The iPhone and iPod Touch have taken the world by storm. In just a little over six months time we’ve witnessed the doors of the iTunes App Store opening to the 10,000 app marker being crossed. In between that time we’ve see the $999 I’m Rich make several people poor, fart joke apps earning over $25K in one day, and Apple still looking the other way when users mention copy and paste. And with the number of total apps reaching over 13,500 less than a month since the 10,000 mark was passed, that growth is showing no signs of stopping. But some of these stand out much more than others do, so we’ve tried to hone in on the cream of the crop.

Have you ever jailbroken an iPhone? Ever used a software solution to “unlock” the iPhone’s SIM slot, freeing it from the shackles of its original carrier? Chances are, the iPhone Dev Team had something to do with it. This group, made up of some of the iPhone development scene’s finest minds, spends countless hours tearing apart the iPhone to make it do all of the things Apple won’t allow - and then figures out a way to make it work for everyone. It’s tough, unpaid, and often thankless - but they keep cracking away.

Later tonight, the iPhone Dev Team is expected to release “yellowsn0w“, a long-awaited software-based SIM unlock for the iPhone 3G. Though they don’t often do interviews, we were able to gab with one of the members, Pytey, just hours before their big release for a chat about who they are, how they operate, and a whole lot more.

Audiolizer is a new music streaming service that lets you put your iTunes library in the cloud. After uploading your iTunes Library database file, the site will automatically compile a list of links to every song, allowing you to access your favorite music when you’re away from your home computer. Users can also manually search for individual songs.

As with a number of streaming audio sites, Audiolizer makes use of the YouTube API to serve its music (this ostensibly makes them less of a target for lawsuits, as they aren’t hosting any music). The system seems to work fairly well, through the presentation is strange - the “music video” shown alongside the player is only thumbnailed sized for some reason. You can still access the full sized video by clicking on the thumbnail, but it’s a bit odd.

Want to work as the community manager of a fully-funded company that hasn’t launched yet? Or an “Information Repository Specialist“? Maybe work as a managing editor at CBS Interactive?

(Here at TechCrunch, we’re still looking for a Rails Developer.)

Other CrunchBoard jobs after the jump.

The biggest surprise fro me in the social media rankings that I posted earlier today was the appearance of document sharing service Scribd in the top 20. According to the comScore numbers, it has more unique visitors worldwide than imeem and almost as many as Bebo, with 23.5 million visitors in November, 2008. (In the U.S., it had about 4 million visitors). This is a serious accomplishment for a startup that launched less than two years ago with $300,000 in seed capital.

On the eve of the iPhone 3G software SIM unlock, the following text just went up on the iPhone Dev Team blog:

01110110 01110100 01100001 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110110 00110001 00110000 00110110 00110000 00110001 00110111 00110100 00100000

Now, any self-respecting geek should immediately recognize this as binary. If we take that block of binary and convert each 8-number chunk into it’s respective ASCII representation, we get one step closer to the final answer.

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook, the blue line, is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well. Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list.

We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).” - Zune spokesperson

The “issues” 30 GB Zune owners are experiencing is a mass failing, all overnight, that is yet to be resolved. From Gizmodo: “Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and… freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them.”

Just a couple of months ago I wrote that the Zune was something of an anti-iPod, attractive to people who think Apple fandom has gone a little overboard.

But a massive, synchronized operating system failure on a Microsoft product is a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction story that’s too good to pass up on a slow news day. And it also lets people dust off blue screen of death jokes, which will forever send chills down the spine of Windows users.

Apple is facing opposition to putting up one of its gigantic glass-everywhere stores in one of Washington D.C.’s historic neighborhoods, the complaint being that it’d be too big and too modern to fit in with all the other quaint, cute buildings in the area (see our artist’s rendition above).

I propose, however, that the complaint is a cover-up for a much more massive and sinister conspiracy involving Apple, Satan, and the White House.

In related news, there might be a new Mac Mini next week.

It will cost $17.5 billion, be run by private companies and track every move we make on the internet, every call, text message and every transaction. Yes, this is the UK government proposal to manage and run a communications database that will make Chinese attempts to control and monitor its citizens look like “light touch” regulation. The only difference with one-party states like China (apart from the summary trial and execution) is that the government claims that it will not look at the content on our every electronic interaction, but merely at the points of entry. The “pings”, if you like. But of course, by building up a database about our every electronic movement, this will create enough “content” to create a pattern of recognition about our movements.

Stock charts and data are the lifeblood of all investing sites, even in these slumping times. Most major media sites have investing sections powered by stock data that they license for a pretty penny. San Francisco startup Wikinvest is making inroads as a stock data provider for media Websites. Its embeddable, annotatable charts now grace the stock pages of USAToday. Beginning next week, they will also power the stock charts on Forbes.com, replacing its current stock data provider, INVESTools. (On USAToday, the Wikinvest charts are supplementing the main charts).

