Source: Gizmodo | 8 Jun 2009 | 8:23 am

The Newspaper Suicide Pact [Voices]

I think I’ll remember last week as the moment when I finally knew, with a certainty approaching fatigue, that the newspaper industry – the business and passion that both shaped and warped me over the past 20 years – had chosen ritual suicide. The choice appears grimly reached and irrevocable.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2009 | 7:49 am

Hacker ‘Dark Tangent’ Joins DHS Advisory Council [Voices]

Forget the new cyber security czar position that President Barack Obama announced last week.

The real sign that the White House might be finally taking cyber security seriously came in an announcement on Friday that Jeff Moss, aka “Dark Tangent” and the former hacker behind the annual DefCon hacker confab in Las Vegas, has been appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council (HSAC).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2009 | 7:39 am

Google: We’re Actually Really Small [Voices]

Three times in the last month, government agencies have targeted Google (GOOG) for antitrust reviews. An outstanding private lawsuit alleges that Google tried to kill a business-to-business search engine with predatory pricing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2009 | 7:34 am

The Sociology of Twitter, Video Interview with Liz Pullen [Voices]

Sociologist and ethnographer Liz Pullen spent a month tracking the top 500 Twitter users (as ranked by number of followers) as well as the much-contested suggested users list. In tracking these accounts, she also closely analyzed the behaviors of new adopters and their expectations of the service.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2009 | 7:28 am

Product V. Process Journalism: The Myth of Perfection V. Beta Culture [Voices]

An alarm went off on some desk at The New York Times business section: Oh-oh, time to slam blogs again. But the latest assault reveals as much about The Times and the culture of classical journalism as it does about bloggers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2009 | 7:23 am

Japanese ESRB Bans Rape Depiction In Games

eldavojohn writes "The Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS), now 233 companies strong, and met in Tokyo yesterday to ban a controversial title from Japan known as RapeLay, an eroge game (something much more adult than the more popular dating simulators). It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old. More importantly, the large ($353 million annually) adult game industry in Japan will now need to stay away from rape in their games if they wish to remain a member of EOCS. RapeLay seems to be available on Amazon's UK and JP sites, sparking outrage and causing a former US Ambassador to Japan to write an editorial criticizing Japan, saying, 'Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty. Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography. Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?' Singapore's Straits Times has more details, pointing out that it's still not illegal to possess these materials in Japan. We discussed this and other games last month in an editorial."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2009 | 6:06 am

North Korea Finds Two US Journalists Guilty of Unspecified "Grave Crime," Sentence: 12 Years Hard Labor

Horrible news for the families of Current TV correspondents Euna Lee and Laura Ling: North Korea's highest court has ruled that the two journalists are "guilty of illegal entry," and will be sentenced to 12 years hard labor. The women were arrested in March while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China.

NKorea sentences 2 US journalists to 12 years jail (AP)
Reporters get 12-year terms in NKorea (CNN)

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 6:02 am

Life of Emma Goldman on Tank Riot podcast

Viktor from the excellent Tank Riot podcast sez, "The Happy mutants at Tank Riot dedicated a show to the one and only Emma Goldman. The team discusses the intriguing life of the controversial 'Red Emma', an anarchist, free-speech advocate, social activist, and spokesperson for women's freedom and birth control rights. We look at her connections to the Haymarket Affair, the Russian and Spanish Revolutions, Alexander Berkman and the publication of 'Mother Earth', Johann Most and her involvement in fighting for worker's rights. We suggest it because we want people to hear a little about someone who vanished from history books for demanding change in the world."

I just saw this in my podcatcher and can't wait to listen to it -- these guys always do a great job on their subjects, and this is a fine subject indeed.

Emma Goldman: Tank Riot (Thanks, Viktor!)

(Image: Emma Goldman on a street car, 1917, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from bobster855's Flickr stream)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:46 am

HOWTO maintain a Difference Engine

Here's a set of instructions for operating and maintaining the replica of Charles Babbage's mechanical computer -- the storied difference engine -- built and displayed in 1991 at London's Science Museum to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Babbage.

If the Engine is being demonstrated on a daily basis, lt should be oiled and greased at least once a week. If no demonstrations are taking place, then the Engine should be oiled and greased on a monthly basis, but the handle should be turned at least twice a week to cycle the mechanisms.

Grease : "Alvania" grease or it's equivalent should be used.

Grease

1. all vertical motion cam profiles only and their levers.
2. all bevel gears above and below the cam stack.
3. all bevel gears on the carry axes and those on the carry drive shaft.
4. the phasing gear, register pinion, "Impact tooth and the tw-in tooth drive.
5. the pawl wheel and crank pinion.

INSTRUCTION MANUAL to Operate and Maintain Charles Babbage's 2nd Difference Engine (via Hack the Planet)

(Image: The Difference Engine, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Adactio's Flickr stream)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:40 am

Public Resource's FedFlix digitizing hundreds of hours of gov video archives at no expense to tax payer

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

You may remember the FedFlix program from Public.Resource.Org. We got the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to send a couple dozen videotapes every month. We digitized the tapes, and sent them back to the government with a DVD. No cost to .gov, and we got public domain data to post as high-res stock footage, plus great casual viewing on YouTube and the Internet Archive. The program went well for a year, the DC folks were happy, and I'm pleased to say we were able to renew the Joint Venture, but with a twist. They're now sending a minimum of 100 tapes a month and we have rights to all 6,000 masters in their warehouse.

The first batch of video arrived and the Public.Resource.Org Factory has been going full-tilt. We've put out an average of 11.5 hours of new video every day for the last 11 days, including some amazing previously unseen-on-the-Internet flicks featuring James Cagney, a bunch of Disney stuff, historical films by John Ford, and an amazingly clueless judicial film on "Special Needs Offender: Cyber Criminals." We put all our video in 3 places (some copies still updating or sorting):

1. YouTube (link)

2. Internet Archive (link)

3. bulk.resource.org, available for FTP and rsync as well as http. (link)

Did I mention this whole thing was no cost to the government? And, no cost to anybody ... this is an unfunded project and we did it for about $350 in hardware costs.

