Apple May Allow Controversial Apps In App Store, Suggest Developers
Apple could introduce an Explicit category to its App Store, as suggested by developers who saw a tab for adult-themed apps appear briefly as a primary category in the iTunes Connect system. Whether Apple was testing code or yanked the category after news leaked remains to be seen. Apples head of worldwide product marketing Philip Schiller indicated in an interview with The New York Times tha...
10 Reasons Why Apple's App Store Polices Make No Sense
News Analysis: Apple's decision to remove over 5,000 applications because of their inclusion of objectionable material has caught the ire of several critics. But it's more of the same for the hardware company. Here is why Apple's App Store policies simply don't make any sense. -
Last week, an iPhone developer told social-networking blog
TechCrunch that their application was taken do...
10 Reasons Why Apple's App Store Policies Make No Sense
News Analysis: Apple's decision to remove over 5,000 applications because of their inclusion of objectionable material has caught the ire of several critics. But it's more of the same for the hardware company. Here is why Apple's App Store policies don't make any sense. - Last week, an
iPhone developer told social-networking blog TechCrunch that their application
was taken down from Apple...
REVIEW: MonoDevelop 2.2 Looks Good on Windows
Although it lacks some of the features of Visual Studio, MonoDevelop 2.2, which finally supports Windows, doesn't disappoint. - When I first reviewed MonoDevelop in June of 2009, I focused
on the IDE running under Ubuntu Linux. At
the time, some developers had been working on porting MonoDevelop to Windows,
but the project wasnt complete.
But now it is. With the release of Version 2.2,
Mono...
Google: Goodbye Google Gears, Hello HTML5
It appears that Google is close to driving home the final nail into the Google Gears coffin. - It appears that Google is close to driving home the final nail into the Google Gears coffin.
Google Gears is the search giant's innovative technology for enabling offline applications. However, toward the end of 2009, Google announced that it was lessening its focus on Gears in lieu of support for...
Adobe Photoshop Turns 20
Adobe's Photoshop graphics editing software has hit the 20-year mark. - Adobe's Photoshop graphics editing software has hit the 20-year mark.
Adobe Photoshop turned 20 on Feb. 19 and is still going strong. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) hosted Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace...
AdMarvel Launches Android Advertising Toolkit 1.5
AdMarvel, a subsidiary of Opera Software as well as a provider of mobile advertising services, announced the availability of its Android Advertising Toolkit version 1.5 on Feb. 17. - AdMarvel, a subsidiary of Opera Software as well as a provider of mobile advertising services, announced the availability of its Android Advertising Toolkit version 1.5 on Feb. 17.
The AdMarvel Android Advertis...
HP Hits the Agile Road
HP has announced a series of enhancements to its toolset for Agile software development, the HP Agile Accelerator, and is banking on its expertise to help enterprise customers modernize legacy applications and build better new ones. - HP has announced a series of enhancements to its toolset for Agile software development, the HP Agile Accelerator, and is banking on its expertise to help ent...
Micro Focus to Ship New Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Micro Focus has announced that it will deliver four new tools for developers to use Micro Focus COBOL technology with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. - Micro Focus has announced that it will deliver four new tools for developers to use Micro Focus COBOL technology with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
Micro Focus COBOL enables developers to exploit existing enterprise applications on the Microso...
Adobe Has Nothing to Fear From iPad and HTML5, Says Analyst
Adobe could maintain its strength as an online rich-media provider despite Apple excluding Flash support from its mobile devices and Google using HTML5 in YouTube, says a new analyst report from Jefferies Co. In a conversation with eWEEK, Adobe executives suggested that the ubiquity of Flash, and the porting of Flash Player 10.1 onto smartphones running Google Android and other mobile operati...
15 Ways Oracle Can Make Java Better (and Improve Its Stance with Developers)
When Oracle acquired Sun, the database giant also acquired the Java technology that was Sun's lifeblood. Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison called Java the most important technology Oracle has ever acquired. With ownership and leadership come responsibility. Java's future is now in Oracle's hands. This eWEEK slide show presents 15 ways Oracle can improve Java and boost its position in the Ja...
