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Apple’s iPhone 3GS is much faster than Apple has claimed, according to testing by Medialets, a mobile analytics company. In tests using JavaScript, the iPhone 3GS proved nearly three times faster than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G — not twice as fast, as Apple has boasted.

Medialets also compared the iPhone 3GS speed against the Palm Pre and an Android-based smartphone. Its tests used JavaScript executed by the smartphones’ browsers, which all use WebKit open-source technology.

The WebKit project provides a JavaScript test script called SunSpider that was used in the Medialets tests. The baseline was established using Safari on a white MacBook.

The testing found that the iPhone OS 3.0 update for the iPhone 3G made it nearly three times faster than when using the previous 2.21 operating system. Medialets said the iPhone 3GS, which comes with the 3.0 OS, boosted speed another three times.

According to the Medialets results, the MacBook set the baseline at 1.36 seconds and the iPhone 3GS needed 16.5 seconds, or about 12 times as long. By comparison, the iPhone 3G with the 2.21 OS needed 132.3 seconds, or 96 times as long, but that dropped to 48.7 seconds, or 36 times, with the 3.0 operating system.

Medialets also tested the Palm Pre and found it needed 48.6 seconds, or 36 times as long, about the same as the iPhone 3G with OS 3.0. Also tested was a T-Mobile G1 with the cupcake Android 1.5 operating system, and that device needed 91.1 seconds, or 67 times as long.

AppleInsider reports that the iPhone 3GS has a 600-MHz processor and 256MB of RAM, up from the iPhone 3G’s 400-MHz processor and 128MB of RAM.

Palm indicated last week that is working to make its Mojo software development kit for the new Palm Pre available to all developers before the end of the summer. Though Palm initially restricted SDK access to a limited number of partners, the company now says it is ready to take a limited number of applications from developers.

But Palm said not everyone will receive the new SDK right away because it wants a small group of developers to kick the tires on its APIs, tools and docs before releasing them to the rest of the world.

“Our goal is to make the SDK available to everyone by the end of this summer, and to get there in stages,” said Palm Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach. “Beginning immediately, we’ll accelerate the growth of the early-access program,” which “will grow from hundreds to thousands of developers.”

A Major Holdup

According to Medialets, the Palm Pre application catalog has already grown from 18 applications at the smartphone’s launch June 6 to 30 applications as of last week. During this period, the Palm Pre catalog generated more than 650,000 software downloads, the mobile analytics firm said.

Medialets notes that one of the major holdups behind Palm’s release of a public SDK is the Palm Pre app catalog itself. Developers have been continually jockeying to position themselves at the top of the catalog’s “most recent” category by simply posting an upgrade, which changes the date of the app and moves it up the list, the mobile analytics firm observed.

“After all the gaming we’ve seen take place in the app store, this issue, coupled with a lack of a payment system in the store itself, are two of the major reasons why the app catalog isn’t ready to handle the volume of submissions that a public SDK…

Despite the overwhelming market dominance of Google and the media hype surrounding the launch of Microsoft’s snazzy new service, Bing, not everyone is convinced that Internet search has reached the end of its evolutionary path.

That’s the theory, at least, of new search engines like Collecta and CrowdEye, which argue that, like prehistoric dinosaurs, Google, Bing and Yahoo are simply too slow to keep up with today’s rapid-fire Internet. Instead, they argue, searchers can get better and more timely information from real-time search results.

“The industry is abuzz with the idea of real-time search,” said Gerry Campbell, CEO of Collecta. “But for most companies touting these services, ‘real time’ equates to timely or recent, not necessarily now. From a structural standpoint, Collecta is the only true real-time search solution out there.”

Same Speed, Different Approach?

CrowdEye, for one, begs to differ. Developed by Ken and Becca Moss, two former Microsoft employees, the search engine concentrates on searching the millions of tweets that flow through Twitter each hour. In the process, it compiles a list of popular related words, hash tags, and links posted by Twitter users. The resulting information is presented in a simple, uncluttered grid.

The chief difference between the two lies in the fact that Collecta is designed to be dynamic, in the sense that results are constantly updated and flow down the screen as new results come in. In appearance, it’s more of a search feed than a search engine. CrowdEye, by contrast, provides a more traditional snapshot of Web activity.

