Google mistakenly reported Thursday that China began censoring its web search again. It's a blunder that adds to a list of missteps over the last six months that have the net's top tech company looking unprofessional.

7/30/2010 4:00:00 PM

Accessing data on the iPad is the United States is a lot more expensive than almost anywhere in the world. American users pay some of the highest prices in terms of dollars per gigabyte of data on the iPad.

7/30/2010 3:10:00 PM

Fifty years after physicists invented the laser, ushering in everything from supermarket scanners to music CDs, scientists have conceived its opposite — the "antilaser."

7/30/2010 2:53:00 PM

Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology.

7/30/2010 2:20:00 PM

A Swedish researcher and entrepreneur has taken the first step toward becoming a cyborg by creating a wearable computer that can be slung across the body.

7/30/2010 2:15:00 PM

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks' recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled "insurance."

7/30/2010 2:09:00 PM

A camera that's equal parts handsome sharpshooter and capable GPS guide? That would be the Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5V.

7/30/2010 12:50:00 PM

Attribution is one of the biggest problems on the internet when it comes to cyberwarfare. How do you hold a nation responsible for malicious attacks if you can't determine whether or not the activity was state-sponsored? It doesn't matter, former NSA Director Michael Hayden says. Do it anyway.

7/30/2010 8:31:00 AM

You will not be surprised that the porn industry is all over the iPhone 4 -- and the latest business opportunity is, almost inevitably, FaceTime.

7/30/2010 8:19:00 AM

Developers and pilots are embracing the gadget, with apps that do everything from tell you the weather to show you the way.

7/30/2010 8:00:00 AM

Spotify's longstanding effort to launch in the United States was reportedly sent "back to square one" due to the derailment of its negotiations with one or more major labels. However, the company tells Wired.com that the report is bogus, and that it is still on track to launch here by the end of the year.

7/29/2010 11:49:00 PM

Facebook 'will probably' put off until 2012 the IPO it hasn't even acknowledged thinking about much yet, three people tell Bloomberg News. That adds about a year to the latest idle speculation of when Facebook might let its 500 million members (or anyone) become owners, as well.

7/29/2010 11:36:00 PM

Meet Caterina Fake, the creative spark behind Hunch. Her big idea? Develop a web service that knows what you want before you even want it.

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

Here in the America, the CIA's drone war in Pakistan is hotly-contested. In Pakistan, two-thirds of the people have never heard of the drones, according to a new poll. You can hear the champagne corks popping at Langley.

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

Penguin publishes the first paperback books of substance, bringing the likes of Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie to the masses. The business model of the book-publishing industry is about to change.

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

What will in-flight entertainment be like in the year 2023? There isn't any.

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

Wired magazine's Found page represents our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Help create our next Found page: Show us what taco trucks will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years?

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

Clive Thompson waxes philosophical on how text messaging is threatening -- and preserving -- the telephone conversation.

7/29/2010 11:00:00 PM

Being able to legally jailbreak your iPhone is cool and all, but think where this type of legal reasoning could take us.

7/29/2010 7:00:00 PM

An Army private suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks was admonished as a trainee in 2008 for uploading YouTube videos discussing classified facilities, according to an Army official with direct knowledge of the incident.

7/29/2010 6:30:00 PM

San Franciscans gets a peek at what's involved in building a new bridge when builders place the first segment of a tower that will soon hold up a brand-new span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Wired.com shoots photos of the new bridge on a recent tour of the massive construction project.

7/29/2010 6:30:00 PM

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen is ordinarily a mild-mannered man. But they could barely contain his anger on Thursday at WikiLeaks for publishing tens of thousands of secret documents about the Afghanistan war.

7/29/2010 3:17:00 PM

An Android app's data-collection practice has raised concerns about user privacy and security on mobile phones.

7/29/2010 1:55:00 PM

A massive simulation of soot's climate effects finds that basic pollution controls could put a brake on global warming, erasing in a decade most of the last century's temperature change.

7/29/2010 1:40:00 PM

A genomic hunt for virus genes traced sequences to Ebola and the closely related Marburg virus in no fewer than six vertebrate species. The genes appear to have been mixed in about 40 million years ago, and have stuck around ever since.

7/29/2010 1:30:00 PM

A group of rocket enthusiasts used a rocket to send a Nexus One phone 28,000 feet into the atmosphere.

7/29/2010 12:37:00 PM

Rapper Kanye West, who might be more famous for his controversial pronouncements over the years than for his music, would seem the perfect candidate for starting a Twitter account, but rejected the notion. However, he changed his mind by starting an account and rapping at Twitter's headquarters on Wednesday.

7/29/2010 9:43:00 AM

If the Empulse RR runs as well as it looks, the competition should be very nervous.

7/29/2010 9:00:00 AM

LAS VEGAS — In a city filled with slot machines spilling jackpots, it was a 'jackpotted' ATM machine that got the most attention Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference, when researcher Barnaby Jack demonstrated two suave hacks against automated teller machines that allowed him to program them to spew out dozens of crisp bills.

7/29/2010 8:01:00 AM

The Samsung HZ35W would be a great GPS-enabled camera, if it could only give us accurate coordinates.

7/29/2010 8:00:00 AM

Isn't it funny how when Twitter does something that others have been doing for ages it's still innovative? But it is.

So look what just showed up in the right margin on the Twitter home page...

Follow TechCrunch and Stevin Berlin Johnson. Good ideas!

But wait a minute -- holy guacamole -- it looks an awful lot like -- omg -- could it be -- the dreaded, evil Suggested Users List.

Has it returned from the dead?

It looks suspiciously like it has. Haven't seen one ordinary person in there, after about a dozen refreshes. They all look like either Friends-of-Ev or celebs with big MSM names. Or reporters that write sweet nothings about Twitter, Inc.