Microsoft Ships Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate
Microsoft has delivered the release candidate version of the company's Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 application development suite. - Microsoft has delivered the release candidate version of the company's Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 application development suite.
The software giant announced the updated release of the latest update of the upcoming delivery of its f...
20 Essential Things to Know About the HTML5 Web Language
The HTML5 specification is the much-discussed, much-anticipated follow-on to HTML4, which has grown a little long in the tooth for the kinds of Web applications developers are creating today and aspire to create in the future. HTML5 will enable a whole new class of Web applications that support multimedia content and offline capability without the need for proprietary plug-in technology. - ...
Ruby on Rails 3.0 Beta Released
The Ruby on Rails project has delivered a beta release of Ruby on Rails 3, the latest major version of the popular web development framework that features Merb integration. - The Ruby on Rails project has delivered a beta release of Ruby on Rails 3, the latest major version of the popular web development framework that features Merb integration.
In a blog post announcing the new beta releas...
eWEEK Newsbreak Video Feb 5 2010
IT administrators who license Google Apps Premier and Education Edition will be able to dictate security settings for their users' iPhone, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile smartphones right from the Google Apps control panel. This action may seem like a small measure of control for admins, but it could be a big cost saver; admins will be able to set these controls in the Google Apps cloud comp...
REVIEW: SlickEdit 2009 is Feature-Packed, but Pricey
SlickEdit 2009 packs enough new, productivity-boosting features to tempt developers to reconsider their tool preferences. Convincing the CFO, however, might be another matter. - Ive always been the type of programmer who's used two editors: one for quick edits, and another for larger-scale work. On Windows, my preference for quick edits has been SciTE, which I regard as a sort of “better t...
Microsoft Boosts Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)
Microsoft has moved to update its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to make it easier for developers to create new applications with security in mind at the front end of the application development cycle. - Microsoft has moved to update its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to make it easier for developers to create new applications with security in mind at the front end of the applic...
Microsoft Boosts Security Development Lifecycle
Microsoft moves to update its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to make it easier for developers to create new applications with security in mind at the front end of the application development cycle. - Microsoft has moved to update its Security Development Lifecycle to make it
easier for developers to create new applications with security in mind at the
front end of the application deve...
Facebook Rocks the PHP World with HipHop
As predicted, Facebook has delivered a new PHP platform called HipHop for PHP that delivers much improved performance to the popular PHP scripting language that is known for its relative lack of performance. - As predicted, Facebook has delivered a new PHP platform called HipHop for PHP that delivers much improved performance to the popular PHP scripting language that is known for its relat...
Is Facebook Souping Up PHP?
Is Facebook working on a new compiler for PHP to speed up the language? Some say the answer to that may come as soon as Feb. 2. - Is Facebook working on a new compiler for PHP to speed up the language?
According to Alex Handy at SDTimes, Facebook is set to make some kind of major announcement regarding PHP on or around Tuesday, Feb. 2.
In a January 30 blog post, Handy wrote:
quot;Well, I ...
End Game
This is my 603rd and last column for pbs.org. If you want to continue reading my work, please visit http://www.cringely.com, which is also in this week's links. Thanks for your support.
Everybody in my line of work writes prediction columns for the coming year, but I wonder how many we will see this time around? The world is unsettled. It's not just this damned financial nightmare we have t...
Insanely Great
Looking for improved business models for the personal computer business, Apple CEO Steve Jobs often used to cite automobile makers, though never American car companies. The examples were invariably German. Whether it was the design aesthetic of his Mercedes sedan or Porsche's success at selling high-margin cars as entertainment devices, Jobs could always point to farfegnugen as a way to sell a...
Saving Detroit
My first car was an Oldsmobile, a red 1966 convertible I wish I still owned today. It was big and heavy yet somehow managed to average 18 miles per gallon in an era when gasoline cost 35 cents. Detroit and the U.S. automakers ruled the world when that car was built, yet now the companies say they are on the skids, bleeding money and headed for bankruptcy. What happened? And what can we do -...