My only question is why the government isn't cranking out 11.5 hours of new video per day. Enjoy.

YouTube - PublicResourceOrg's Channel (Thanks, Carl!)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:35 am

Brain Chef: game pits zombies against game-show hosts against DRM vendors

Nick sends us Brain Chef, "A fun addictive browser game. Simple to play, choose to be a human or a zombie and move around the map hunting other online players. Humans want to kill zombies. Zombies want to kill humans. Everyone wants to kill SecuROM."

Brain Chef: Fight zombies, gameshow hosts, and copyright abuse. Fight other online players too! (Thanks, Nick!)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:30 am

Mandatory censorware comes to Chinese PCs on Jul 1

As of July 1, PCs sold in China will come with mandatory on-disk censorware that will prevent users from looking at web-pages that displease the party. How much do you want to bet that this is proposed (in the name of protecting children) in at least one western country within 12 months? I'm guessing Australia -- they've got some techno-ignorant parliamentarians down who're so eager to censor the Internet it'd curl your hair.

The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from "harmful" content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China's security ministry and military.

China Squeezes PC Makers (Thanks, Patrick!)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:28 am

Pirate Party takes two EuroParl seats!

The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform party that was inspired by The Pirate Bay, has won two seats in the European Parliamentary election. The party attributes its success in part to the scandal surrounding the trial of The Pirate Bay's operators, which was conducted by a judge who failed to disclose that he was a prominent member of a copyright-industry-friendly copyright-expansion association.

This should be interesting.

When we asked Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge about the outcome, he told TorrentFreak: "We've felt the wind blow in our sails. We've seen the polls prior to the election. But to stand here, today, and see the figures coming up on that screen... What do you want me to say? I'll say anything"

"Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it," Falkvinge said. "This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it's time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples' lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities' mass-surveillance," he added.

Pirate Party Wins and Enters The European Parliament (Thanks, Benno!)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 5:25 am

June 8, 1949: Looming Ahead, Orwell's Big Brother

The mother of dystopian novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is published.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Prisoners Run Gangs, Plan Escapes and Even Order Hits With Smuggled Cellphones

In his 25-plus years as a Texas state senator, John Whitmire had never received a phone call like this one.

"I know your daughters' names," said a nasal voice. "I know how old they are. I know where they live." Then the caller recited the young women's names, ages, and addresses. The senator, sitting at an antique rolltop desk in his Houston office, gripped the handset tighter.

Whitmire is the bald-headed, blunt-talking chair of the state senate's Criminal Justice Committee, a law-and-order man who displays an engraved pistol in his office. But that call last October 7, he says, "scared the hell out of me." Richard Tabler, the man on the other end of the line, had murdered at least two people and possibly four. He was a prisoner on Texas' death row, supposedly locked safely away. But from the narrow bunk of his solitary cell an hour's drive north of Houston, Tabler had reached out and touched one of the Lone Star State's most powerful politicians with a smuggled Motorola cell phone.

Tabler insists he was just voicing concerns to a public official. "I was talking to him about treatment on death row, how inmates are abused back here, not fed, not showered," he says, sitting in a locked booth in the visiting room of Polunsky Unit, the sprawling facility that houses death row. He's facing me through a thick pane of bulletproof glass. We talk, of course, by telephone.

Tall, pale, and gangly, with wispy facial hair and big green eyes that bulge like an emu's, Tabler looks considerably younger than his 30 years. A crudely tattooed tear leaks from one eye. Rows of thin white self-inflicted scars mark the backs of his hands and forearms. A former cook with a long, violent criminal history, Tabler wound up in Polunsky after resolving a disagreement with the manager of a strip club and his friend by shooting them dead. Days later, two teenage pole dancers who worked at the club were also murdered. Tabler freely owns up to shooting the two men, which earned him his death sentence. He has at various times admitted and denied slaying the strippers. (He tells me he "gave the green light" for their murders.)

Whitmire didn't believe Tabler when he announced who he was. So the inmate kicked the door of his cell, flushed his steel toilet, and held the phone out to the clanging and yelling from the row's other residents. And, just to make sure he had the senator's attention, Tabler rattled off those personal details about his daughters. Tabler claims he didn't mean to threaten Whitmire. "I was letting him know that just because I'm on death row, it doesn't mean I'm stupid," he says. "It doesn't mean I can't get information."

Inmates aren't allowed to have cell phones in any US prison, let alone on death row. But the 21st century's ubiquitous communications tools are nonetheless turning up by the thousands in lockups not just in Texas but across the US and around the world. Last year alone, officials confiscated 947 phones in Maryland, some 2,000 handsets and accessories in South Carolina, and 2,800 mobiles in California.

The presence of cell phones is changing the very meaning of imprisonment. Incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals, keeping them away from one another and the rest of us so they can't cause any more harm. But with a wireless handset, an inmate can slip through walls and locked doors at will and maintain a digital presence in the outside world. Prisoners are using voice calls, text messages, email, and handheld Web browsers to taunt their victims, intimidate witnesses, run gangs, and organize escapes—including at least one incident in Tennessee in which a guard was killed. An Indiana inmate doing 40 years for arson made harassing calls to a 23-year-old woman he'd never met and phoned in bomb threats to the state fair for extra laughs.

"Cell phones," says James Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, "are now one of our top security threats."

Talking to his own security threat, Whitmire stayed calm, hearing out the prisoner's complaints. He noted Tabler's number, then promptly called John Moriarty, the Texas prison system's beefy, mustached inspector general, asking how the hell an inmate had gotten hold of a cell phone in what is supposed to be one of the state's highest-security lockups.

