the iPhone 3GS and eleven different Android devices, and has been downloaded over 1.6 million times. Users of the application can select from various content layers, such as nearby tweets, Wikipedia articles or even local businesses, and can locate them by holding their phone in their field of view. Using the phone’s GPS, accelerometer and compass data, the application can place markers on the screen to show where various objects exist based on their locations in the real world.

Previously, these various content layers have been entirely free to use, but now with the implementation of a content marketplace business can create branded AR experiences and sell them through Layar. The application uses PayPal to process the transactions, and right now the buying of layers is only available in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Some of the paid content layers launching with the platform include tour guides, home buying guides and augmented greeting creators. One layer, which sells for $1.95, displays recent criminal activity from SpotCrime.com in over 300 U.S. cities, and another provides an augmented park map for Disneyland and Disney World at a price of $3.45.

One of the more unique layers available on the platform allows music fans to discover the actual geographic locations where some of the most famous album covers were photographed. Perhaps this layer will help fans of the growing “sleeveface” photography meme take their creations to the next level.

Layar is taking a cut of each sale – 40% to be exact, which is actually higher than the 30% Apple takes from purchases made in the AppStore. The company sited “the costs for the platform, legal, administration, banking and others” in Wednesday’s press release as the reasons for the 60/40 deal with developers.

The introduction of a marketplace into the mobile AR space could be an enormous boon to the community as it will incentivize companies to create layers. The possible influx of content into the Layar store could work wonders for expanding the AR user base, but the company’s 40% cut off the top could also prevent some developers from using the platform.

Either way, Layar’s content store is a big leap forward for mobile AR developers who have been searching for better ways to monetize their products. Desktop AR is years ahead of mobile in terms of revenues, but as more computing moves more onto portable devices, stores like Layar’s could lead the way toward reversing that trend.

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There were tweets a plenty today about Mark Benioff and his latest term: “Cloud 2,” referring to the apps that will come from VMforce, the new Java-platform as a service that Saleforce.com and VMware are launching.

Dennis Howlett added to the discussion by picking up on the meme that Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff shared as part of the launch:

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Benioff understands the value of a meme. And as a result, he has more command over the enterprise cloud market than any other executive in the space.

Cloud 2 is a that term shifts perspectives, connecting the concept of the cloud and the social Web to the Java-dominated environment of the enterprise. People may run away cynically but the language seems to work in the public discourse.

In the message is a clear realization that the social Web is the overall dynamic theme that is affecting the Internet as we know it.

That’s something people can understand.

Facebook is playing on that theme to challenge Google on the premise that hyperlinks are the future of the Web. Facebook is connecting presence with location to serve relevant updates, which act as gestures. In this regard, the social Web is woven into Facebook’s fabric.

Salesforce.com and VMWare understand the dynamic that Facebook brings to the Web and into the overall enterprise. The apps developed out of VMforce will connect to an open graph that the enterprise controls. That’s a theme that can be communicated through the discussions about the VMForce platform. It will resonate far more than dull conversations about technology infrastructure.

The alliance also shows that VMware is now positioned to compete as a platform providers against Google, Amazon and Windows Azure.

All of this leave Oracle and SAP in a tight spot. These are not exactly companies that are commanding in their influence about the social Web and its connection to the enterprise.

They are deeply entrenched, for instance, in this long discussion about private cloud computing, not communities of interest. It’s like Oracle has rejected this aspect of the Sun merger.

Sun would seem like the logical successor to Java in the cloud. Java has historically served to represent Sun as the force behind one of the technology world’s most important developer communities.

But that power is changing hands with Salesforce.com and VMware as possible successors.

VMware now is a direct benefactor of the Salesforce drive to the enterprise. And Salesforce.com has all the advantages that VMware offers from its own enterprise imprint and its $420 million acquisition of SpringSource last summer.

Java is a cornerstone coding language of the enterprise The question we now have to face: What will the competitors do as the Java platform moves into the cloud? How can they counter the micro application approach that seems to be gaining importance in the enterprise with each passing day.