Not Enough Indians
There is no joy at Yahoo, for mighty Jerry has struck out.
This week Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang announced he was stepping down after 17 turbulent months as CEO of the big Internet portal -- a time in which the company rebuffed a buyout offer from Microsoft, flubbed an ad sales agreement with Google, and ended up being worth a third of its former self when the rest of the market is down only ...
Now For Something Completely Different
President-Elect Barack Obama has announced that when he's in office he'll appoint a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the whole darned USA. Though Google CEO Eric Schmidt already said he isn't interested in the job, I am.
I accept, Mr. President.
And while the idea of Cringely for CTO may seem lame to most everybody I know (including my Mom), I think I can make a strong case for why I...
Download file ...
Download file
Love-Hate
Steve Jobs is not like you and me. He has millions of customers, 32,000 employees, and a board of directors who think he can do no wrong. Running a company that is immensely profitable, gaining in market share, has no debt and $20 billion in cash, he can afford to make bold moves, the most recent of which is his decision to replace Tony Fadell, until moments ago head of the division that prod...
Azure Blues
It isn't very often I get to apply Moore's Law to a non-Information Technology business and rarer still that I can then relate the whole thing back to Microsoft, so I'm going for it. Here's what the solar power industry can teach us about Microsoft:
The wonderful thing about Moore's Law is what the lady at the bank called the "miracle of compound interest." That halving of manufacturing cost...
Collateral Damage
I am not a very sophisticated mobile phone user. I don't use most of the bells and whistles on my phone, probably because I don't know what they even are. But just because I'm an idiot about USING mobile phones doesn't mean I don't understand the emerging mobile market, to which I have been paying a lot of attention of late. And why not? As personal computers fade from what Al Mandel called...
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Apple last week introduced a pair of very nice notebook computers that, not at all surprisingly, looked like riffs on the MacBook Air. The company in a separate announcement released 600 high-definition television episodes through the iTunes Store. This week Apple will reportedly release new 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs, also for the Christmas season. Two weeks, three announcements, but what stri...
Cool Threads
A couple of columns ago we touched on the practical rebirth of parallel computing. In case you missed that column (it's in this week's links), the short version is that Moore's Law is letting us down a bit when it comes to the traditional way of increasing the power of microprocessors, which is by raising clock speeds. We've hiked them to the point where processors are so small and running so...
Off With Their Heads!
My promised column on threads will appear in this space on Friday. It would have appeared here today but the crumbling global financial system suddenly seemed a more appropriate topic.
We're in trouble and by "we" I mean the whole darned planet. What started as a mortgage problem in the U.S. has blown into global financial paralysis that threatens us all with recession and maybe even with de...
Data Debasement
Last week I was in Boston to moderate a panel at the MIT Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference -- one of those tech shindigs so expensive I can only attend as hired help. My panel was on parallel computing and it produced this column and another I'll file early next week. This week is about databases and next week is about threads. Isn't this a grand time to be a nerd?
Than...
Test Headline
Test Body
The Cringely Plan
In the early 1980s I was a volunteer firefighter for a tiny community in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California. We all lived in a beautiful redwood forest and our task was to keep that forest from burning down in a huge conflagration, taking us all with it. The job was made all the harder because our little part of paradise hadn't burned since the 1920s, so there was 60+ years of fl...
Door Number Three
I'll begin this third and (I promise) last column on IT management with a confession: I have been fired from every job I have ever held. This is certainly not something I set out to do, nor did I even realize it until one day my young and lovely wife mentioned that I had never told her about voluntarily leaving any position. It's not that I've had so many jobs, either. This one and the one b...
Leadership
Last week's column on bad IT management and the strong response from readers that followed show this to be a huge issue. There are WAY too many IT managers who either can't or shouldn't manage technical teams. Last week I maintained that having a firm technology base, or at least the ability and willingness to acquire one, was essential for good managers. While readers got carried away with ...
Fire Your Boss
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. This week is also a time when the world economy is under stress comparable or greater to that imposed seven years ago. Whatever you are feeling in your wallet, I can't overemphasize the impact the current global credit crunch is having on our economy and that of other nations, including Germany and Japan. We're...
