The bigger question: Can Dorsey pull off the mock turtleneck?

​Will Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter and Square) become the next Steve Jobs? That's the question that tech site gigaom.com recently tackled in an article comparing the St. Louis native to the late Apple founder. The website notes that the two both spent a lot of time thinking about the "big picture" of how technology interacts with our lives or our "humaness" as Dorsey puts it.

Writes gigaom:

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Just weeks after targeting St. Louis-based Monsanto, hacktivists affiliated with the online troublemaker group, Anonymous, are boasting of a new feat. This time, they claim to have stolen tons of data -- including identities of confidential informants -- from more than 70 law enforcement computer networks nationwide, including Missouri Sheriff's Association. (The group's promotional video below actually uses footage from a Columbia police SWAT raid).

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The Anonymous slogan: "We do not forgive. We do not forgive. Expect us."

​In the latest of a string of increasingly ballsy attacks, Anonymous -- a loose collective of online ne'er-do-wells -- has trained its sights on the Creve-Coeur-based agri-giant, Monsanto.

Anonymous got national attention for its lively 2008 campaign against the Church of Scientology. But this year, they've taken on targets with much more political and economic clout, such as major credit card companies and just last week an FBI contractor (some 40 members' homes were raided by the feds last January).

Their philosophy is hard to pin down, but Daily RFT will describe it today as "webertarian" ("web" + "libertarian" = see what we did there? Maybe "libertubian" is better). The common thread seems to be a desire to maintain the Internet's chaotic freedom. 

The group voiced its displeasure with Monsanto in a video last year, blasting it for alleged "mental slavery, food control and genetic manipulation" (other grievances are now cataloged on anonpad.com).

But only recently have they taken concerted action -- triggered, according to Cnet, by Monsanto's "lawsuits against organic dairy farmers for stating on labels that their products don't contain growth hormones."

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It knows where you are! And other people can use it to find out.

​Next time you get black-out wasted on Goldschlager and wake up behind a strip mall, you might have no idea where you are. But your iPhone does.

In fact, it's been tracking -- and recording -- your spatial location since the moment you turned it on.

That's a big problem to certain Missourians, who (like people in other states) are now pursuing a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc.

And their beef isn't just about privacy.

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Wait! Don't go! Here's why...

​You've heard the stories. St. Louis is losing its most creative and entrepreneurial people to the likes of Chicago, New York and Austin. If only we were more like Silicon Valley -- the argument goes -- perhaps local boy Jack Dorsey would've founded Twitter in his hometown of St. Louis and not the Bay Area.

But how to stop the brain drain? Judy Sindecuse, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" and founder of the venture capital company Capital Innovators, thinks she has a possible solution. It's called StartUp St. Louis, a tech-company accelerator she's helping to start this fall that aims to launch 40 IT companies in St. Louis within the next four years.

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A Daily RFT reader painted his roof white, and look what happened...

​A regular reader of Daily RFT contacted us yesterday to say he'd just painted the roof of his south-city duplex completely white. The hope was that it would keep the second floor of his home cooler, but he initially didn't think it would do much.

(We asked, and he claimed in reply that he did not work for a hardware store or would benefit in any way from this; he admitted only to being a big "home improvement nerd.")

From the pictures he sent in, it appears he got some outrageously different temperature readings while comparing his newly-painted roof compared to that of his duplex neighbor:

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New social networking iPhone app BuzzE shows users potential friends nearby.

In May 2010, Brett Rosen walked into a San Francisco restaurant and noticed that almost everyone sitting at the bar was fiddling with a smartphone. That's when he got the idea. If people at a bar are going to be on their phones anyway, he thought, they might as well be interacting with the people around them.

A year later, Rosen and his partners Rohit Thadani and Steve Johnson launched BuzzE, a social networking app for smartphones.

BuzzE uses GPS technology to show users (Buzzers?) other users who are nearby. Someone's profile picture catches your eye? You can "buzz" her (the rough equivalent of a Facebook "poke" or a real life wink), chat with her, buy her a virtual drink and play games together like "How Hot Are We?" and "I Found You!" This digital interaction, if you play your cards right, sufficiently breaks the ice so that you can meet up with her and buy her a real drink. So basically, it's a way better wing-man than your college roommate.

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Paul Jackson and Jake Houvenagle, the masterminds behind ShootPaul.com, and a friend.

About six months ago, Jake Houvenagle and his friend Paul Jackson came up with a stupid drunken idea: They would build a Web site that would allow users to virtually shoot at Paul with a paintball gun, sort of like a live-action video game.

Unlike many stupid drunken ideas, this one is actually going to come to fruition. As you read this, Houvenagle, 29, and Jackson, 28, are assembling their shooting gallery in a warehouse in downtown St. Louis. (Houvenagle will reveal only that it's near the corner of Tucker Avenue and Washington Boulevard.) Soon they will start testing. If all goes well, the site, called ShootPaul.com, will go live at the end of May.

So why are they doing this?

"As we get closer to launch, I ask myself that question all the time," Houvenagle admits.

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Today that big arch is actually a frown.

​After a year of speculation and more than 1,100 applications from cities across the nation, Google yesterday announced it has chosen a city for its ultra-high-speed broadband project.

Soon Google will begin installing fiber optic lines in Kansas City, Kansas, which the company says will "make Internet access more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today." In choosing Kansas City, Google said it found a location where it could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations.

It's worth noting that the the Kansas-side of Kansas City has only around 150,000 residents, making it much smaller than its namesake in Missouri. (Google had said it wanted to test the project in a city of between 50,000 and 500,000 people.)

Last year, St. Louis made a push to land the project, with the mayor's office officially applying for the technology and creating a website to lure Google.

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Of course you know about our annual Best Of issue -- the RFT's guide to finding the best of everything in St. Louis.

But what you may not know is that there's an app for that. With the brand-new Best Of app from Village Voice Media, you can read up on (and get location info for) all those hidden gems around town, whether you're partying in Soulard or shopping at Plaza Frontenac. The free app is networked to all of VVM's publications, so if you're vacationing in New York, L.A. or San Francisco, you can easily use it to explore the city you're in.

Currently, the app can only be used on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. But don't worry: The Android version will be available at the end of April.

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