Last Monday, TwitOrFit debuted as a HotOrNot clone for Twitter, letting you rate people's profile pictures on a scale from one to ten, low making them a "Twit" and high making them "Fit". Now that the first week's results are tabulated, it looks like the Twitter community is overwhelmed by less than average looking men, myself included. How bad is the situation? Well, according to TwitOrFit voting, only seven male profiles rate above average (average being 5.0), and every single man trails the @officedog.

As part of TwitOrFit's offering at launch, the site offered a "Top 10" list of "Fits" and "Twits". If possible, you'd prefer to be on the first list and not the second.


The Ladies Outpoll All in TwitOrFit. Men? Not So Much.
Unsurprisingly the top 10 "Fits" are rather attractive women, as determined by crowd vote. The highest score is a 6.85, owned by @popgloss, with @hansenism coming in at #10 with a tally of 6.57.

In comparison, the #1 "Fit" guy in the world, according to TwitOrFit is the rugged @bobbyllew, who snagged a 5.58 rating, two places ahead of Mashable's Pete Cashmore, who has a respectable 5.32 score.

Yet, they all trail @officedog, whose 6.37 score is 14% better than @bobbyllew, and who has held the #1 Guy position since launch.


I Can Now Assign a Numerical Score to My Ugliness
So what does this mean? Are all Twitter men a sad lot? Are the male TwitOrFit users uglier than the normal? Or are we deserving, as a whole, of our low scores? My profile picture, likely too serious, lags at a mere 2.77 on an average score from 38 users. Are the ladies this aggressive in marking guys down, or did other guys rate down their competition? Curious all around.

In TweetDeck's five months of public availability following the Adobe AIR Twitter client's debut in July, the product has seen significant usage growth, battling for market share against competition like Twhirl, and becoming the standard for power users of the microblogging service who want to see all their friends' updates as well as search terms, and have the ability to group followers at the same time. On Monday, PR 2.0's Brian Solis measured TweetDeck as having delivered a full 3.8% of all tweets, and I've personally seen this number as high as 6%, according to TweetStats.


The New TweetDeck: Click for Full Size
As with any service that gains in popularity, demands become greater on the product's developers, and TweetDeck is no exception. Author Iain Dodsworth is planning to release a new version of the product on December 24th (tomorrow), with a long list of new features, including:

• Adding sent direct messages to the direct message (DM) column.
• An added spell checker
• The addition of a "narrow columns" option
• Integration of TweetShrink
• The introduction of new TweetDeck Services

TweetDeck Will Display Narrower Columns
One of the few concerns I've seen voiced regarding TweetDeck is that it can be a screen real estate hog. Once you start with a column showing your friends' tweets, add a Replies column and Direct Messages, pretty soon you're giving up a good chunk of your monitor. With that in mind, Dodsworth has both updated the interface to make it slimmer, but also added the aforementioned "narrow columns" option. The addition of sent DMs in the DM column also makes sense, essentially showing the conversation in full, assuming you are both sending and receiving DMs with the same Twitter users.


The New TweetDeck Integrates Spell Check
The addition of TweetShrink to TweetDeck also helps to bail you out in the event you have something to say, but just can't seem to keep it down to a mere 140 characters.

For example, the note: "Will it reduce the number of characters in my message or tell me what to cut?" is shortened to "Will it reduce the number of characters in my msg or tell me what 2 cut?", saving me five characters. Who knows when that could come in handy? It also reduces common words like "and" to &, for example.

Also interesting is the addition of the first of what is expected to be many TweetDeck Services, that enables additional information from outside of TweetDeck to be displayed. In this version, there is an undocumented feature that injects your follower data in the top of the replies column as the application is started, powered by twittercounter.com. Dodsworth promises more will be integrated along the way.

TweetDeck has already become the go-to Twitter application for many of Twitter's most-active users, including Ross Mayfield, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Darren Rowse, Mark Krynsky and Guy Kawasaki. Dodsworth hopes the latest updates will gain even more conversions, and you can already see the buzz building around the new TweetDeck in Twitter:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=TweetDeck

You can expect to see the newest version of TweetDeck hit the Web on Christmas Eve, December 24th.