Doomsday
This was the week Google surprised the world with Chrome, its own open source web browser. Just imagine the deadly effect that had on a dozen or more browser-specific start-ups in Silicon Valley. Lots of readers are wondering what I think of Chrome, like my opinion really matters. Chrome is okay -- faster, but not faster enough to make me change for that reason alone. It's better than IE and al...
How Much is Enough?
While to regular readers this may seem an odd time of the week to see a new column from me, get used to it, because I'm deliberately increasing the frequency of I, Cringely columns to something greater than one per week yet still possibly less than two. In part this is my response to having more than ever to say. It's also an attempt to create more opportunities for you to view the ads we don...
Computer security's dubious future
As long-time readers already know, I?m a big fan of Bruce Schneier, CTO and founder of BT Counterpane. Besides being a cryptographic and computer security authority, cryptographic algorithm creator, and author of many best-selling books on security, Bruce produces some of the most relevant conversations on computer security. I consider his books, Cryptogram newsletter, and blog must-reads for a...
Is your Web site FIPS compliant?
I?ve been involved in a lot of FIPS-compliance Web site testing lately. I?m a crypto hobbyist, not a crypto expert, so I hesitate to write about it, but I?ll explain the basics as well as I understand them. Crypto experts, please write in if I messed up something important.
Computer security: Why have least privilege?
My previous column on the questionable long-term effects of least privilege created a firestorm of controversy and discussion. Personally, I think controversy is good if it gives people on both sides of the argument a chance to reconsider their previous conclusions. If the argument changes your mind, then maybe your original conclusions needed more consideration. And if it strengthens your supp...
File sharing beyond the firewall
Conventional storage systems work well for local file sharing, but no system I can think of can help you share files outside your organization, unless you commit to cobbling together an in-house solution.
Make interoperability the goal
Getting storage vendors to play together nicely is no easy task. When they do, it is an event worthy of pause -- even if the gathering proves more about self-service than boosting the interoperability of their wares.
Strategic security: Get a handle on authentication
It's a common dilemma: You host multiple Web-accessible applications, for both internal customers and external users. A few of your developers are keeping up on the last programming trends and security models, while some of your highest-seniority employees are stuck in programming models outdated a decade ago. You've got a hodgepodge of access and authentication methods, along with a lot of cli...
Control user installs of software
I've written many times over the years, including as recently as last week, that letting users execute and install their own software will always allow viruses, worms, and Trojans to be successfully installed. Traditionally, I've recommended that users not have admin or root access, that they let system administrators choose what software is allowed and what is blocked. But this recommendation ...
Smaller drives nurture green IT
Infortrend? quietly marked a storage milestone last week, shipping the EonStor B12, the first enterprise-class array based on 2.5-inch drives. Combining power and reliability in a small size, the B12 could become the measuring stick for all storage arrays in its class, surpassing those that mount 3.5-inch drives in both efficiency and performance/space ratio.
EMC's solid-state play begs for benchmarks
I would bet dollars against pennies you didn't miss the EMC buzz about SSDs (solid-state drives) in Symmetrix. The vendor carefully orchestrated the announcement in hopes of capitalizing on the most interesting innovation to its portfolio in a long time.
Internet security: What will work
In the first column of this year, I discussed computer security outlook and hopes for 2008. I forecast more of the same that we saw in 2007: more spam, more malware, more bad guys basically owning the Internet and our connected computers. I don't see any trends or new leaders with significant power to change the status quo.
Dell could best EMC in joint AX4 release
As you may have heard, Dell and EMC this week trumpeted branded versions of the Clariion AX4 storage solution -- in Dell's case, the AX4-5 -- aimed at SMBs. Developed jointly, the technology differs little, yet market strategy may mean Dell will reap deeper rewards.
Security design: Why UAC will not work
It's security's dirty little secret: Not having your users logged in as root or administrator will not stop malware.
Security predictions for 2008
At the beginning of each year I like to talk about what did or didn?t happen during the past year, and what to expect in the coming year. Unlike past years, I?ll try not to get too emotionally ramped up on all the failures.