Moriarty's people subpoenaed the records for the phone that had dialed Whitmire. They were astonished by what they found: The device had logged more than 2,800 calls and text messages in the preceding month. At least nine other prisoners had used it, investigators say, including members of such notorious gangs as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Crips.

In response, on October 20, Texas governor Rick Perry ordered every one of the state's 112 prisons locked down and all 156,000 inmates searched. Officials found 128 phones, including a dozen on death row, as well as scores of chargers, batteries, and SIM cards. That brought the total number of phones and related items confiscated from Texas prisons in 2008 to more than 1,000.

Tabler was chatting with a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman when Perry's statewide search kicked off. "Give me 15 minutes and I'll tell you what kind of car you drive," he bragged. "I'll tell you your Social Security number." Minutes later, a team of riot-suited guards stormed his cell.

Prisoners have always been able to communicate with the outside world, through whispered conversations with visitors, smuggled notes, and a litany of more ingenious methods. But the ease with which they can do it today is chilling. During a hearing on the activities of Blood gang members imprisoned in New Jersey, a state police officer testified that he listened in on a 45-minute conference call that linked Bloods in three different lockups with three others on the streets. And then there are all the worrisome things a prisoner might look up online, like recipes for making explosives, tips for faking medical conditions, or the home addresses of, say, a politician's daughters—not to mention guards and various enemies.

Consider the case of a, a 38-year-old Maryland resident who had the bad luck to witness a street murder in Baltimore and the rare courage to agree to testify against the accused killer, Patrick Byers. According to prosecutors, Byers acquired a phone while awaiting trial in Baltimore's City Detention Center. He obtained Lackl's name, address, and phone number and allegedly texted that information to a friend on the outside, along with an offer of $2,500 to get rid of Lackl. On July 2, 2007, the friend rounded up a couple of thugs and drove out to Lackl's modest suburban home, where authorities say the crew blasted him to death with a .44 Magnum.

Grim as that story is, it's just an intimation of how dangerous cell-phone-connected inmates can be if their network is left to grow unchecked. Brazil provides an especially bloody lesson. For years, the country's largest prison gang, Primeiro Comando da Capital, has been using mobile phones to strengthen its grip on the state of Sè3o Paulo's inmates and establish a presence on the outside. In 2006, annoyed by the transfer of some of its members to more restrictive facilities, the PCC used its cellular network to launch simultaneous riots in dozens of prisons and a wave of attacks on police in the streets of the state capital. More than 40 officers and guards were killed in the first four days alone. Hundreds more died in the ensuing violence.

The North Branch Correctional Institution spreads out along a wooded valley in mountainous western Maryland. The massive, low-lying complex of concrete and razor wire is one of the most technologically sophisticated maximum-security prisons in the nation. Electronic cell doors are opened remotely. Touching the perimeter fence triggers a volley of microwaves that alerts video cameras to focus on the spot.

But despite the fancy surveillance gear, phones keep finding their way in. "Inmates come up with all kinds of methods," says former NBCI warden John Rowley as he leafs through photos of mobiles found in hollowed-out soap bars and glued-together stacks of graham crackers. Elsewhere, phones have been tied to carrier pigeons and lashed to arrows shot over prison walls. Officials found 78 devices welded inside an air compressor being delivered to one Texas lockup.

But the easiest—and probably most common—way mobiles are moving into prisons is in the pockets of guards and other prison staff. "There's no question that corrupt officers are involved," says Texas inspector general Moriarty. The risk is small, the payoff big. Correctional staff coming to work are typically searched only lightly, if at all, and a phone can fetch a couple thousand dollars. One California officer told investigators he made more than $100,000 in a single year selling phones.

Prisoners face a similar risk-reward calculus. In most states, the laws haven't kept pace with technology; getting caught with a cell phone is not a crime but a rule violation, like being found in possession of a cigarette. And there's good money to be made on rentals.

Once a phone is in, prisoners have little trouble concealing it. Cellular components have been found stashed inside Bible bindings, shoe heels, peanut butter jars, and toilet pipes. Moriarty has an x-ray showing a handset and charger lodged up what he refers to as an inmate's "keister." (Which begs the question: ring or vibrate?)

To find concealed phones, North Branch uses a decidedly low tech piece of equipment: Alba, an irrationally exuberant, gingerbread-colored Belgian Malinois. It turns out that mobiles have a distinct scent, which specially trained dogs like Alba can detect. "I didn't believe it would work at first," says Peter Anderson, who has been head trainer of the Maryland prison system's canine unit for a decade. But after learning the method from a British colleague who developed it in 2006, Anderson trained four dogs for Maryland. Last year, they flushed out 59 phones.

Brought into a white-walled conference room inside the prison, Alba trots around eagerly, snuffling at tables, chairs, and bookshelves—then stops and sits, staring intently at a piece of cloth under which I've hidden my iPhone. "Good girl!" shouts her handler, rewarding the three-year-old pooch with a chew toy that sends her into a spasm of delight.

It's an impressive trick. But Anderson admits that even the best dogs don't always find their target. "The scent signature isn't very big, so they have to get fairly close," he says. "Dogs aren't the answer, but they help."

Terry Bittner is taking a more technological approach. He heads up the Cell Hound product line of ITT, housed in an office park outside Baltimore. The company sells a system specifically designed to detect cell phones inside correctional facilities.

Hunkered before an oversize monitor showing a schematic map of the division's headquarters, Bittner explains how it works. Sensors installed throughout the building search for cell signals by scanning the mobile-phone radio spectrum seven times per second. When they detect one, a circle appears on the monitor showing its location. The map of Cell Hound's offices is crawling with red and green circles, the colors indicating the types of network in use. Some circles float around, indicating someone walking and talking. Others blink on for only a second—a text message.