Only this time they aren't just targeting newbies, the kinds of people who sign up, see nothing interesting and then disappear. I already follow 1323 people, and I've been on Twitter since 2006. According to Google I've blogged about it 3490 times (not including this post). What could possibly be the rationale for asking me to follow Tim O'Reilly or John Battelle. How about instead suggesting some people for me to unfollow. (I'm not kidding, I suffer from tweet overload.)

Yeah they totally suck.

Why don't they write some software down there at Twitter and stop nominating their friends for awards.

Where's my opt-out of this? I want to get rid of this thing. Now.

Update: They've blogged about it, but it sure doesn't sound like what I'm seeing. They don't mention the user interface on the Twitter front page.

7/30/2010 3:23:28 PM

Follow up to the piece earlier this week.

You may not like Starbucks coffee, it's not my favorite (that was kind of the point) -- but I'll go there over other choices because of the free wifi. It's funny because I have other choices because I have Verizon Mifi. And the freeness of Starbucks shouldn't matter either because until recently I had AT&T Internet service (at the house in Berkeley) and therefore Starbucks wifi was always free, for me.

There's a funny thing that happens, maybe some psychologists can explain, when something is free for everyone -- that makes it more valuable for you, even if you don't really care if it's free.

Anyway, some free advice for Au Bon Pain and all the pizza joints near the Starbucks on Astor Place, figure out how you can provide free wifi too. I bet it's going to make a diff in your business, pretty soon. It'll be like offering your customers a free glass of water if they ask for one.

7/30/2010 12:42:38 PM

This morning I published a book for distribution via Kindle. I took the full content of Scripting News for 2009, formatted it according to their rules. That was the hardest part. You have to render it as simple HTML and all the images have to be included in the zip archive you upload. That meant writing a parser that went through the text, pulls out the images, downloads them locally, and patches the URL in the HTML.

I couldn't figure out how to price it at $0. The lowest price was $1.99. Hope that isn't a problem. Of that, I will get 35 percent or about 70 cents. I don't expect it to amount to a lot of money.

I want to write a book, and I have some people I'm brainstorming with. By starting to publish to the Kindle, even in a rough format, I start to get my feet wet. For me, a veteran bootstrapper, this may be a necessary first step.

Anyway, it may take a few days for it to make it through their approval process. When it's available for purchase I'll post a pointer here.

If you want to download it now, here's the archive.

http://static.scripting.com/misc/2009.zip

Let me know what you think (and please think before you comment).

PS: Wonder if I'm going to have to pay $1.99 to see what my stuff looks like on a Kindle? That would totally suck.

7/30/2010 11:52:45 AM

I splurged and upgraded to Time-Warner "wideband."

Everything about Time-Warner, the company, is smarmy -- but the connection is very nice and fast (but not symmetric).

$99 per month, $40 to install.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

7/29/2010 11:58:31 AM

I KNOW IT'S JARRING THAT THIS PIECE IS IN ALL CAPS BUT I WANTED TO SEE IF IT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT THE COMMENTS HERE MIGHT IN SOME WAY BE RESPONSIVE TO WHAT I SAID, RATHER THAN JUST BE RECITAL OF PARTY LINE STATEMENTS THAT INVOLVE THE KEYWORDS IN THE PIECE.

FOR EXAMPLE: ADOBE, FLASH, APPLE, HTML 5. GO AHEAD TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.

THERE ARE MANY OTHER EXAMPLES. IF I SAY "THE IPHONE 4" I WILL BE LABELED IN OTHER WAYS.

ANYWAY I'M TIRED OF SCREAMING AT YOU.

HAVE A NICE DAY.

7/29/2010 10:31:39 AM

Earlier this month I reported on bloggers leaving scienceblogs.org because the publisher sold a presence on the site to bloggers from PepsiCo.

One of the rationales for bundling all the science bloggers together in one place was the synergy that comes from aggregation. Of course, with RSS you can achieve the same effect, without putting them all on the same server. So I put it on my to-do list to set up an science blogs aggregator, and yesterday I had some time to do it, so here it is.

http://science.newsriver.org/

As always, the OPML for the site is public so if you want to feed it into your aggregator you're welcome to. You should reimport the OPML from time to time, or ask your aggregator developer to do it for you -- because that list will be updated dynamically as the site grows.

And if you know of science blogs that should be included in the list, please post a comment here.

7/29/2010 8:50:29 AM

Some people don't care for them, but I love Ole and Lena jokes.

Here's a good one.

Ole was going on a business trip to St Cloud but it was cancelled at the last minute cause the Minnesota Twins made it to the playoffs.

He's lying in bed before going to sleep when the phone rings.

He listens, gets up to look out the window then returns to the phone.

He says in an irritated way: "How should I know, it's a thousand miles away!" and hangs up.

Lena asks: Who was that Ole?

Ole: Oh Sven yust vants to know if the coast is clear.

7/29/2010 7:17:12 AM

The iPad with its Kindle app got me interested in reading on a tablet again.

But it's summertime, and I'd rather read in the park, or on a bench looking out over the Hudson.

The iPad doesn't work for outdoor reading if there's any sun at all.

Further, I have a backlog of unread books I bought on Amazon, and I don't see why I should replace them (or if I can) using Apple's store.

I already buy a lot of stuff from Apple, and I don't like how they push around app developers and content companies. We're talking about First Amendment stuff here. So I vote with my dollars, and feel good about it.

So a couple of weeks ago I bought a Kindle DX, and I think it's a great product.

When I read on tech blogs that Kindle is a goner, I think these people must not read very much. Reading isn't about tech prowess or the shiniest gadget.

The Kindle is lighter, works in more places, has longer battery life, better connectivity, and has the biggest base of content. Plus they have been very smart about making their content available on every device known to man, including Apple's.

Bottom-line: Don't worry about the Kindle.

7/29/2010 7:03:37 AM

Xcv comments: "At the large tech company I work at there is an internal micro-blogging tool. The limit was recently increased from 140 to around 500.

"People are still writing concise things. It is just incredibly refreshing to not have to abbreviate things. And also you can include full links instead of shortened crap."