Stop the big-drive addiction
Looks can be deceiving. Take Hitachi GST's recent additions to its Travelstar line. The 2.5-inch drives may not look that much different than other small form factor drives, but one glance at their specs is enough to see the beginning of a storage revolution away from 3.5-inch drives.
A side of hash
A hash is cryptographic algorithm that attempts to uniquely describe inputted content by outputting a value that is unique for a given piece of inputted content. A good hash algorithm has several characteristics, including:
HP hones blade management
To paraphrase a sentence often attributed to Mark Twain, everybody talks about the cost of managing storage, but nobody does anything about it.
Ask better password questions
I just love how many Web sites take my complex, hard-to-guess password and make it as easy to crack as guessing my favorite color or the city of my birth. It seems nearly every Web site comes with user-accessible, self-service, password reset questions, and nearly all of those same sites make resetting or obtaining my password magnitudes easier than actually knowing my correct password. Thanks.
New fast lanes to storage
Cutting through the sales-pitch hype of Tier 1 vendor presentations often means checking in with their suppliers. After all, conversations with suppliers tend to reflect what Tier 1 vendors ask of them. Less sales-oriented, these talks can be refreshing in that they are less likely to be sugarcoated with hype and more likely to be built on facts.
Getting entrepreneurial in 2008
When I wrote my first InfoWorld article back in December 2001, I had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. Reading back over that masterpiece, "Dawn of the real-time enterprise," is scary. I didn't understand the technology, the acronyms, or how to filter out the inevitable vendor hype. I called friends to ask, what's J2EE? What's JMS? What's OLAP? And when they explained it, I pretended...
When you shop for storage hardware, bring a lawyer
Is there a worse time to start thinking of what to put in next year?s storage budget than just before the holidays? Probably not <grin>, but setting aside the nuts and bolts of storage now so that you can focus on the legal implications of next year?s purchases will be the best present you can give yourself before the new year.
PC Market Poised For Dramatic Growth in Emerging Markets
Sometime next year, there will be more than 1 billion PCs in use around the world, if market forecasts from Forrester are to be believed.
Greener Than Thou: Has Dell Planted the Deepest Stake of the High-Tech Giants?
Whether you consider it real or rhetoric, Dell and its eponymous founder Michael Dell are pouring a whole lot of fertilizer onto their environmental initiatives.
Green Technology Kudos Due HP
Bully for them: HP has achieved the first Gold level environmental rating from EPEAT (the highest one possible) for one of its business desktops. Does it matter to you?
Now That's A Toxic Avenger!
I was inspired by this green technology video segment about a young man who essentially saved his own life by garbage-picking for discarded computers, refurbishing them and passing them along for their own second chance.
What Can The Channel Learn From Dell?
Now that Dell has declared its intentions for the channel, it's time to watch what the big systems vendors do in the way of developing their own services capabilities.
Geeks On The Street: What Feedback Do You Get From Your Techies?
The Geek Squad isn't just an outbound techie network. The Geeks are information gathers the average citizen can trust.
Reporter's Notebook: Wipro's Five Tips For Improving Customer Satisfaction
Being disciplined about apply quality frameworks to IT projects can aid in improving customer satisfaction. At least that's the viewpoint of Wipro.
More Data Privacy Stats, Plus, Bell Hosts A Royal Visit
Twofold reason for this post. First, there are some more dismal stats out on data privacy breaches. On a lighter note, for you anglophiles out there, I learned last night that distributor Bell Microproducts was the recipient yesterday of a royal visit from Prince Edward. Yes, THAT Prince Edward, the queen's youngest son.
Is E-Commerce Going Mainstream?
Clothing overtook computer hardware and software as the most-shopped e-commerce item in 2006, usurping the latter category in online sales for the first time.
IBM Ponies Up Some Green Stuff For Green Tech Movement
Think the green technology movement is just a fad? Well, for IBM it just became a $1 billion per year fad.
Go With The Flow: An Intriguing Inventory Management Tool
I am stuck thinking about a tool called FreeFlow. Its offering is a hosted inventory asset management system, something that a vendor and its supply chain can use to make excess inventory available to those who have a better shot at selling it.