Where do you get all the day's tech news? For many people, including me, it's Google Reader. For others, they look to Techmeme or other sites that aggregate the headlines from around the tech newswires and blogosphere. But as there are a seemingly infinite number of news sources and social news tools, from Digg to Reddit, Hacker News, ReadBurner and others, aggregation sites are getting a second look. A new site, launching this morning, called Techfuga, not only aggregates all the leading blogs, but also those social services as well - including FriendFeed. The result is a very busy site that has hundreds of links to the day's news, from a wide variety of sources.

Techfuga's mission, like many others before it is to provide "the ultimate top tech news from around the Web." On launch, the site has aggregated 40 different technology news aggregators. It then separates those aggregators into three types: "Human aggregated based on submission and voting/sharing", including Digg, Reddit, Hacker News, Readburner and FriendFeed; "Solely based on algorithms", including Techmeme and Google News, and "Editorial human-aggregated", including TechCrunch and Ars Technica. As you might guess, the result is pretty busy. The data's there, but like with Guy Kawasaki's AllTop and PopURLs before it, you might spend as much time scrolling down to find the article you want to read as you eventually spend reading.



Like Alltop, Headlines from Across the Web Populate Techfuga.
Beyond the simple headlines, Techfuga groups related stories (as Techmeme does) and attempts to link to the discussion pages of items that are indexed. They also, like Techmeme, say they offer an algorithm that determines "Top Stories".


Techfuga Correctly Found Linkage Between Stories
After midnight on Tuesday, Techfuga correctly found that Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins' article "FriendFeed: Like Most Things, Good in Moderation [Scoble’s Intervention]" was related to a FriendFeed post by Robert Scoble, "Oh, oh, @techcrunch thinks I need a friendfeed intervention!". That in turn, led to related items at TechCrunch and Scoble's blog. So, in theory, the algorithm works. It's not the prettiest I've ever seen, but if you assume that Techfuga is the superset of data, incorporating Techmeme as one of its sources, it does have a ton of data to work with, and as many early versions of sites have shown, cleaning up the GUI can be easier than discovering the content initially.


You Can Search The Full Techfuga Archive for Keywords
Techfuga's value is also found in its search engine. Searching Techfuga also searches through its many different sources, so when I performed a vanity search to see if I ever came up, responses came through Propeller, BuzzTracker and ReadBurner, and did so quickly. Broader searches, even outside of tech, like one for "Baseball", showed similar diversity.

Techfuga opens its doors this morning, so find it here: http://techfuga.com/.

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

A lot of us mobile geeks have been talking about the 3G iPhone unlocking software release, due out on New Year's Eve. Yesterday, the Dev-Team released a demo video of said software, 'yellowsn0w', working its magic by effortlessly switching the 3G iPhone from AT&T's network to T-mobile's, and actually made a call.

...well this information sounds great but it confused a lot of my friends that have iPhones. You see, most of my offline friends are non-geeks, but keep up with iPhone-related news. So when they heard about the unlocking, they sent inquiring IMs, SMSs, and e-mails. Even peers asked me privately via Twitter DMs, e-mail, and Facebook messages to explain in detail, and understandably so. There are times I am scared to openly ask questions, in fear of being ripped apart by someone who knows more than me. There are also jerks who are intentionally rude to others online. Those people make me think twice before asking questions aloud. Even if this is the Internet, it is offensive when people are outright mean.

So if you have no idea what this unlocking stuff is, don't worry. You are definitely not alone. As much as I keep up with mobile industry news, I still learn something new everyday. That said, instead of responding to every email, IM, DM, etc., etc., I consolidated the 15 most frequently asked questions here:

1. What is unlocking?
AT&T and Apple signed an agreement that Apple will only distribute the iPhone to AT&T in the US. So even if the iPhone uses a SIM card, it can only be used with AT&T's SIM, hence the phone is locked. Dev-Team's software, unlocks the phone and that is why the video shows the phone making a phone call on T-mobile's network.