Interesting story.

7/28/2010 11:20:14 PM

In the neighborhood around NYU we have a million places to get coffee, and many of them have free wifi. The ones that don't, like Au Bon Pain, which have better food, can't compete. And most of the free-wifi places have inferior wifi. So this morning, when I was looking for a place to work for a bit, there was no choice but to find a Starbucks, get an iced coffee, and sit down.

Not sure where they're going to go with the free wifi, I hope they add some features, and I hope they find a way to make it pay. But right now, it gives them the advantage over all the other places. Working, free wifi is a big deal.

7/27/2010 9:45:12 AM

On Twitter, Dossy wonders why the new Magic Trackpad from Apple.

Come on guys get with the program. You're in the middle of a bootstrap. This is the next step.

Apple has a new operating system called iOS. It's what runs on iPods (which they are phasing out), iPhones and iPads.

What doesn't it run on? (Yet.)

Why not? Wellllllll. Cause for one thing, the Mac is built around a mouse as a pointing device and iOS is built around fingers as the pointing device. So if you want to run iOS software on Mac hardware don't you need a little new hardware? Just a little?

Come on, this isn't that hard. It's Software Evolution 101.

7/27/2010 8:14:49 AM

From Mashable comes news that Twitter is adding pictures and video to the tweetstream.

Verrrrra nice.

So....

How about dropping the 140-char limit too?

And please spare me how it all has to fit into an SMS package because I don't know, maybe a video takes up a bit more than 140 bytes.

7/26/2010 8:38:00 PM

Let's say I'm having lunch with Andrew Baron next Tuesday at a local restaurant. We both put items on our calendar. Link those two items, and then link both of them to the location we're having lunch at.

When the big day comes, I whip out my iPhone, which of course is synched to my calendar, and take a picture of Andrew and he takes a picture of me. The pictures automatically are linked to the calendar entry and to the location.

Now, someday anyone (since we made this public, why not) who's just trawling around wonders if we ever met, they not only know where and when but what we looked like that day.

Of course the right way for this to work is if it isn't a hybrid, but just nicely interconnected.

7/26/2010 5:22:14 PM

Sheamus wrote a list of 5 things Twitter should do ASAP.

I have something to add to that list.

I want to be able to delete a tweet from my @replies tab.

So if someone sends something unpleasant to me, I don't have to block them to get rid of it.

Just the ability to hide one tweet. Please.

7/26/2010 2:08:48 PM

7/26/2010 12:06:06 PM

A lot of people seem to like Inception. Many of them are very smart. I don't get why they like it. I found it disappointing.

I really wanted to like it. I need a movie like The Matrix, which was one of the most inspiring movies of all-time, a movie I still quote, more than ten years after it came out.

But Inception is to The Matrix as Dan Quayle is to Jack Kennedy. Inception is actually worse. Try this out. Inception is Fat Albert and The Matrix is Jack Kennedy. Hey hey hey!

Inception is a sloppy movie that gives great trailer. Think about it. All the great visuals in Inception are in the trailers. After the great visuals, what is there? A plot so grandiose and sloppy that the characters spend half the dialog explaining how it works. Okay that could be interesting. But it's not.

I had the feeling of being in a movie theater watching a long boring movie, enjoying the air conditioning and popcorn. Thinking about what I'd do when I got back to work. Believe me, nothing like that happened the first time I watched The Matrix. Or the second, or third, or fourth, or fifth. I could watch it again right now and still love every line of dialog. Inception? Maybe it had two or three ideas that made you think. The rest of it was slop.

Okay so let me put my stake in the ground. David Weinberger says it's going to be nominated in 12 categories and win most of them.

I say Inception is Avatar. It won't win any of the big awards. If it's the best movie of 2010 it's going to be a very very very bad year.

7/26/2010 7:41:17 AM

I'm taking a page out of Apple's playbook.

If you can't stay on-topic, I'm not only deleting your comment but adding you to the blacklist.

I'm trying to improve discourse on my blog in a way similar to Apple's wanting to improve the apps on the iPad. This feels very symmetric to me.

7/25/2010 5:55:59 PM

I was browsing the web today on my iPad looking for the lyrics to a song I heard yesterday on the Jonathan Schwartz show on WNYC.

It's a show tune, that started off not-too-interesting but by the end the lyrics had me choked up. It was a beautiful story, and I not only wanted to hear it again, but I wanted to share it with others.

I eventually found a rendition of it on YouTube, but during my exploration I came across a Flash thingie (what are they called) that promised to have some info about the song, but of course since Apple doesn't like Flash, my iPad can't "see into" it.

Aside: The song I was looking for turned out to be Life Story sung by Lynne Wintersteller from the play Closer Than Ever.

It was at this point that it hit me that what Apple is doing with Flash is dangerous, for reasons I hadn't previously considered.

Deliberately throwing out content that might have useful information in it, that's not too wise, imho. Better to keep as much as we can, and stop worrying too much about whether we like the format or not.

And what Apple is doing violates Postel's Law which says you should be liberal in what you accept. Another reason Postel was wise. It helps keep the web from breaking.

A reminder that now that Apple's market cap is bigger than Microsoft's we have to think about what it does differently. If Microsoft had decided to outlaw a popular format, no matter how much we may not like it, we'd look at that as an anti-competitive move. Why should we look at it any differently if it's Apple?

Update: You can view what Apple has done as linkrot, but on a massive scale, and it was deliberate. Linkrot is usually accidental, but this was deliberate. If Microsoft had done this, the very same people who are defending Apple so fiercely would be (virtually) marching on Redmond with torches threatening to burn it to the ground.

7/25/2010 12:55:04 PM

The banking reform bill is all smoke, I hear -- from people who know.

An analogy.

We've noticed that in the summer buildings get hot. Sometimes they get so hot that people die! So we've just passed a law that all buildings must have air conditioning. But you don't have to turn on the AC until the temp gets to 150 degrees. Oh that does a lot of good. (Not.)