Second Life: Ready Or Not, Here It Comes
I tried to join the hip crowd last week for an IBM experiment: a storage product launch it chose to hold in Second Life. While I'm usually on time for most meetings (traffic willing), I became hopelessly lost on my way to this virtual one.
Being Green Is Within Your Power
It being Earth Week or Earth Month and all, I'm actually surprised that more technology vendors haven't been making a bigger deal out of their efforts to contribute to the green IT movement.
Identity Angst (Or Who Are You? I Hope Not Me)
The past two weeks have prompted some soul-searching on the part of many retailers and just about any company that deals with POS or e-commerce transactions. It's just another indication that security know-how is core to just about every solution provider's agenda.
Refurbishers Could Make Going Green Easier
Slowly but surely, the bigger technology recycling and refurbishment operations are reaching out to include technology solution providers in their plans.
Can Open Source Cure Global Software Piracy?
Most software born in the United States is priced completely wrong for emerging markets, given their economic state. So why should we be surprised at the state of global software piracy?
Accenture Fuels My Mobile Obsession
Accenture hopes to make mobile devices, or cell phones if you prefer, a whole lot more personal. Are you ready for a pocket conscience?
Wiki Mania, Or Must We Share and Share Alike? (Yes, We Must)
Despite the security implications, ad hoc communication over the proverbial corporate firewall is good for business. It will start to happen with or without the blessing of the boss.
Would You Like That Data Center To Go?
Rackable Systems is touting the first sale of a brand-new technology platform that it is positioning as a "mobile data center." (Read, data center in a truck.)
Is Commoditization Coming For Managed Services?
How easy should it be to become a managed service provider? Or, simply, to offer managed services?
Time Flies Dept.: Dot-com craze peaked 10 years ago
When the NASDAQ stock index hit its all-time high of 5,133 on March 10, 2000 - having more than doubled in a year -- the now legendary dot-com bubble was already looking like a balloon strapped to the back of a porcupine.
A week later the NASDAQ had fallen 9 percent. ... A year later it was under 2,000. And the finger-pointing would last deep into the decade. Read more
Wyndham's reply: Trust us, we're working on it
On Monday I wrote about the spate of data breaches that has plagued Wyndham Hotels - three in 12 months - and raised the question of whether this might be enough to dissuade customers from trusting the chain. Read more
RIP RealDVD: You never had much of a chance
Even before RealNetworks debuted its DVD-copying technology called RealDVD at Network World's DEMO conference in September 2008, it was abundantly clear that a legal battle was about to ensue.
Today, as RealNetworks licks its wounds in the wake of having lost that expensive battle on all fronts, what's not clear is why the company decided to roll the dice without better odds of winning. Read more
Cell-phone gabber in fast-food line gets his just deserts
A post here last week - 'The Soup Nazi' wouldn't have needed one of these signs - pointed to a collection of placards placed near cash registers to snap customers out of their phone-induced stupors and into concentrating on communicating their orders. A comment on that post struck me as far too amusing to be denied more prominent display. Buzzblog regular "Stew" writes: Read more
Topeka, Kansas shows Google it can grovel
All that what missing was a promotional video of Dorothy Gale clicking her ruby slippers and whispering, "There's no place like Google; there's no place like Google ..." Read more
Why trust a hotel chain that's had three data breaches in a year?
Never mind three strikes and you're out. How about three strikes and I'm not even thinking about checking in to your hotel?
Granted, even the most security-conscious of companies can be victimized by hackers, but when you've had to cop to a third data breach in less than a year you'll have to forgive prospective customers for looking elsewhere for shelter. Or paying in cash.
From IDG News Servi...
'The Soup Nazi' wouldn't have needed one of these signs
The memorable "Soup Nazi" character from "Seinfeld" was made memorable by his intolerance of the slightest delay or uncertainty in placing one's order at his diner. A dismissive "No soup for you" was all he needed to dispatch with a laggard.