Each stock page on USAToday also includes community analysis and links to related concepts from Wikinvest as well. Wikinvest charts can be annotated with news stories and embedded elsewhere. For instance here is a chart from USAToday’s Google stock page:

Deloitte recently released the results of its VC Indicator Survey (PDF), conducted among Israeli VCs this past month. The complied results are so pessimistic they paint a warm and fuzzy aura around Sequoia’s Doom & Gloom presentation.

Participated by approximately 80 Israeli venture capitalists, the survey predicts 2009 will be an extremely painful year for the Israeli startup industry in most every respect.

Here are some of the highlights:

Can you name Google’s top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google’s subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google’s main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). Google Docs, Sites, and Knol are still too small to make the top-ten, but are all showing decent growth.

YouTube and Orkut are not included below because they are on their own domains, but YouTube would be second with 70 million unique visitors. Orkut is not popular in the U.S., so it would not be a factor in this particular list. And I took out sorry.google.com, the domain Google uses to try to catch bots and spyware. It would have ranked No. 8.

Angelsoft, a New York based company that develops a platform for connecting early-stage investors and entrepreneurs and managing investment deal flow, has released a significant update to its software and is finally opening up its network to VCs next to angel investors.

When the company released version 3.0 last September, the upgrade was centered more about making it easier for early-stage investors to sift through entrepreneur applications, search and rate them, etc.

The new version is called Angelsoft 3.4 and comes with 317 updates (release notes), most of them bug fixes, but also introduces a number of features including a nifty ‘Tripit’ style one that enables users to e-mail in deals to a default e-mail address.

I knew someone would eventually nail the perfect service for updating Twitter. That day has come, with the launch of Twoogie, where you can send and view tweets in true Doogie Howser, M.D. style on an IBM PS/2 screen.

Just add your username behind the URL to view your Twitter stream the old school way (e.g. TechCrunch). Note that for some reason - could be intentional - it doesn’t always work straight away. To update, you’ll need to log in with your Twitter credentials, so that’s entirely up to you.

YouTube is posting their year end review of the top videos, measured by ratings, favorites and number of comments.

Last year they posted just 10 videos. This year, 24. They’ll be posting one per hour all day today and then summarize them at midnight when everyone will presumably find them much funnier because they’ve been drinking for hours (hopefully not alone watching the Big Apple fall live on Hulu).

Make your guesses on which videos will be included. I’ve started things off with the one above, which I imagine is very likely to be included.

The ongoing litigation between Mob Wars creator David Maestri and SGN is over. On December 16 the two sides reached a settlement. The Mob Wars game goes to Maestri, but SGN will have rights to create similar style games itself. SGN also received an undisclosed financial settlement.

The history of this powerful little app is dramatic. It was first created by Maestri while still employed at SGN’s former iteration, FreeWebs, under the pseudonym Jason Gilbert. That alone is evidence that the game actually belonged to his employer. Maestri left SGN in February 2008, and SGN sued Maestri for control over the game. For more background, see here.

Mob Wars, which is a game that lets players act as criminals and rise through the mob ranks by committing crimes, fighting other players, etc., brings in a lot of money. Players use real currency to buy weapons and other virtual goods on the site. Some estimates suggest revenue may have peaked at $1 million/month, and there are nearly 2.5 million active users of the application on Facebook today.

It has also spawned a number of copycats, including Zynga’s Mafia Wars, with 2.7 million active users.

Online holiday sales deflated 3 percent this year. ComScore estimates that holiday sales in the U.S. totaled $25.5 billion between November 1 and December 23, the last day orders could be delivered in time for Christmas. The comparable total in 2007 was $26.3 billion.

Sales were struggling to keep up with last year’s totals all holiday season. In the end, they fell short. (Hitwise comes to the same conclusion).

We’ve got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.

Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device.

We don’t have any information on pricing. The current iPod touch, with a 3.5 inch screen, starts at $229. The 32 GB model is $399. We expect the price on the larger iPod touch to be significantly higher.

Apple rumors, particularly Apple tablet rumors, tend to come and go. I’m not saying Apple is definitely launching a large form iPod Touch. But sources I trust are saying they are currently planning to, and one source has actually held the device.

Quick, name three significant web sites that have domain extensions that end in .me or .tv. Having trouble? Sure, there are a few of them out there (kyte.tv and Buddy.tv come to mind, but I can’t think of any major .me’s). For all of the hype surrounding these extensions at launch, they’ve largely failed to deliver.

Earlier today Chris Dannen at FastCompany wrote a post titled “How 2009 Will Spur The Rebirth Of Cyber Squatting“. In it, Dannen writes about the beginning of a new age of domain squatting, as ICANN (the organization that handles domain name registrations) begins accepting applications for new domain name suffixes. He posits that with the emergence of new extensions like “.nyc” or “.law” these squatters will be given a new lease on life, with a nearly endless number of possible domains to plunder. Legitimate companies, likewise, will have to register as many domains as they can in the hopes of fending off sites like “Microsoft.sux”.

Fortunately, Dannen is wrong. Some overzealous companies may still go to the trouble of snatching up as many domains as they can, but it will be for naught.