Obama signed the bill, hailing it as the most significant banking reform legislation since the Great Depression. Will it do anything to prevent the kind of meltdown we had in 2008? Nahhh. That would spoil the fun. How can the bankers soak the last bit of life from the US economy if they're regulated.

Forbes says Obama is anti-business.

Obama calls him up to say thanks.

Now he can get re-elected.

As if we'd vote for Mitt Romney.

As if it would make a diff.

Bonus: How to remove Obama bumper stickers.

7/25/2010 11:42:51 AM

If you've never seen the movie, this is how it goes. Captain Queeg, played by Humphrey Bogart, is a career naval officer, in charge of a ship that drags targets for battleships to practice on. It's part of the huge Pacific fleet during World War II.

Queeg is a mid-level guy, not going anywhere. It being wartime, most of his officers are draftees -- college kids, smartasses, in one case a coward (played by Fred MacMurray). There's another career officer on the Caine played by Van Johnson.

The captain is way past his prime. Mediocre. A failure that they've kept around because no one had the time to retire him. The same story for the Caine. So it tries to stay out of range when the other American boats take shots at the targets it drags.

Queeg does all kinds of stupid shit, like navigate over the towing line of a target the Caine is towing, thus losing it. He's weird, he likes to play with steel balls. When he discovers that some of the frozen strawberries are missing from the pantry he starts an investigation. He says it's about time they had some fun on the ship. He believes they were stolen by some of the officers. He's reliving a victory of his early career. This is too much for the college kids, so they convince Van Johnson to depose the captain, in the famous mutiny that the movie and the Herman Wouk novel are named after.

Classic movie, with some great performances. And somehow the story comes up all the time in real life, especially in the tech industry.

Anyway, just when it seems the rest of the world is ready to let Antennagate go, here comes a Youtube video from Apple, dragging the Droid-X into the mess. Now Apple's competitors get to look aloof, like leaders, puzzled why the captain is making a federal case about the strawberries.

The users just got their emails telling them how to get their new cases. The thought occurred to me that Apple could have given us a nice present anyway, even if there hadn't been a PR mess. Wouldn't that have been classy. We appreciate that you're an early supporter of our products (knowing we're the ones who always get screwed, we know it, but they don't have to say it). So here's a nice gift. It's really nothing, but it's our way of saying we appreciate you.

Instead, they're taking stupid cheap shots at the upstarts, making themselves look stupid and cheap. They so totally don't need to look that way.

Now I don't think for a minute that Apple is Captain Queeg. It's not some marginal character in a big war. It's more than an aircraft carrier, it's a whole fleet. So why are they acting like a burned out captain of a mine-tower who thinks he's found the missing strawberries.

7/24/2010 7:15:18 AM

I have to test this app every time I do a fresh install. Please excuse the digging.

7/23/2010 10:38:14 AM

A few days ago Scoble posted a tweet saying that he had seen the Excel or Pagemaker for the iPad platform. It turns out that product is Flipboard, from Mike McCue, who I know from Netscape days. Mike went on to found Tellme which sold to Microsoft.

I haven't been able to use Flipboard yet, their servers are too busy, but from Scoble's video and their website, I think I understand what the product is.

Prior art: Pointcast, Netscape's initial RSS aggregator, Daylife (a NY company I have invested in).

If subscribes to your Twitter and Facebook feeds, grabs links to pictures and stories your friends point to, and presents them in a visually appealing way. Behind the scenes there's a lot of RSS (hence the connection to Netscape's RSS aggregator), but it's not a River of News, it's a "magazine style" reader. It is initially appealing, but I'm not sure whether it is useful over time. Scoble says he's been using it for hundreds of hours and still likes it. That's a point in their favor, Scoble really works this stuff.

Normally I wouldn't write a piece until I'd had a chance to use a product, but this time I want to put a question out there about the architecture and plumbing, and see what comes back.

With no disrespect, Flipboard is a scraper. It takes content flows that weren't intended for this kind of presentation and repurposes them. How could they do otherwise, it's a chicken-and-egg situation. Right now there is no content that is specifically designed for a Flipboard-like environment. But now that their product exists, it seems we have one half of the puzzle in place, why not put out a proposal to the content tools vendors (of which I happen to be one) and say this: If you want to produce content flows that look beautiful in our environment, here's how to do it. Let us either put hints in our source code for you, or create new renderings of our source code specifically to be viewed in the new environment.

I want to get this idea out there as soon as possible. Mike is a smart guy, and I'm sure he has hired some smart people. I don't doubt that they've thought of this. The question is -- have they done it?

And more broadly, there certainly are others working in this area. How can we all work together to boot up a great new level of reading and writing, on the iPad and elsewhere?

I want to be clear -- I'm on the authoring tools side of this. Aside from my small investment in Daylife, I have no stake in the reader side, at least not at this time.

For background, I explained this idea in a piece earlier this month.

7/22/2010 4:45:35 AM

Last night, at a NYC dinner party, a reader suggested I write a Ten Commandments of open development work.

Even though it reeks of hubris, it's probably a good idea.

I've been involved in a lot of open development work over the last 30 years, and some of it has worked, but most of it fails. When it fails it's almost always because some group of people violated what I will call Rule 1.

Rule 1: All meetings must be open to anyone who wants to participate.

This is important because it means that any control anyone is exerting is visible to anyone who wants to see it. And that visibility tends to limit the control.

As soon as you have an invite-only meeting, someone is going to have to take your word that the process is fair. And the process isn't fair. So, if you say it is, you're lying. And lies are a terrible foundation to build on.

I think SOAP died when it became clear that Microsoft and IBM were having private meetings.

It's why so many of the supposedly "open" formats that Google is promoting have no chance of working in the market. I can't read minds, so I can't tell you why they do it. But it never works. A lie is a lie, even if you work for the largest company in the universe.