Of course, that was before customers started queuing up at cash registers with cell phones attached to their ears. Today, proprietors of coffee shops and e...
Oh, how the mighty Conan has fallen
From the "Tonight Show" to Twitter, that's the path upon which television talk-show host Conan O'Brien, currently unemployed, finds himself today. It won't pay the bills, but, hey, the fellow has time on his hands.
Here's the bio on O'Brien's new Twitter presence:
"I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account."
His one and only tweet, posted 18 hours ago, reads thusly...
It lives! It lives! Original 'Rickroll' video returns to YouTube!
Read more
Conviction of Google execs in Italy sheer madness
Word comes this morning that a jury in Italy has convicted a trio of Google employees over the brief posting of a video that showed four boys bullying another child who has Down's Syndrome. The employees received suspended six-month sentences.
From a BBC report: Read more
Women win online Trivial Pursuit contest
OK, guys, let the excuse-making begin.
The online Trivial Pursuit contest that we have been following here since it began in October has ended and the final results will be a bitter pill for those who had been playing in behalf of or rooting for the male contingent: Women won this "Battle of the Sexes," albeit by a sliver of one percentage point. (Anyone who thinks close matters should give a s...
Newspapers urge BBC to pretend the iPhone doesn't exist
There's dumb and then there's breathtakingly dumb. There's clueless and then there's the Newspaper Publishers Association of Britain, which is calling upon the publicly owned British Broadcasting Corp. to forego delivering news and sports via iPhone apps.
Why not just tell them to pull the plug on their Web site?
The BBC itself allows the head of the NPA to offer what passes for an explanation:...
Trivial Pursuit 'Battle of the Sexes' races toward photo finish
Tick-tock, trivia buffs: Monday is the deadline for doing your side any good in an online Trivial Pursuit contest - men vs. women -- that right now is so close it needs a breath mint. Read more
Google donates $2 million to Wikipedia
Critics will harp on the obvious - that $2 million is a rounding error at Google - but news this morning that the search giant has awarded a grant in that amount to Wikipedia can only be seen as a positive development.
From Wikipedia's press release:
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google In...
EFF publishes 'Digital Books and Your Rights' ... (sigh)
There's something sad - if not perverse -- about the fact that the Electronic Frontier Foundation sees a need to publish "Digital Books and Your Rights," a checklist for those who own or want to purchase an e-reader. I mean I took my kids to the local Barnes & Noble yesterday, left with a handful of children's titles, and never once stopped to think about the current or future legal implication...
New one-stop shop for data center, network needs ... Staples?
Maybe someone at Staples believes the Easy Button is real technology. Not sure how else to explain the office supply chain's announcement this morning that it is branching out to become a "one-stop" provider of data center and network services for corporate customers of all sizes.
From the company's press release: Read more
Pat-down searches are no substitute for full-body scans
The expert I'm relying upon here has an obvious bias - his company is among those that make the full-body scanners causing such a public debate these days. And I have an obvious conflict of interest in relying upon his expertise: He's a relative.
Nonetheless, I trust his judgment and believe he's right. Read more
Airport pat-down searches are no substitute for full-body scans
The expert I'm relying upon here has an obvious bias - his company is among those that make the full-body scanners causing such a public debate these days. And I have an obvious conflict of interest in relying upon his expertise: He's a relative.
Nonetheless, I trust his judgment and believe he's right. Read more
Applying a reality test to Google's super-fast 'Net plan
So Google wants to bring a gigabit per second into your home, my home, and presumably, most homes. Audacious? Yes. Admirable? Sure. Doable?
From a Dow Jones story on the Wall Street Journal's site:
Industry executives and analysts say Google's plan, announced on a blog post Wednesday morning, sounded long on promise and short on detail. They were quick to point out that Google has little experi...
Technology 'firsts' that made a president's day
From the first presidential steamboat ride to the introduction of electricity in the White House to Obama's famous Blackberry, our nation's commanders in chief have always enjoyed the privilege of being exposed to technology's cutting edge -- even if they haven't always embraced it.
So in honor of Monday's celebration of Presidents Day, here's a rundown of notable presidential first encounters ...