Lockups tend to show a lot of wireless activity. "The maximum security sector of one prison we went to looked like a telemarketing center," Bittner says. Three facilities so far have bought the system, which can cost from $20,000 to $500,000. But spotting a phone's location isn't the same as stopping it from being used. By the time a guard gets to the scene, the device could be stashed.

Senator Whitmire has a more straightforward approach. "Jam the damn things!" he bellowed at a recent Texas senate hearing. Sounds obvious, but there are problems with this tactic, too. For one thing, it's illegal. The 1934 Communications Act prohibits anyone except the federal government from interfering with radio transmissions, which now include cell calls.

At the urging of frustrated state officials, a bill was introduced in Congress in January that would let the FCC grant waivers for jamming in prisons. But the telecom industry is fighting it. Jamming inmates' phones would block calls by prison staff and other paying customers, they say. There are also technical shortcomings: A few layers of tinfoil can shield a phone from the jamming signal.

While the squabbling continues, what might be the most effective way of cutting illicit phone use is largely ignored: making it easier for inmates to place calls legally.

There's no question that prisoners are using cell phones to foment all kinds of mayhem. But investigations have established that most calls placed on contraband mobiles are harmless—just saying hi to family and friends. Whatever their crimes, most convicts have parents, children, and others they're desperate to stay in touch with. Letters are slow, and personal visits often involve expensive, time-sucking travel. Some prisons have public phones for making collect calls, but access is limited, conversations are often monitored, and phone companies often charge much higher rates than on the outside.

A Virginia woman whose husband is six years into a 40-year sentence says she won't let him use a cell phone because she doesn't want him to get in any more trouble. As a result, "my phone bill last December was $800," she says. "That was my whole Christmas bonus." Between calls she drives seven hours each way, twice a month, to see him in person.

"Cell phones are the best thing since conjugal visits," says a California con I'll call Jack. "And being a lifer, I don't get those." Jack doesn't want his real name printed because I spoke to him—several times—on a contraband handset he had procured in the pen, where he's doing time for second-degree murder. "I call my mom three or four times a week," he says. "And I text my daughter every night."

But the most compelling reason to let inmates like Jack talk to their families isn't that it's nice for them or even their mothers. It's that it could reduce crime and save the public a bundle by cutting recidivism. Most of the more than 2 million men and women behind bars in the US will eventually be released, and decades of research show that those who maintain family ties are much less likely to land back in jail. Every parolee who stays straight saves taxpayers an average of more than $22,000 a year.

Even tough-on-crime Texas has embraced that logic. The state has long refused to allow phones of any sort for inmates in its prisons, but this year officials are installing landlines. "Once they're in place, we expect a decrease in the problem," Moriarty says.

Those phones might have saved Richard Tabler's family a lot of trouble. Most of his calls were to his mother and sister, who also bought minutes for Tabler's mobile account, say Moriarty's investigators. In Texas, it's a felony to help an inmate use a cell phone. So on the day the statewide lockdown began, police also arrested Tabler's mother and sister.

Tabler himself has been segregated from the general population since his calling spree. In the hope that authorities will drop charges against his family members, he says, he's cooperating with their investigation, giving up the names of guards involved in cell smuggling. That has put him at risk. "I've written to Governor Rick Perry's office, told him, 'Look, I apologize for this drama I caused,'" he says. "'But I fear for my life. I'm having threats from officers.'" And prison gangs: Furious that he triggered a crackdown on the phones they rely on to do business, the gangs have put a half-million-dollar bounty on his head, he claims.

"They've got cameras everywhere since that Tabler-Whitmire thing," death row inmate Henry Skinner told me soon afterward. "Right now you couldn't get a phone no matter how much you had. That Tabler messed up a lot of things for us."

For a while, anyway. The lockdown Tabler sparked was lifted in November. Since then, another 310 phones have been found in the hands of Texas inmates—including four on death row.

Vince Beiser (vincelb@sbcglobal.net) wrote about new energy storage technologies in issue 17.04.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Video: How to Clean a Skull (Hint: Flesh-Eating Beetles)

Wired Science takes you into the bowels of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, to the preparation room where specimens are preserved and bones are cleaned by carnivorous beetles.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Steam Tech Gets Less Punk, More Stimulus Money

Combining heat and power at one plant located near its customers would boost efficiency and help solve the energy problem. Despite challenges, some combination plants are being built and the DOE is backing the idea with stimulus money.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Homemade Solar Quadricycle With Room For The Dog

The Solar Human Hybrid is a street-legal quadricycle with a solar-powered electric motor to help you along, room for three friends to join you in the fun and even a spot for groceries and your dog. Best of all, it was built by an eighth-grader who’s willing to show you how to make one yourself.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2009 | 4:00 am

Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp

A new service from 83 Degrees called Super Chirp launches this evening that lets Twitter users get paid for their content stream.

This is a theme we’ve touched on in the past. There is a huge market for celebrity fan pages that Super Chirp will play right into. In fact, 83 Degrees CEO Narendra Rocherolle wrote a guest post here last year called A Missed Opportunity - Britney On Twitter where he talks about the idea. Twitter is mobile and it’s real time, two huge advantages over normal fan sites. And it’s constantly refreshed with new content. Britney Spears has 1.7 million Twitter followers. How many of them would be willing to pay $1, or $10, per month to see a premium stream of her content?

Here’s how Super Chirp works. Unlike Twitpub, where publishers have to create a new Twitter account, Super Chirp works through direct messages (Twitter’s private message system). That means publishers can leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote the paid streams. Users subscribe to the content on the Super Chirp site, pay via Paypal, and then get the messages via DM. They can also visit Super Chirp to see all those paid messages, and sort them by publisher.