Rule 1 is the mechanism whereby small developers, even the ones who aren't blessed with invitations, have a chance to compete in a world ruled by the large companies. (And by the way if you get an invite it doesn't mean they like or respect you. You're probably the fig leaf they'll use the "prove" the process was open, even when it wasn't.)

But a pragmatist might say -- if we made the meeting open to all, and announced it publicly, 1000 people would show up and we'd get no work done. True. I've been in those meetings. And listened to one boring speech after another, and during all that boredom I figured out Rule 2.

Rule 2: If you have a choice, ratify defacto standards instead of reinventing them.

When it came my turn to speak in the 1000-person meeting, I said we could all leave the room this day with a standard if we just ratified RSS instead of trying to create something new that does exactly what RSS does. Even though what I said was true, no one could refute it, we didn't do it. And here we are eight years later and the defacto standard still rules.

The great thing about both these rules is that even if you break them, they still rule.

If you have an invite-only meeting then your work is for nil, and the people who aren't at your meeting will route around you, and if there's value in an open standard, it will be created in the haphazard way that open formats come about, naturally.

If you choose to reinvent a defacto standard, you will still have to support the defacto standard, and it will grow while people may implement your competing format, but lots of people will wonder why they should bother, and won't.

7/21/2010 8:04:34 AM

The more it settles in, the worse it looks for Apple.

Rex Hammock swears it's his last piece about the press conference, but why should it be? We've been immersed in the Reality Distortion Field, he and I, for our entire adult lives. And neither of us are spring chickens. Now that's it's fluttering in and out, and mostly out -- why not spend some time appreciating it, and trying to find a better way to talk about Apple's products.

What became clear on Friday is that Apple does great as long as everyone is fawning, oohing and ahhing with every new feature. But when there's trouble, even just a bit, the charm is gone.

The first clue that the iPhone 4 was going to break the mold was when he announced it on stage at the WWDC and the damned thing wouldn't connect to the Internet. They blamed it on the people in the audience.

Then we saw Jobs at the D conference, lecturing a questioner about how they were going to take more control of the apps so that people couldn't look at the browser IDs of people coming to external sites from the Cupertino campus. This had the charm and charisma of Captain Queeg testifying in the Caine Mutiny.

Then one gaffe after another on Friday, each more ridiculous than the previous. He asks if they could get the benefit of the doubt. Oy he's been getting nothing but the benefit of the doubt for his entire career. He says they built all those stores because they love their users. Really. It kind of looks like they sell products there, for money -- you know -- profit.

Then he commits the biggest sin for Apple, he says the iPhone is just like the others. Oooops. That one is going to be hard to walk back. It wasn't in a random email that could be blamed on someone else. The boss said it, in slides for everyone to see. The iPhone is like all the others. It's just a phone.

If I had any advice to give the folks at Apple it's this.

1. Read Rex's piece.

2. Read JLG's piece.

There are ways to communicate about problems with products -- be direct and honest. And when you design them, assume that every flaw is going to be examined in great detail. Like it or not the users have great communication tools now. That's the actual world you live in.

Instead of saying how you are just as awful as your competitors, praise them to the hilt and say you're aiming to do even better. Everyone loves an aspirer. No one loves a sore winner. Coach Bill Walsh of the 49ers had this down. Johnson & Johnson did a voluntary recall of Tylenol at the first hint of a problem. Avis is Number 2 so they try harder. There are so many examples of people respecting the hell out of their competition, and taking product failure seriously, seeing things from their customers point of view. Not merely talking about them or to them, but hearing them and reflecting back to them what they say, in policies and features.

Rex says: "The Friday fiasco displayed also that when the management of 'the message' doesn't go according to the way they want it to go, they stop being insanely great and just start being insane."

The reporters were caught just as flat-footed as Apple was. To blame the media, as Apple has been doing, isn't realistic. It's despite the media that we find out what's really going on, without very much help. They do carry Apple's water, but lately they've been hearing that things have changed and maybe they're starting to respond.

To think that the Reality Distortion Field was intact last Friday is not to understand the RDF. That was the one of the first press events where the field was not in force.

7/20/2010 4:00:48 PM

To restart the Instant Outliner, I needed the equivalent of FriendFeed's realtime update functionality.

It's really elegant, but I couldn't make my software depend on another service for update notification. I started to do it in REST and realized that I was reinventing a lot of what XML-RPC already did.

So I put aside the REST approach and went with XML-RPC.

A day later I had it working and a day after that I had the Instant Outliner converted. Unlike previous implementations this one works perfectly, is instantaneous and requires no polling. The long-poll approach works perfectly.

I wanted to document this for the programmers who are testing the Instant Outliner, because the realtime updating functionality is more general, it can be used to connect our workgroup together in more ways than through I/Oing.

There are two entry-points, one to get the next set of updates, and one to push an update to the workgroup. Both assume there's an identity system in place that can independently determine if a username/password is valid. (The identity function hooks in as a callback.)

Users can connect from more than one location at a time, each instance gets a complete set of updates. So I can leave my I/O app running at home and stay connected from a classroom or Starbucks.

You can find the source for both the client and the server at builtins.realtime in opml.root.

Here are the two entry-points:

1. realtime.getUpdates (username, password) returns array of struct

2. realtime.pushUpdate (username, password, htmltext, type, data)

7/20/2010 10:10:47 AM

There were several signs Friday that the era of thousands of oil-skimming boats and hazmat-suited beach crews is giving way to long-term efforts to clean up, compensate people for their losses and understand the damage wrought

7/30/2010 4:27:07 PM

New figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that illnesses from reported outbreaks of food poisoning linked to catering outpace those from restaurants or home cooking.

7/30/2010 8:16:52 AM

The fight over Arizona's immigration law showed no signs of letting up Friday as the federal judge who blunted its force faced threats and the Republican governor who signed it considered changes to address any faults.

7/30/2010 5:59:06 PM

In a summer of suffering, America's military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead.



