If there wasn’t a vast, cold expanse of internet in the way, we could just hug those iPhone Dev Wiki folks. Apparently a particularly dedicated hacker who goes by “Nightwatch” has compiled and launched the iPhone’s very first independent “Hello World” application, paving the way for 3rd party applications to run on the heretofore closed device. Of course, user implications are a long ways away, but Nightwatch has built a pre-alpha ARM/Mach-O Toolchain for other hackers to follow his example, and other folks should be able to get 3rd party code running on the iPhone before long. Exciting times indeed. [http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/19/iphone-says-hello-world-here-come-the-3rd-party-apps/]