In a company town hall meeting to discuss the new iPad, Steve Jobs goes after Adobe and Google. He says Google's do no evil mantra is bullshit and that Adobe is evil. With friends like these...
Randall Stross in the NY Timessays AT&T is taking it on the chin even for some of the network woes caused by the iPhone's design. So, a network that admits it has can't handle all the business it acquires by advertising it's so good, will take lumps rather than addressing the problem? Fake Steve Jobs does a great fake post reporting on a conversation with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson about the issues. Something tells me this isn't so fake. These guys are great bamboozlers and should be in politics. Probably would if it paid better.
Nokia is sinking and keeps making noise that it is only temporary. This line in this NY Times piece stands out. "Apple is made for the common man. It’s more for Joe Six-Pack than techno-geeks. But we understand Joe Six-Pack too." If they are depending on Joe Six-Pack, the sinking will continue. But then again the cool toys for geeks (otherwise known as Beta Hardware) can't continue at this pace.
The big tech companies are going after each other tooth and nail. Apple is now working on its own maps app, obviously spurning Google, Microsoft is working with Rupert Murdoch to help make his bluff/threat to remove his media from Google search in favor of Bing, Apple has been working with Microsoft to bring Silverlight to the iPhone, continuing its spat with Adobe. It’s a dog eat dog world and at this point, no dog has an advantage. Steve Lyons says they all care less about creating new products than they do about hurting each other. That’s why “it’s just business” is such a pre-historic concept.
Sarah Palin and the Bard? Conservative Joseph Hatch compares those enraptured by Sarah Palin to the groundlings of Shakespeare’s day, and says that the groundlings are the ones who turn a play into a hit or not, and that the Republicans need to cater to those masses and forget the elite. It’s a theory that tries to focus on the populist appeal of the common versus the elite, but ignores the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, even the groundlings understood the real issues behind the stories being told, and that Shakespeare felt no need to dumb down the message to appeal to them.
MG Siegler compares Twitter to Walter Cronkite in today’s age of realtime. I like his points, but the prism is ever so slightly askew. We gathered around Uncle Walter, (and others) when news happened, no matter how messy the reporting was because we had no other real choice. In today’s world the choices are just as messy, quicker, and unfortunately able to be tied into knots by the sheer volume of reporting and re-reporting news as it surfaces. In my view, the trust factor (and the forgiveness for error factor) is diminishing to a point that no one has belief in any source.
Saul Hansell of the New York Times wonders: Is There a Method in Cellphone Madness? Saul is a brave man as he trys to meander through the morass of billing, costs, and basically anything having to do with costs on phones as we experience them now. He’s brave because I don’t think anyone really understands the pricing plans and economy. It is worth a read if for no other reading that he uses the phrase “avaricious oligopolists.”
The MPAA shuts down a town’s municipal WiFi because someone in the town was pirating movies. It’s a small town (Coshocton, OH) with a small set of users who all used the same IP address but this sort of craziness is nuts.
Carrie Prejean must be really trying to outdo other colossal PR disasters and create a new definition of hubris. How else could she continue to trip over own mistakes so easily. Let’s skip over her early failures. Lately, word surfaced that there was a (GASP) sex tape of her, doing the naughty by herself. She claimed it was the single biggest mistake of her life. Well, apparently that single biggest mistake turns out to be more than single, as more tapes have supposedly surfaced. Larry King must be laughing. Not since Sarah Palin.
Maybe the Tea Baggers movement will end up feuding itself into oblivion. Somehow I doubt it, and I hope it doesn’t. At the moment the Tea Baggers ire is focused on the Democrats. If power changes hands, I’d love to see if the anti-government hysteria would continue.
Joe Hewitt of Facebook, who developed the Facebook app for the Iphone caused a stir when he said he was done developing for the iPhone platform, due to Apple’s crazy policies. Here’s his statement.
The Republican National Committee makes a move that makes them look like the Democrats on a bad day. Apparently if you worked for the RNC, your insurance policy allowed for coverage of an abortion. Not any longer.
The latest Gillmor Gang takes on the Droid vs the iPhone, among other things, and gives new life to the Crunchpad, which surely needs it.
I guess it isn’t surprising that Google’s Street View captured me and our two costume designers out front of out place of business, Wayside Theatre. When the weather is nice, heck, even sometimes when it isn’t, we frequently have discussions outside. This shot is obviously from last fall. A larger view of the theatre shows that it was after our renovations were complete. The flower beds don’t have the current foliage of this year. Thus, the WVPT banner means it was taking place during the run of The Mousetrap, a show that WVPT sponsored. And the American flag indicates that it was on Veteran’s Day last year which was one year ago today. Our town places flags up and down Main Street for all national holidays.
So, there you have it, me and our two lovely costumers talking about something important. Well, at least I hope it was important now that it is memorialized. Interesting that the address is wrong though.
No, not really. But hey, the new feature in Google Earth that will allow for real time tracking of people and cars could probably do better in finding OBL than the US has done. I'm sure it will look spooky to all sorts of folks concerned about privacy and the like but hey, Big Brother has been watching for some time and in so many ways, all you can really do is wave. Wait, that's going out to a round of beta testers today.
The first round was about Google Voice being rejected, or still be reviewed as Apple says, with no one believing them. The FCC stepped in, asked questions, got answers, and the fight continues after Google pulled a Joe Wilson on Apple’s claims.
Now round two has AT&T saying that if Google wants to play like a phone carrier with Google Voice it has to adhere to the same regulations that phone carriers do. Google says AT&T is being silly.
Everyone involved realizes the high stakes involved in this mud fight and they feel good about tossing each other under the bus when the need arrives. Something tells me this will be sloshing around for quite some time.
Somebody is telling stories again. From the looks of it, most likely it is Apple, but that's not a definitive thing. Yet. Remember back when Apple, Google, and AT&T had to answer the FCC's questions regarding the Google Voice debacle on the iPhone? Everybody published their respective answers, but Google was the only one who redacted some of its response.
Now, supposedly due to Freedom of Information Act requests, the FCC and Google have removed the redactions and we see that Google is directly contradicting Apple's claim that they didn't reject the app, they are still reviewing it. Google lists some communications that say Apple did indeed reject the app. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch says Google dropped a nuke on Apple with this one, and has one more up its sleeve. Apparently visual evidence of the app's rejection.
Nobody really bought Apple's story to begin with, and this is certainly far from decided. When corporate battle is joined, anyone can say anything. But one way or the other, someone is going to join the Orly Taitz Hall of Fame on this one before it is over.
Take it for what it’s worth. Frank Schaeffer helped weave the Christian Right into our political life, then had a Lee Atwater-like change of heart once things got out of control. Here he talks about how we are damaging our political and social fabric.
This story is recycling again after it came up during the last administration. Politicians and scientists may debate whether or not climate change is real, but the military is preparing for climate change as a threat to national security.
Apple goofs again. And again. And again. Sorry. Broken record there. This one is about Boobs. No dictionaries this time. Just boobs. Apple has reached a tipping point where they fortunes are starting to decline. This happens to boobs. It’s called gravity.
Recent Comments