Afghanistan - United States armed forces - War in Afghanistan - Asia - Taliban

7/30/2010 4:40:25 PM

Wildlife officials said Friday a grizzly bear was euthanized after tests determined it was responsible for a triple mauling in a Montana campground.

7/30/2010 6:01:17 PM

As the engine of U.S. economic growth slows, two of its main cylinders - job growth and consumer spending - still aren't firing. Until they kick in, the  weak recovery is in jeopardy.



United States - Economic growth - Consumer spending - Economic - Business and Economy

7/30/2010 2:02:40 PM

7/30/2010 2:02:40 PM

Former Vice President Al Gore won't be prosecuted over allegations by a masseuse that he groped and assaulted her in his Portland hotel room in 2006, the county prosecutor said Friday.



Al Gore - Portland Oregon - Vice President of the United States - United States - Prosecutor

7/30/2010 5:57:05 PM

Two employees of the U.S. Embassy in Paris were being given medical tests Friday after handling a suspicious package and reporting feeling "unwell," officials said.

7/30/2010 7:02:53 AM

Tony Hayward, who resigned as chief executive of BP in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, has said that he was turned into "a villain for doing the right thing."



Tony Hayward - Oil spill - BP - Gulf Oil - Chief executive officer

7/30/2010 6:28:51 AM

Soldiers have killed a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel, dealing the biggest blow yet to Mexico's most powerful drug gang since  a military offensive against organized crime began in 2006.

7/30/2010 4:15:08 AM

Vast sections of Russia were under a state of emergency Friday as more than 10,000 firefighters fought to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash and ember during the country's hottest summer on record.

7/30/2010 2:14:31 PM

A black woman who was salutatorian of her high school class gets an honorary degree from the same university that rejected her admissions application 60 years ago.

7/30/2010 2:06:19 PM

Cigarettes smuggled into Iran have been tainted with pig blood and nuclear material as part of a Western conspiracy, an Iranian official claimed Friday.



Iran - Middle East - United States - Politics - Science and Environment

7/30/2010 10:26:55 AM

7/30/2010 10:26:55 AM

A 21-year-old New Jersey man has been sentenced to up to three months in jail for intentionally vomiting on another spectator and his 11-year-old daughter in the stands at a Philadelphia Phillies game.

7/30/2010 5:34:29 PM

State police divers on Friday recovered the remains of two of four missing passengers who were on a medical plane that crashed into Lake Michigan last week.



Lake Michigan - United States - Michigan - Sonar - Recreation and Sports

7/30/2010 4:55:41 PM

An officer at the Seaside Heights, New Jersey police department confirms to UsMagazine.com that Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, 22. was arrested Friday afternoon.

7/30/2010 3:23:53 PM

In November the University of California Press publishes the first installment of Twain’s three-volume autobiography. This edition will be nothing like the previously published versions cobbled together by the author’s editors and executors after he died.



Mark Twain - Memoir - University of California Press - Author - Publishing

7/30/2010 12:06:50 PM

A Florida inmate has filed a lawsuit seeking $500,000 in damages from 3 men who caught him red-handed with a stolen bicycle, claiming they roughed him up, a newspaper said.



Crime - Lawsuit - Florida - Prison - Organizations

7/30/2010 8:16:00 AM

7/30/2010 8:16:00 AM

The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment.

7/30/2010 1:23:10 PM

A former Swedish police chief known for his lectures on gender equality and sexual harassment was convicted on Friday of rape and other sex crimes and sent to prison.

7/30/2010 6:19:20 AM

Afghan police fired shots on Friday to disperse hundreds of people protesting the deaths of civilians in an accident reportedly involving a U.S. Embassy vehicle, officials said.



United States - Death - Police - U.S. Embassy - Paris

7/30/2010 10:54:52 AM

A huge wildfire in the high desert wilderness north of Los Angeles jumped an aqueduct on Friday, rushing toward a subdivision of homes.



Los Angeles - Los Angeles County California - California - United States - Counties

7/30/2010 5:46:48 PM

bullfight - Catalonia - Spain - Animal rights - Barcelona

7/30/2010 4:33:27 AM

The false logic at the heart of a new documentary holds that because Hugh Hefner aligned himself with various laudable causes through the years (civil rights, the antiwar movement, etc.), his magazine is a force for positive change.



Hugh Hefner - Civil and political rights - Documentary film - History - United States

7/29/2010 5:50:08 PM

Walt Disney Co has struck a deal to sell Miramax, the studio behind such films as "Trainspotting" and "No Country for Old Men," for more than $660 million to a group that includes construction magnate Ron Tutor and investment firm Colony Capital LLC.

7/30/2010 4:15:37 PM

Overdraft - Business - Financial services - Banking Services - Banks and Institutions

7/30/2010 7:21:53 AM

A court-appointed trustee seeking to recover billions of dollars lost by Bernard Madoff filed 3 lawsuits in a bid to get back more than $30 million  he said the Madoff family had invested.

7/30/2010 5:44:23 AM

7/30/2010 5:44:23 AM

A federal prosecutor said Thursday a former B-2 bomber engineer helped China design a stealth cruise missile to raise money to pay the $15,000-a-month mortgage on the mansion-like home he built on Maui's north shore.

7/30/2010 12:17:19 AM

Whether you want pear chutney on your sandwich, or an artery-clogging ball of meat and grease for less than a buck, there’s a regional burger chain for you somewhere in America.



United States - Meat - Business - Fast food - burger

7/30/2010 6:46:26 AM

Check out the latest gallery of photos sent in by msnbc.com readers and vote for your favorite. When you're done, upload your own vacation shots.



msnbc.com - Sports - Olympics - Winter Games - Events

7/16/2010 9:01:41 AM

A rare sun-like star that is both young and relatively close to Earth has been found to be harboring an even weirder object a failed star locked in a close orbit around its host, according to a new study.

7/30/2010 9:43:21 AM

A dead whale was discovered pinned to the bow of a luxury liner near Juneau, Alaska, the 3rd such incident involving the company's Alaska fleet in a decade, officials said Thursday.

7/30/2010 5:32:03 AM

Just how distracting daydreams can be depends on where exactly your wandering mind takes you, a new study suggests.



Health - Daydream - Florida State University - Knowledge Management - Memory

7/30/2010 10:07:38 AM

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers took to the streets, burning cars and blocking traffic, police said, in a protest against the minimum wage rate, police said.

7/30/2010 3:06:45 AM

7/30/2010 3:06:45 AM

Bad weather has hindered rescue efforts in Pakistan, where flooding has claimed at least 430 lives.  The death toll has surpassed that of a 1929 deluge, which killed 408.



Pakistan - Flood - Asia - Monsoon - Government

7/30/2010 5:42:20 PM

casuistry: specious or deceptive reasoning, esp. in questions of morality.

7/30/2010 2:00:00 AM

A coroner raises ongoing safety fears as an inquest jury blames a points failure for the 2002 Potters Bar train crash, in which seven died.

7/30/2010 11:26:39 AM

Soham killer Ian Huntley is to sue the Prison Service for compensation after his throat was slashed in an attack by a fellow inmate.

7/30/2010 5:47:53 PM

Hundreds of UK soldiers launch an operation to clear Taliban insurgents from a key stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

7/30/2010 7:06:48 AM

The incoming BP chief executive has said it is time to scale back some parts of the oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.

7/30/2010 1:07:23 PM

The new identity of Jon Venables must be kept secret because there is "compelling evidence" of a threat to his safety, a judge says.

7/30/2010 10:58:03 AM

A toddler drowned after falling into a garden pond during a visit to a house in Edinburgh, it has emerged.

7/30/2010 10:01:42 AM

Government plans to limit the number of skilled foreign workers allowed into the UK are criticised by the Lord Mayor of London.

7/30/2010 12:31:13 PM

Syria's president and the Saudi king call on Lebanon's rival factions to avoid turning to violence amid mounting political tensions in the country.

7/30/2010 2:39:20 PM

Israel launches air strikes into the Gaza Strip, reports say, hours after a Palestinian rocket hit the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

7/30/2010 4:36:41 PM

A nine-year-old girl from Wales has died in a rafting accident while on holiday in Turkey.

7/30/2010 1:45:10 PM

A French mother who admitted killing eight of her newborn babies is relieved that her secret is finally out in the open, her lawyer says.

7/30/2010 11:07:33 AM

A 20-year-old Christian mobile phone shop manager in Florida stops a would-be armed robber by preaching to him.

7/30/2010 1:19:21 PM

An exhibition of paintings by a seven-year-old artist from Norfolk sells out, fetching about £150,000 in half an hour.

7/30/2010 11:02:41 AM

Andy Turner leads Great Britain's medal haul on the fourth day of the European Championships as he takes gold in the 110m hurdles.

7/30/2010 3:14:21 PM

Birthday boy James Anderson produces a superb bowling display to put England on top in the first Test against Pakistan at Trent Bridge.

7/30/2010 11:52:22 AM

Bristol City sign England goalkeeper David James following his release from Portsmouth.

7/30/2010 9:26:19 AM

Red Bull appear to be in control as McLaren struggle during second practice for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.

7/30/2010 8:37:34 AM

Pat Richards kicks 10 points as Wigan move one step closer to the Super League leader's shield with victory over defending champions Leeds.

7/30/2010 3:46:19 PM

A Romanian man and a woman are jailed for 30 months for forcing six children, the youngest aged two, to beg on London's streets.

7/30/2010 1:44:32 PM

The High Court bans a man from staging sex parties and pole-dancing classes at the mansion he owns in central London.

7/30/2010 12:35:51 PM

A 28-year-old man is arrested in connection with the murder of Kevin "Gerbil" Carroll in Glasgow.

7/30/2010 12:28:07 PM

Three men wearing ski masks have stolen more than £10,000 from a man in the Carntyne area of Glasgow, police say.

7/30/2010 3:13:48 PM

The widow of a man believed to have been killed by the IRA in 1981 said she felt sad but relieved that her husband's remains appeared to have been found.

7/30/2010 2:59:34 PM

A Catholic bishop calls for an independent inquiry into the deaths of 11 civilians killed by the Army in Ballymurphy in west Belfast in 1971.

7/30/2010 5:58:30 PM

Hundreds of mourners attend the funeral of a "brave, courageous and loyal" soldier killed in Afghanistan.

7/30/2010 10:00:49 AM

Two men, 21 and 23, will face charges after a raid on a Cardiff shop ended with the deaths of two others on quad bikes.

7/30/2010 9:04:16 AM

Three Kenyans are charged with the murders of 76 people killed when bombs exploded as they watched the World Cup on TV in Kampala, Uganda.

7/30/2010 11:13:11 AM

Four white South Africans are fined $2,700 (£1,700) each after making a video humiliating black university workers.

7/30/2010 6:30:26 AM

A consortium headed by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing agrees to buy the UK networks of French power group EDF for £5.8bn ($9.1bn).

7/30/2010 4:50:38 AM

Search teams in north-east China are still searching for thousands of barrels of toxic chemicals washed into a major river by flooding.

7/30/2010 6:30:04 AM

Forest fires kill at least 23 people in central Russia, while a forecast of heavy rain brings relief to Moscow.

7/30/2010 11:26:09 AM

President Nicolas Sarkozy says he would like to strip French nationality from anyone of foreign origin who threatened the life of a police officer.

7/30/2010 9:28:41 AM

Colombia's Farc rebel group issues a call for dialogue with the new government after Juan Manuel Santos's election as president.

7/30/2010 4:05:26 PM

A gay couple become the first to marry in Argentina under a new law allowing same-sex unions.

7/30/2010 12:55:40 PM

The UN refugee agency urges Saudi Arabia to stop deporting Somalis, saying 2,000 have recently been sent to Mogadishu.

7/30/2010 5:50:34 AM

The Arab League backs direct Palestinian peace talks with the Israelis, but leaves the timing to the Palestinians, officials say.

