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When hackers announced that they had compiled, installed, and run the first third party program on the iPhone, the 'Hello World' application, the typical consumer probably didn't get all that excited. After all, what's the big deal about a program that simply prints out "Hello World".

Though not very exciting, it was very significant. The running of that first application signaled the success of iPhone hacker Nightwatch's toolchain and hinted and things to come. Well, here they come.

Using Nightwatch's toolchain, iPhone hackers have now compiled and installed working versions of Python, Vim (a popular terminal text editor), and Apache. That's right, Apache. In other words, you can now run a webserver on your iPhone.

The reality brought forth by these recent developments is that full fledged third party applications are going to happen for the iPhone whether Apple

Mostly because it's relatively not that exciting, we've been a bit lazy in getting this story posted. The other day, via a new third party application called srelay (a SOCKS proxy server), you can now tether your iPhone EDGE connection to your laptop or desktop via WiFi. Yes, it could come in handy in a pinch, but sharing an EDGE connection with a full fledged PC isn't nearly as exciting as it would be if the iPhone were 3G.

Of course, this application and functionality is only available to you if you've hacked your iPhone. Like all other iPhone hacks, you need to start with the jailbreak hack. Once completed, you can then install srelay on your iPhone, set up a direct computer to computer WiFi connection, and off you go. The video below provides a HOWTO and demonstration of the process.

Shares of both AT&T (T) and Apple (AAPL) fell today based on news from AT&T that it activated only 146,000 iPhones in the first two days of the iPhone era, June 29th and June 30th. Though AT&T shares closed down only $0.35, Apple shares slid a whopping $8.81 or 6.13 percent.

Investors were shocked at the low activation total, as some analysts had estimated that Apple sold as many as 700,000 iPhones during it's opening weekend. Despite the lower than expected numbers, AT&T assured investors that all was well with AT&T, Apple, and the iPhone. Still, despite the fact that 40% of the iPhone activations AT&T reported were new customers, AT&T slid for the day.

Most likely, investor worry over AT&T's activation numbers is misplaced. One of the most important details to notice about AT&T's activation report, is that it omits one day of the iPhone's opening weekend - Sunday, July 1st. Many of you will recall that very large numbers of customers who arrived home with their iPhones were unable to activate their phones due to technical issues and backlog experienced by AT&T and Apple.

Chances are high that most of the iPhones purchased on opening weekend were not activated by AT&T until that Sunday, which fail to make the recently report AT&T activation statistic.

We've seen a lot of new sites popping up designed specifically for the iPhone. What's more, many existing sites have designed iPhone-sized interfaces to make the iPhone user experience of their services more welcoming. The latest of these offerings, iRovr, is a full fledged social network designed specifically for the iPhone.

iRovr offers blogging, photo sharing, video sharing, bookmarking and user profiles - but all sized to fit the iPhone's screen. Media sharing is accomplished through POP email aliases.

Sites such as Digg and Del.icio.us have already offered iPhone an iPhone sized interface. However, the largest sites in social networking land - such as MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut - have not.

The first shipments of Apple's iPhone Bluetooth Headset hit Apple stores today, and details about the headset and unboxing pics are surfacing already. Preliminary reports indicate good sound quality from the headset and a nice array of included extras.

The headset offers, for the most part, a fairly typical BT earpiece feature set, including the ability to answer incoming calls, end current call, ignore incoming calls, answer calls when on an existing call, etc.

Unfortunately, what's missing is any indication or information on the how to use the "single button that lets you make and receive phone calls simply and intuitively" to actually make calls. That tidbit is mentioned in the headset's product information on Apple's online store and previously led to speculation (by your's truly) that the iPhone headset might bring with it some sort of voice dialing capability to the iPhone. Instead, despite the claim on Apple's online store, there's no mention of actually making calls with the headset. Instead, the manual instructs users to make a call on their iPhone.

As highlighted by flickr user nomad7674's unboxing pics, one nice feature of pairing the headset with your iPhone is