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Spotify, our favorite streaming music browser to talk about that we can’t even (legally) use in the U.S., has just announced that it is releasing version 0.4.3 “which includes the largest feature upgrade since our launch in 2008″. Are we finally going to (legally) get Spotify here in the U.S.? Not a chance.

Spotify is going social, adding a connection with Facebook, usernames, the ability to publish activity to your blog, and more. It’s also going local, adding library features and giving users the ability to import their local library into the Spotify network.

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From Spotify’s announcement:

To kick it off we’ve added a number of social features, centered on a fully editable Spotify music profile, with the ability to publish playlists, top artists and top tracks for public view. Discovering these profiles is simple as we’ve connected with Facebook so that you can instantly add your friends’ profiles.

As well as introducing a variety of new social features, Spotify is evolving into a total music management platform. We’ve added a ‘Library’ folder in the left side bar, enabling you to combine your own music library with ours.

While Music Ally is saying that the connection with Facebook has “huge” implications, it almost feels like catching up with the competition to us. Haven’t most other web-based music delivery services gone social in many ways?

A quick run-down of the features coming to the new Spotify includes a Facebook integration, usernames, publishing to your Facebook stream from within Spotify, in-platform messaging, and tracking of collaborative playlists. As for the library, which many people in the blog posts’ comments seemed even more excited about, users can “import a link to all the music files stored on [their] computer”, wirelessly sync their mobile device, and “star” tracks to tag them as favorites.

Our own Frederic Lardinois predicted a Q3 U.S. release for Spotify, but we have already seen some solid competition. MOG, for example, released a mobile, $5 a month version this year at SXSW and a representative from Napster told us it was looking to do the same in the near future. Both of those services offer similiar sized catalogs and comparably priced services.

While today’s feature announcements by Spotify look enticing, we’re still left asking – when will it be available in the U.S.?

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Google has acquired widget developer Labpixies, which developed some of the first gadgets for Google’s personalized homepage iGoogle. It also develops apps for Android and iPhone.

"Over the years, we worked closely together on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of global OpenSocial based gadgets. Recently, we decided that we could do more if we were part of the same team…" says Don Loeb of Google’s iGoogle team.

"We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall," he adds.

"We both felt the time was right to come together," says Labpixies in its announcement. "We started LabPixies to create a truly personalized online experience and develop fun widgets that people find useful every day. Working at Google will help us scale to more users as well as giving our team greater opportunities. Google and LabPixies teams have worked on many projects together including the launch of global OpenSocial based gadgets. The acquisition is an opportunity to learn from each other to bring more apps to users, help developers and improve the overall developer ecosystem."

The Labpixies team will be based out of Google’s Tel Aviv office, and will anchor the company’s iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

This is only the latest in a string of acquisitions from Google. Other recent acquisitions include Agnilux, Plink, Aardvark, and Episodic.

More than 15 weeks after the Nexus One launched in the US, it looks like our friends in the UK may finally get an opportunity to buy the Android smartphone.  Late yesterday, a "coming soon" page set up by Vodafone briefly changed to describe the release window as April.

Credit goes to EuroDroid‘s Gary Cutlack for catching the change, and assuming the update wasn’t incorrect, it pretty much guarantees that Nexus One sales will begin sometime in the next week (since April of 2011 is an unlikely release date for a cutting-edge device).

Offering the Nexus One to consumers in the UK would be a big step for Google, too, since it hasn’t yet tested its online-only sales model anywhere outside the US.

It might be wise not to expect a whole lot to occur as a result of this development, though, considering how Nexus One sales have disappointed analysts so far.  Also, Google admitted Wednesday that it was more or less giving up on improving the Nexus One’s 3G performance, and that won’t help move the product.

We’ll see what happens.  At least it won’t take too long to see how the situation turns out.

At Facebook’s f8 conference, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was removing restrictions on user data retention within Facebook applications. Previously, the company had a policy where developers couldn’t “store and cache any data for more than 24 hours,” Zuckerberg said while speaking to the audience of Facebook developers crowded into the San Francisco Design Center on Wednesday. “We’re going to go ahead and…get rid of that policy,” he said. The audience cheered.

But should Facebook end users cheer this news, too?