For analyst Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, the jury is still out on how successful these search engines will be. “Twitter-based search engines have limited utility right now,” Sterling said. “They’re very interesting, and real-time search is clearly here to stay. How the public reacts to services like these,…

Gerry Campbell, former senior vice president of search for AOL and a former president of search and content at Reuters, and his team of technology veterans have brought a different kind of search to users. On Thursday, they launched the beta version of Collecta, a real-time search service that allows users to type in queries to find results that are happening in real time.

Collecta sifts through the Web for information and tracks results from news stories, blog posts, micro-blogging updates and social-status messages. It provides real-time streams of results at Collecta.com, using its Extensible Messaging and Performance Protocol (XMPP) platform. Unlike other instant-messaging protocols, XMPP is an open standard.

The service relies heavily on information flowing from high-velocity sources such as Twitter.com, a micro-blogging site, and WordPress.com, a blogging service.

Search Alternative

The new service will have to compete with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other Web sites that offer search, but Campbell said Collecta offers something different from its competitors.

“What Collecta is doing that is different is instead of gathering, indexing and analysis and ranking, what it is all about is taking something from one point (the publishers) and sending it to the other (our users’ browsers),” Campbell said. “You could watch messages, posts and pictures flow through.”

Once users receive the results, they can also manage the collections of searches on stories and conversations they care most about, including their company, a car they may be considering, or a favorite actor. It also displays which search queries are considered popular at the time of search.

Just hours after launching the service, Campbell said the team has been busy. “We are getting hammered; it is fantastic, exciting and nerve-wracking,” Campbell said.

Real-Time Glitches

Part of offering real-time information is also receiving real-time feedback.

Entering the search query “Gerry Campbell” to…

Facing a barrage of international criticism, the Chinese government is apparently backing down from its earlier announcement that all PCs sold in the country must have censoring software installed.

According to an anonymous official in the government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), it’s “misleading” to say that China is requiring PC owners to use the software.

“PC makers are only required to save the setup files of the program in the hard drives of the computers, or provide CD-ROMS containing the program with their PC packages,” the official said. “The government’s role is limited to having the software developed and providing it free.”

Flawed Software

The software package, known as Green Dam-Youth Escort, has been fiercely criticized by human-rights and free-speech groups around the world. Although ostensibly designed to block pornography, the software also is designed to limit access to Web sites containing material critical of the Chinese government.

Software researchers in the United States and elsewhere have asserted that the Green Dam software contains numerous security holes that could permit the installation of malware on PCs that install the program, or even permit a remote user to gain control of the computer.

On top of everything else, software manufacturer Solid Oak, publisher of the well-known Cybersitter software, is threatening copyright infringement litigation against the Chinese government, Jinhui Computer System Engineering (which produced Green Dam), and any PC manufacturer that installs the censorware. Solid Oak alleges that significant portions of its code was stolen by Jinhui. Others allege that chunks of open-source code were incorporated into Green Dam without credit.

Troubling Trend

The Green Dam controversy is seen by many as part of a troubling trend of censorship, with both eastern and western governments going to greater lengths to control online activity. Many argue that the companies that manufacture personal computers (such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell)…

Twitter, the social-networking service derided for being the last refuge of the banal, has gained a new currency on the world stage. The stream of micro-blog postings has proven an important source of real-time news and images of the violence that erupted following the contested presidential election in Iran.

Iranian protesters turned to Twitter — and other social-networking sites, including Facebook — after Iranian censors ordered foreign journalists to stop live reporting of the protests. Now, according the Middle Eastern news outlet Al Jazeera, the government of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to filter Twitter and Facebook traffic to stop the reports.

Delayed Maintenance

In the United States, the tweets from the streets of Iran caught the attention of the State Department. With old media shut down and no formal diplomatic presence, the department was just as reliant on the Twitterverse as everyone else — so much so, in fact, that a “low-level State Department official” contacted Twitter and asked it to delay a long-scheduled maintenance shutdown. State Department officials stressed that it was not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who made the call.

As Twitter cofounder Biz Stone later tweeted, “NTT America proves again why they are such an awesome partner and reschedules urgent network maintenance.”

As he explained in a linked blog post, “A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.”

Routing Around Censorship

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s John Gilmore once famously said that “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” The tweeting in Iran…