2. Is the unlocking software offered by Apple?
Despite their misleading name, Dev-Team is not affiliated with Apple.

3. What do I need to do in order to unlock the iPhone?
After purchasing an iPhone, you will need to Jailbreak it. Jailbreaking = hacking.

4. I don't know anything about Jailbreaking, help?
MacRumor's user forums is a good place to start, and of course Google. (Don't worry, the link will take you to the search results, not Google's start page.)

5. Is it illegal?
I am not qualified to give definitive answer about legalities. I would contact a lawyer (if you are really concerned) and/or read the iPhone's EULA (End User License Agreement) online or download the PDF (Pay close attention to section two, "Permitted License Uses and Restrictions")

What I can say for sure is this.

Apple has the iPhone's firmware protected by the Copryight Right act and finding ways to get around using it (circumventing) is violating a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) code. However, the Copyright Office issues exemptions once every three years and for now, unlocking phones for the "sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network" is legal as long as you own the phone. Source 1, 2, 3, and 4. Whether Apple or AT&T decides to sue you or not is a different story. Also, keep in mind using Apple's apps without paying for them (Google Maps, Weather, for example) is piracy, therefore illegal.

6. Will I get in trouble with AT&T?
The 3G iPhone is $599 and $699, retail. The $199 and $299 is a discounted price with a two year AT&T contract. If you purchase the phone with the discounted pricing and Jailbreak it, you will violate AT&T's T&Cs.

7. Will I be arrested if I get caught violating AT&T's T&Cs?
Not that I know of. But you may be banned for an Apple store for life. But I can try putting you under citizen's arrest if you insist. (kidding)

8. Can I use it on Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, Nextel, et al.?
No. The iPhone works on GSM. The only two GSM (non prepaid) networks are AT&T and T-mobile.

9. Will this mess up my phone?
Apple and AT&T do not support Jailbroken/Unlocked phones. If you encounter an issue, they will not help you. It also voids the warranty. If you are comfortable with tweaking your phone and problem solving potential issues, then Jailbreak and unlock away!

10. So I am going to unlock my phone, now what?
After Jailbreaking, you need cell phone service. If you choose T-mobile, simple swap the SIM like Musclenerd did in the video.

11. Which plan do I choose?
I know a few people with Jailbroken iPhones on the T-mobile network. They have a voice plan with either a BlackBerry or Sidekick data plan. Again, this is at your own risk. Personally, I would go to a T-mobile store and ask a sales associate. For pricing, please go to T-mobile's site here.

12. I signed up for AT&T in July and only five months into my two year contract. What are my options?
If you want to use your phone on a different network, you would need to break your contract or keep paying your AT&T bill, while using another GSM provider.

13. Why would I want to Jailbreak my phone?
You would be freed from AT&T. If you travel internationally, you can use a prepaid SIM, instead of paying AT&T the outrageous roaming rates. Plus, you will have a Jailbroken phone, so you can install applications that aren't from the iTunes App Store.

14. Cons?
You are stuck with AT&T. You are no longer protected by Apple. Any help you need, would be from the Jailbreaking Community. And your phone will not work on T-mobile's 3G's network, since AT&T and T-mobile are on different frequencies. Meaning, you paid for a 3G iPhone that will not be running on a 3G network. That is, assuming they (Dev-Team) came up with a way to force the iPhone to change its frequency to 1700MHZ (T-mobile's frequency).

15. If I Jailbreak, do I have to leave AT&T?
You don't have to, but remember, if you have a problem with your phone do not bring it into the store because it is in violation of the T&Cs.

And there you have it. 15 of the most asked questions from my loved ones. I love them so much, instead of responding to the emails, texts, and IMs, I will direct them here.

So, are you going to Jailbreak and unlock your iPhone? Is yours Jailbroken? Looking forward to your feedback, inquiring minds want to know!
(image via here)

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits