Real estate has a succinct language of its own that serves as a defining and selling tool.

WSJ: The Empire State Building's Luster Returns | By Ada Louise Huxtable

But the apps that have turned the iPhone into a more useful tool -- be it as simple as a flashlight or as sophisticated as a language translator -- have been relatively rare.

ENGADGET: Switched On: iOS 6 gets back from the app

More competent visitors to the site can build a world from scratch using the tool's own programming language known as metamarkup.

BBC: Screen shot from Metaplace

Open-source programs across the board - the Apache Web server, the Perl programming language and the GNU development tool set, to name a few - are gaining legitimacy as a business platform.

CNN: Celebrated freeware OS Linux grows up