7/29/2010 10:25:34 AM

Floods caused by heavy monsoon rain kill at least 385 people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, washing away whole villages, roads and bridges.

7/30/2010 11:18:21 AM

Five Taliban are removed from a sanctions list by the UN Security Council, a move sought by Kabul to ease rapprochement with insurgents.

7/30/2010 4:33:56 PM

US economic growth slowed between April and June, with GDP growing by an annualised rate of 2.4%, the US Commerce Department says.

7/30/2010 9:48:09 AM

US forces suffered the deadliest month of their nine-year Afghan campaign, with 66 service members killed in July.

7/30/2010 11:20:31 AM

Parents groups are warning many more people will be asked to pay back some of the tax credits they are awarded.

7/30/2010 6:00:09 PM

Many young people working free as interns may legally be entitled to pay, a report says.

7/30/2010 6:00:34 PM

BA reveals a steep quarterly loss of £164m after being hit by cabin crew strikes and disruption caused by the volcanic ash cloud.

7/30/2010 6:22:45 AM

The intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was "not very substantial", former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott says.

7/30/2010 6:27:43 AM

Merging all tax credits and benefits into a single payment is one option being considered by Iain Duncan Smith in a "radical" welfare shake-up.

7/30/2010 9:17:53 AM

Three ex-Labour MPs and an ex-Tory peer lose appeals over a ruling that they are not protected by parliamentary privilege from prosecution over expenses fraud allegations.

7/30/2010 5:12:42 AM

Calcium supplements taken by many older people could be increasing their risk of a heart attack, research shows.

7/29/2010 5:59:08 PM

The right of women to choose whether they have home births is being questioned by a leading medical journal.

7/29/2010 6:54:54 PM

A father persuades the NHS to give his sick daughter a "miracle" drug he found on the internet.

7/29/2010 1:06:35 PM

The Education Secretary insists there no is rush for schools in England to become academies, after criticism over the number of schools coming forward.

7/30/2010 8:40:02 AM

Plans to reform A-levels could put students off maths and lead to university department closures, an academic body warns.

7/29/2010 8:20:44 PM

More than 150 top schools in England have applied to become academies, government documents show.

7/29/2010 6:29:07 AM

Owners of mobile phones are being asked to test the security of their network to see if enough is being done to stop eavesdropping.

7/30/2010 3:31:48 AM

Newsbeat's had an exclusive look at new training being given to UK soldiers at the Royal School of Artillery in Wiltshire.

7/30/2010 1:37:19 AM

Security researcher Ron Bowes tells BBC News why he collected and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users.

7/29/2010 6:40:36 AM

The largest wildlife census of its kind conducted in Chernobyl reveals evidence of mammals declining in the exclusion zone.

7/30/2010 10:00:31 AM

Land in the north of Chile is "ready" for another major earthquake, say researchers, adding that authorities did not act on previous warnings.

7/30/2010 12:39:19 PM

A UN panel votes to remove the Galapagos Islands from a "red list" of endangered heritage sites, to protests from a leading conservation group.

7/29/2010 12:11:11 PM

Sports presenter Clare Balding makes an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission over an article which mocked her sexuality.

7/30/2010 12:10:49 PM

Comedienne and chat show host Ellen DeGeneres is leaving American Idol after one season on the judging panel.

7/30/2010 3:13:38 AM

Ben Shephard bids farewell to GMTV after 10 years telling viewers: "I'm going to miss all of you, every single one of you."

7/30/2010 5:29:54 AM

More women in the developed world are choosing not to have children. So why do others think it's OK to question this decision?

7/29/2010 5:50:59 AM

With thousands expected to flock to a major cheese fair, why are Britons taking this once-humble foodstuff so seriously?

7/28/2010 5:15:25 AM

Hawley Crippen is one of the most infamous killers in British history. But was he really innocent of murdering his wife?

7/29/2010 5:47:14 AM

China is struggling with an arduous clean up after the country's worst oil spill, with grim conditions for those involved.

7/30/2010 6:49:32 AM

London Mayor Boris Johnson sells the benefits of the London bike hire scheme to the world media.

7/30/2010 12:01:19 PM

A Canadian woman has said she played dead in order to escape from a bear during an attack in Montana that left one man dead.

7/30/2010 4:49:52 AM

A north London grocery store is committing "wildlife massacre" by selling squirrel meat, an animal welfare group has claimed. Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (Viva) accused a branch of Budgens of supporting a "barbaric and needless cull" of grey squirrels.

7/30/2010 4:15:43 PM

More than 400 people have been killed and nearly 400,000 displaced in floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains in northern Pakistan.

7/30/2010 5:59:58 AM

Thousands of children in Gaza appear to have broken their own world record for the number of kites flown at the same time, the UN says.

7/30/2010 1:19:04 PM

Wild fires have continued to rage in central and western Russia, with more than 20 people now reported to have died.

7/30/2010 10:49:57 AM

Hundreds of amateur musicians have set the sights and sounds of Yorkshire to music.

7/30/2010 1:40:07 AM

Are family holidays worth all the hassle?

7/30/2010 5:31:17 AM

What could drive a mother to kill a child in first few minutes of life?

7/30/2010 11:34:58 AM

Did they really play croquet at the Olympics?

7/30/2010 6:27:00 AM

Testing London's new hire bicycles

7/30/2010 6:39:03 AM

Who's the 'good lad'? Crisps boy, Massa or Dr Watson?

7/30/2010 4:20:50 AM

Northern Cyprus is a 'haven' for fugitives no longer

7/30/2010 8:34:30 AM

What did they do with the drunken sailor?

7/30/2010 1:26:22 AM

Brazil's uphill struggle curtailing lucrative trade in underage sex

7/30/2010 4:19:15 AM

After months of speculation, NBC Universal Television Entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin announces who will take up King's role on CNN.

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM

7/30/2010 4:44:06 PM