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The Change is for Developers, “No Effect” on End Users?

For developers, the removal of this technical limitation is great news. Apps had to constantly connect to Facebook’s servers in order to refresh their data. Application load speeds were also affected as the apps would have to do this server pinging process upon first launch. Now the data the apps need will already be there – a change that may even result in noticeable performance gains for the end users of the applications.

Yes, Facebook Apps Have Your Data

The new policy, however, brings to light something that your average Facebook user may not have ever known at all: Facebook applications access your personal data.

We’ve looked at this issue before (see: “What Facebook Quizzes Know About You“) after the ACLU put together an awareness campaign surrounding the privacy issues of Facebook applications. Using a sample app, the ACLU’s Facebook Quiz, many everyday Facebook users were shocked to find that applications (like quizzes) could access almost everything on a user profile, including hometown, groups you belong to, events attended, favorite books, and more. What’s worse is that your profile information becomes available to developers when your friends take the same quiz.

Why the Policy Change is Riskier Than It Appears

On its own, the new data retention policy doesn’t change how developers can use the data they store. In fact, for some developers, it won’t change much of anything at all – many simply ignored Facebook’s rules about data retention in the past. Even with the change, it’s just business as usual for those developers and their apps.

That said, the indefinite storage now permitted is concerning for a few reasons. As security engineer Joey Tyson points out on his blog, a site where he has detailed numerous hacks and security holes for Facebook, Google and more, the change makes Facebook apps “far more valuable targets for attackers.”

A popular application’s database could be filled with literally millions of users’ personal details (Facebook now touts 400 million users and Facebook’s most popular app, Farmville, for instance, boasts over 81 million users). If such a database was targeted for attack, the payload for hackers could be incredible.

In addition, Tyson explains, opportunities for behavioral targeting and visitor tracking are increased since developers can now maintain complete archives of profile information.

It’s also worth noting, as tech blog VentureBeat points out, it’s impossible for Facebook to know about how application developers are using the data they collect. If a developer chooses to use that data in ways that are misleading, malicious or that break the company’s terms of agreement, Facebook may not be aware. With 500,000 supported applications, Facebook just doesn’t have the resources to police the apps they house.

How to Remove Facebook Applications

To the end user, these changes may sound overwhelming and even scary. But there is something very easy everyone can do to minimize their risk and that’s delete the Facebook applications you no longer use.

The process of doing so is incredibly simple.

After signing into Facebook, do the following:

1. Click on “Account” at the top-right of the screen.
2. Click “Application Settings”
3. Change the “Show” drop-down box to “Authorized.” This will show all the applications you’ve ever given permission to.
4. In the resulting list, click the “X” button on the far right next to each app you want to remove to delete it.
5. On the pop-up box that appears, click “Remove” then click “Okay” on the next box confirming the app was deleted.

Repeat this process to remove all the apps you no longer use on a regular basis.

Doing this won’t eliminate risk entirely – nothing can do that – but it’s a good first step in reducing risk. However, as long as you have a Facebook account, your data won’t be private. If true privacy is really a concern for you, it may be time to find that account delete button instead. (Hint: it’s under “Account Settings.”)

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It looks like Google isn’t going to be able to put Buzz’s initial privacy problems behind it anytime soon.  Late yesterday, representatives from Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK all signed a letter expressing concerns about the service and Google’s privacy practices in general.

The data protection authorities weren’t too hard on Eric Schmidt (to whom the open letter was addressed); they recognized that Google’s participated in many discussions regarding privacy, and that the company’s just one of many operating in a similar fashion.  Also, they applauded the manner in which Google responded to complaints about Buzz.

Still, what follows is definitely the takeaway point: "It is unacceptable to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of repairing problems later as they arise.  Privacy cannot be sidelined in the rush to introduce new technologies to online audiences around the world."

Then the data protection authorities later stated that they’d "like to receive a response indicating how Google will ensure that privacy and data protection requirements are met before the launch of future products."

So it looks like Google will face a lot more international scrutiny due to its mishandling of Buzz’s launch, even if the company isn’t hit with any immediate sanctions or fines.