This is a natural product for celebrities to embrace. But it’s also interesting for charities - loyal supporters can donate to the charity and get a stream of news relevant to that charity, or whatever. Some news outlets may try to charge for streams as well. I could imagine that at least some of our followers on our main Twitter account would pay to get additional information if it had enough value.

Any publisher that wants to sign up can as long as they have a Twitter account. The publisher sets the price, between $0.99 and $9.99 per month. Super Chirp keeps 30% of the gross, and that includes the Paypal fees. So the Publisher ends up with 70%

I think it’s a fantastic idea that at the very least may prove out the product for Twitter itself. If Twitter launches something like this directly, Super Chirp could become irrelevant quickly. Although, if I were running Twitter and Super Chirp got traction, I’d buy the service and port over the publishers and paying users to keep it all going.

83 Degrees is the same company that launched Power Twitter, a service I’m absolutely addicted to.

You can read more about Super Chirp on the 83 Degrees blog.

Update: Here’s one guy who has already signed up. Looks like he’ll be doing $9.99/month stock tips — but he’d like Super Chirp to up the range.

And it looks like Loren Feldman of 1938media just signed up as well as the “funniest guy on Twitter,” for $0.99 a month. Feel free to leave your Super Chirp profile in the comments if you sign up as well and say what you will specialize in.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2009 | 3:32 am

Analysis Says Planes Might Be Greener Than Trains

New Scientist has an interesting piece up about the calculable energy costs per mile for various forms of transportation. Despite the headline ("Train can be worse for climate than plane"), the study it describes deals with highway-based vehicles, too: the authors attempted to integrate not just the cost at the tailpipe (or equivalent) for each mode of transport, but also the costs of developing and supporting the associated infrastructure, such as rails, highways and airports. Such comparisons are tricky, though; a few years back, a widely circulated report claimed that the Toyota Prius had a higher per-mile lifetime cost than the Hummer (see that earlier Slashdot post for good reason to be skeptical of the methodology and conclusions). I wonder how the present comparison would be affected by a calculation of (for instance) how much it would cost to move by plane the freight currently carried by trains.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2009 | 2:59 am

Wails and Mumbles: Tort Deform

(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including the potato cannon-relevant Backyard Ballistics, and the recently-published Absinthe and Flamethrowers)

Everybody's talking about the honorable Marilyn Milian, the hottest judge on television!
--Opening tagline for the television show "The People's Court"

I've been watching a lot of TV judge shows lately, mainly because I don't have cable, they're on when I'm working on Make Magazine projects in my workshop, they're good background noise, and hey, they're marginally better than Maury Povich or Deal or No Deal.

I'm no connoisseur of small claims court television, but I do have opinions. I kind of like Judge Joe Brown, because he frequently does weird things with his voice. He'll be lecturing someone for trashing their roommates CD collection when mid-sentence, he switches to a deep, over-the-top, musical baritone for no reason at all. Sort of like Steve Bochco's Cop Rock show.

Judge "Christina's Court" Perez's tag line is that she "takes law into her own heart." I have absolutely no earthly idea what that means.

Anyway, if what daytime TV viewers are seeking is hot, sexy justice, then it's time for a new concept altogether. Maybe a show where the judge wears a tight fitting black leather robe and carries a riding crop? At the end, the loser has to strip down to their underwear and the winner gets to yell stuff at them. Now that's hot. Copyright 2009. Feel free to call my hot, sexy agent with offers.


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2009 | 1:25 am

The Morality And Effectiveness Of Process Journalism

The New York Times Sunday edition team picks fights like no one else. The problem is they tend to pick the wrong fights. And mask opinion pieces as straight up factual articles.

In December they wrote about Facebook revenue woes just, as it turned out, at the time that Facebook saw a huge spike in advertising dollars that will propel them to as much as $600 million in revenue this year. Then there was the Tesla article that prompted quite a response from CEO Elon Musk. That article was retitled and rewritten to correct errors and change the overall tone.

I can’t help wondering if our occasional criticism of the NYTimes prompted their most recent attack, this time aimed squarely at us. Not only does writer Damon Darlin get a lot wrong, he just absolutely failed to write the real and far more interesting story that was staring him in the face.

When Damon reached out to me by email to talk about the story, I wrote back something along the lines of “The Sunday New York Times scares the shit out of me” because of their reputation for twisting conversations to fit whatever story they’ve decided to write. But Damon persisted, saying “I want to call you about a column I am doing on different ways news organizations approach reporting rumors.” Seemed fair enough, I have lots of thoughts on that subject.

We talked for 20-30 minutes by phone. About 30 seconds of dialog, remixed to change the meaning and context entirely, made it into the article as quotations. None of the rest of our talk seemed to influence his thesis, that blogs can’t be trusted, at all.

Damon was laser focused in the article on a post we ran talking partially about Apple/Twitter acquisition rumors. Here’s that post: Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up. Damon says:

Hours later, TechCrunch, a popular Silicon Valley tech news site, was reporting the very same thing. The posts generated a good deal of traffic for both sites. They were picked up by numerous reputable sites and retweeted endlessly on Twitter. The TechCrunch post yielded 405 comments from readers, an unusually large response. Within 12 hours the Gawker post had been viewed 22,000 times, enough to earn it the orange flame that Gawker editors use to designate a post as hot news.

Neither story was true. Not that it mattered to the authors of the posts. They suspected the rumor was groundless when they wrote the items. TechCrunch noted, 133 words into its story, that, “The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations.”

But they reported it anyway. “I don’t ever want to lose the rawness of blogging,” said Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch and the author of the post. (Owen Thomas, the writer of the Gawker post, has since taken a job at NBC and did not want to comment on the record.)

Damon is suggesting that I reported the rumor as if it were real, and waited until deep into the post to say anything about it being unlikely. 133 words into it!

