Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. They've gone by many names - "programs," "executables" and "applications" - and the development of technologies such as HTML5 calls their nature into question. But the explosion of apps that have set the mobile device market alight over the past several years have been around for almost as long as digital computing has.
Engadget, Switched On: When apps meet traps