The fact is we didn’t talk about the rumor until the third paragraph of that story, and the statement about it being unlikely to be true came immediately after the sentence that stated the rumor:

Today, though, rumors popped up that Apple may be looking to buy Twitter. “Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up.

There’s just no way to interpret this paragraph as a cheap way to get traffic by misleading readers. We say exactly what we were hearing, and what we believe to be true. And by the way, it shouldn’t matter, but we’ve subsequently confirmed that Apple and Twitter were in fact in acquisition discussions, and the original source for our story was correct.

The other money quote from Damon is also misleading and was taken out of context:

That drive to compete with the so-called mainstream media is what’s behind his strategy. He doesn’t have the luxury of a large staff to confirm everything, so he competes where he has the advantage. “Getting it right is expensive,” he says. “Getting it first is cheap.”

Note the break between “Getting it right is expensive” and “Getting it first is cheap.” The break is there because there were paragraphs of dialog between them. Damon saw a way to slap them together to make us look bad. He did that because it fit his original thesis, which he had formed prior to talking to us.

The Real Story

The real story is what I said between those two sentence fragments, and it’s that stuff that makes all the difference. I talked to Damon about how stories evolve on our blog. How it can start with a rumor, which we may post if we find it credible and/or it’s being so widely circulated that the fact of the rumor’s existence is newsworthy in itself. But then we evolve a post to get to the truth.

Jeff Jarvis calls this Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture in a post today. His arguments deserve to be fleshed out into an entire book.

We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with a sausage all the time. Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that sausage being made, too. The key is to be transparent at all times. If we post something we think is rough, we say so. If we think it’s absolutely true, we signal that, too, while protecting our sources.

A good example of this is another Twitter story we wrote, this time about Google. in Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated) we wrote, based on a solid source, that Google was in late stage talks to acquire Twitter. The post itself brought out other sources who disputed that the talks were in late stage. Within minutes after posting we had updated the text, adding “Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine. But discussions between the companies are confirmed.”

That update is 100% correct. Google was in talks over a data deal, and there were discussions of an acquisition. Our original source got his information from a Google employee. We have subsequently confirmed that a Google employee did in fact tell him that they were in late stage acquisition discussions with Twitter, because he believed it to be true. There was some internal miscommunication about the discussions.

But anyway, media outlets like the NYTimes think that having to update a story is a sign of weakness. I believe the opposite, that it’s a sign of transparency and a promise to our readers to continue to give them the best information we have. Corrections and updates are made constantly to big news posts.

Some people ask why we don’t just wait until we have the whole story before posting. That’s where the cheap/expensive quote above comes in. The fact is that we sometimes can’t get to the end story without going through this process. CEOs don’t always take our calls when we’re asking about speculative rumors. But when a story is up and posted, it’s amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to give us additional information.

It’s that iterative process, which Jarvis nails completely, that I was trying to guide Damon to. He can like it or hate it, but it works. And readers love it. The only people who don’t like it are competitors who like to point out that a story was partially wrong, and that they got it right later. But the fact is that they didn’t even know there was a story to begin with. Our original post kicked off the process, and they, like us, started digging for the absolute truth.

The other thing Damon conveniently left out of his article are the many, many big stories that we have broken over the years. There’s a reason that we are no. 1 on the TechMeme leaderboard. There’s a reason why we have more than twice the weight of CNET, at no. 2 and the NY Times at no. 3. It’s because we have an exceptional reputation for honesty and hard work, and we spend all our time in the community building friendships with the people who are driving this industry forward. I translated the word “friend” into “source” for Damon so he could understand what I was talking about. I don’t just call these people when I have a question on a story. I also call them to hear about their kid’s elementary school graduation, or to give them advice on which venture capitalist might want to invest in them. They trust me, and they talk to me.

Here are a few of the stories that we’ve broken over the years. These aren’t stories where we followed someone else, they’re things that we broke first and nailed. I don’t think the NY Times or anyone else can point to this kind of track record:

• Google Buys Youtube (we had the parties and the price nailed)
• Yahoo’s Offer To Buy Facebook (we posted internal Yahoo documents showing their valuation modeling of the Facebook deal, and broke the fact of the discussions first)
• Google/Yahoo Search Deal (we broke the news that a deal was happening, down to the time it was being announced, although we were off by two hours because Yahoo changed the time. this was a major stock market mover)
• Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 (you heard it on CrunchGear first, months before anyone else)
• Existence of New Palm Pre (we were the first to report on the existence of the Pre)
• Palm’s second Pre-like phone (we were the first to report on the second Palm phone using the Pre OS)
• Bebo Getting Acquired (we had the price range and speculated on lots of buyers while competitors were yelling that it wasn’t true)
• Facebook In Dubai Raising More Money (story was 100% true, despite the fact that Facebook continuously denied that they were raising more money right up until they announced that they had raised more money)
• Cisco Buys Flip (we had parties and price, no on else was anywhere near this story)
• MySpace Founder/CEO Chris DeWolfe firing (we owned this story, plus we broke the news on the new COO)
• Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook (just as MySpace was kicking off 90,000 registered sex offenders from its site, thousands of them were showing up on Facebook—our post led to inquiries by the Connecticut Attorney General).

These are just a few of the big stories we’ve broken over the years, and there are countless other smaller stories that we’ve owned completely as well (like this). Readers flock to us because we have the most interesting tech news and because we always maintain 100% transparency. Our love of this community is obvious to our readers. I just wish fear of the unknown didn’t blind the NY Times and others to the future of journalism. Because that fear is driving them exactly away from the truth.

I always shudder when journalists say “don’t say something, get a source to say it and then quote them.” It leads to really awful stuff. Pretending that you’re writing one story when you’re really writing another, and then twisting what your sources tell you to fit whatever it is that your editor told you to write isn’t ethical journalism. It may check all the boxes that were laid out for you in journalism school, but it isn’t anything other than op-ed with nothing real to back it up.

Update: NYTimes editor Tim O’Brien, who has trashed us before, tells Jeff Jarvis via Twitter “@jeffjarvis really, it has nothing to do with a “playground fight”. it’s just a a difference of opinion. you’ve aired yours, which is great.” here. One problem - the NY Times article wasn’t labeled as an opinion piece, it was labeled as factual reporting. This is a really serious issue in my opinion.

And someone else on Twitter points out that the NYTimes loves the rumor, too.

Update 2: Robin Wauters points to this post where he questioned a somewhat sensationalist headline on a NYTimes blog post. The title of the post was subsequently changed and a link was added back to us in explanation. The link was later removed by the editor. That’s called process journalism. There is actually a whole laundry list somewhere of NYTimes articles that had to be updated based on later facts coming to light, but I really didn’t want this to devolve into “i know you are but what am i.” however, we can go that route, too, if we have to.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2009 | 12:36 am

New site promotes journalists as individual brands (AP)

AP - First came bylines for once-anonymous journalists. Then came their photos, particularly as news shifted online, and blogs began to carry mug shots of their writers.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Jun 2009 | 12:03 am

Google Chrome's Inclusion of FFMpeg vs. the LGPL

An anonymous reader writes "Google has recently added FFMpeg to Chrome to better support HTML5's video element. FFMpeg is licensed under LGPL 2.1, which states that 'if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library.' Google admits to having obtained a patent license for their use, but still claims they are not violating LGPL. Among the confused we find Håkon Wium Lie and Miguel de Icaza, who wonders what FSF might say. Google doesn't feel like asking FSF for clarification."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 7 Jun 2009 | 11:54 pm

Printable, Rollable Solar Panels Could Go Anywhere

Al writes "A startup based in Toledo, Ohio, has developed a way to make large, flexible solar panels using a roll-to-roll manufacturing technique. Thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells are formed on thin sheets of stainless steel, and each solar module is about one meter wide and five-and-a-half meters long. Conventional silicon solar panels are bulky and rigid, but these lightweight, flexible sheets could easily be integrated into roofs and building facades."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 7 Jun 2009 | 10:48 pm

Quick Peak? Bing’s Reign As #2 Search Engine Lasted One Day.

A couple of days ago we reported statistics from StatCounter suggesting the Bing, Microsoft’s new “decision” engine, had bypassed Yahoo as the number 2 search engine in the U.S. and the world. Well guess what? That same data suggests Bing reign as #2 was extremely short-lived: As in one day. Yes, the same data now suggests that just as quickly as Bing shot up, it’s now heading the opposite way. And in fact, it’s still falling.

On June 4, Bing had over 15% of the U.S. search share market, according to the data. On the same day, Yahoo had just over 10%. The following day, Yahoo had almost 11% while Bing had fallen below 10%. And yesterday, Bing had fallen to 6.68% while Yahoo rose again to 11.33%. Meanwhile, the same data suggests that while Google took a big dip during Bing’s reign, it too has now started moving back upwards as Bing declines. Not that Google was in any real danger — on June 4 (the day of Bing’s #2 position), Google had fallen to 72% of searches in the U.S. Now it’s just about back up to 80%.

Worldwide data shows the story to be basically the exact same. Bing was #2 for a day then Yahoo regained its place as Bing fell.

Of course, it’s important to note that StatCounter is not the be-all end-all measurement tool for such numbers. It claims to track the browsing behavior of over 2 million users across 3 million sites. But the overall trend is undeniable — Bing shot to fame quickly, and once the initial hype wore off, it’s now falling back down. Microsoft needs to keep pushing those TV and web ads to keep its name in people’s minds. Otherwise, Bing runs the risk of having already peaked.

Update: As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And it’s more bad news for Bing. It’s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. — yes, that’s less than what Live.com was at last month.

[thanks Anurag]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 7 Jun 2009 | 10:42 pm

WWDC rumor bingo is go!

We were going to do a roundup of all those rumors, things we know, things we don't know, etc, but then we thought: "Why don't we make some nachos?" So we did. And then it was time to publish the rumor roundup, so we just stuck 'em all on an old-timey bingo card. Seriously, though, this is a pretty good representation of the major points we expect to be covered at WWDC this coming week. I'm not sure how we'll know whether there's a robot Steve Jobs or not, but it seemed prudent to put the possibility on the card regardless. Click through for the big version.

Source: MobileCrunch | 7 Jun 2009 | 10:30 pm

What’s In A Name? That Which We Call An “iPhone 3GS” By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

We’re on the verge of Apple’s WWDC keynote tomorrow morning in San Francisco. We’ll be there covering it live starting at 10 AM PST. After the usual months of speculation, there are two things Apple’s VP of marketing Phil Schiller is expected to focus on during the keynote: Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and the iPhone platform. Obviously, the iPhone 3.0 software will be a big part of that, but most of those details were already given during Apple’s iPhone 3.0 SDK event a few months back. That’s why a new piece of iPhone hardware seems likely to take center stage tomorrow as well.

Details of such a device (or devices) have been trickling out over the past few months. It now seems fairly likely that the device will look similar to the current iPhone 3G, perhaps with a different, more matte-finish back and a loss of the silver ring that goes around the screen now. It will likely feature a better camera — probably 3.2 megapixels (as opposed to the current version’s 2 megapixels) and could have autofocus. The device should also be able to record video. It’s also possible that it could have a front-facing camera, though that may be saved for a future version rather than this one. Speed will likely be a focus as the device should have a faster processor, more RAM and be able to handle faster 3G connection speeds. And that leads to two final rumors: The device’s name and battery life.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made his predictions for the WWDC keynote this morning, talking about what he’s heard and what he’s unsure about. He has a great track record when it comes to such things, so when he says he’s heard a new possible name for the device, it’s at the very least probably a code name, which he notes. And I hope it is a code name, because it’s kind of lame: iPhone 3GS.

As I allude to above, he makes the case that the “S” in iPhone 3GS would stand for “Speed.” That makes sense given what Apple is likely to tout with this version, but is a rather boring naming convention. I would much rather see Apple go with some other names that have been tossed around like “iPhone Video” or the “iPhone Pro.” The latter makes some sense given the other recently reported talk that there will be a slightly cheaper version of the iPhone that will be for sale when this new version comes out. A lot of people including Gruber believe this cheaper version could simply be the current iPhone 3G reduced in price to either $149 or $99.

Eventually, such a model would undoubtedly be phased out in favor of a new, smaller model just as Apple has done with its iPod line. And that’s why I still have some hope that Apple will simply call its new iPhone the “iPhone,” while it gets ready to transition to an “iPhone nano” or whatever they’ll call that when it comes out eventually (not tomorrow). But calling it simply the “iPhone” could raise some confusion if the cheaper iPhone model is still the “iPhone 3G” — some people might be tricked into thinking that the iPhone 3G is more advanced than the one which would be called the iPhone. So that’s a roundabout way to describe why would could be stuck with a clunky iPhone 3GS name.

I just wonder if that name will draw some confusion from people misreading it as the plural version of the iPhone 3G. I can just see ads touting that a store has iPhone 3Gs in stock — while they mean the iPhone 3GS. And just try doing a Google search for “iPhone 3GS,” — yeah, that’s pretty useless. Not that Apple would dictate a name based on a Google search. Of course, I also thought the MacBook Air was a bad name because it sounded like “MacBook Error,” but that seems to have worked out okay for Apple.

The other juicy tidbit in Gruber’s predictions is that he’s heard this new iPhone 3GS will have 15 to 20% better battery life. If true, that is awesome. I recently complained about the diminishing battery life of my iPhone 3G, but when it was still young, I found the device’s battery life to be pretty good — not great, but good, considering how much I was using it. But a 20% boost on top of that would be most welcomed.

[photo: flickr/kennymatic]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch | 7 Jun 2009 | 9:45 pm

Pirate Party Wins At Least One European Parliament Seat

reeeh2000 writes "According to TorrentFreak, with half of polling stations now closed in Sweden, the Pirate Party has at least one guaranteed seat in the EU Parliament. Currently, the party is sitting with 7% of the vote. Depending on how the remaining districts voted, the Pirate Party could win another seat, for a total of two." Reader lordholm adds a link to an article about exit polls in Sweden (link in Swedish) indicating that the Pirate Party will score two seats, writing "According to the polls, the pirate party is the largest party in the 18-30 year age category of voters. The final counting of votes (including around a million postal votes) will not be done until later next week."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 7 Jun 2009 | 9:44 pm

Kilauea Volcano Sees Increase In Activity

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano seems to be active again, with molten lava moving around 300 feet under the crater's floor.The growth of the Halemaumau crater corroborates scientists' certainty that the lava is near the summit, said Janet Babb, a geologist and spokeswoman at the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 7 Jun 2009 | 8:59 pm

Hackers Claim To Hit T-Mobile Hard

dasButcher writes "Hackers are claiming to own T-Mobile USA's servers and to have access to the cellular phone carrier's operations, finance and subscriber data." (Here's the seclists.org post of the claimed breach.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 7 Jun 2009 | 8:41 pm

Seesmic To Launch New Desktop Version, iPhone App And Browser Based Client

I had an informative chat with Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur at the TechFellow Awards Friday night, where he revealed to me the future plans for Seesmic Desktop, a desktop Twitter and Facebook client that’s built on Adobe Air. Seesmic will launch a new version of the desktop client next week that will let users compress their stream of Facebook updates and Twitter messages into one column. Currently, the client divides streams from different accounts and social networks into several columns.

The new version also features a new button that will let you post a Tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. And Seesmic will also let you see tracking stats from links sent out with url shortening service bit.ly. Seesmic’s current version lets you use a variety of other url shorteners, including tr.im and Snurl, but doesn’t let you see stats within the client itself.

According to Le Meur, Seesmic will soon be offering a browser based client. This offering is actually appealing, considering that Adobe’s AIR platform has some strange UI bugs and quirks and tends to use a good amount of resources on computers. And Seesmic will also launch an iPhone app, which is currently under wraps along with the web-based product. Details about the features of the browser client and iPhone app will be officially unveiled at TechCrunch’s Real Time Stream CrunchUp on July 10.

Seesmic Desktop, which faces competition from popular client and rival Tweetdeck and a plethora of others, officially launched in April. Le Meur tells us that Seesmic is getting about 10,000 downloads a day. PeopleBrowsr, another social network aggregator, recently made the opposite switch, adding a desktop Adobe Air client to its browser product.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters recently wrote, the social network aggregator market is almost fully saturated. It seems like every day there are new startups that are trying to venture into the already competitive landscape. So it makes sense that Seesmic would want to not only build up its offering with useful features, but also try to conquer all the mediums—web, desktop and mobile.

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch | 7 Jun 2009 | 8:12 pm

Did the terms of service for Facebook or Twitter change? TOSBack lets you know

Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Websites

If you’ve ever signed up for an account at a site like Flickr or Amazon, you are familiar with terms of service and privacy policies.  Every site you can create an account with has both.  You can’t get an account without agreeing to them, but how many of us actually read them or pay attention to when they get changed?  You know you probably should considering all the personal information you give the sites access to, but you just don’t have the time to read and digest all that technical language.

Well, the Electric Frontier Foundation has launched TOSBack.org, which monitors on a daily basis the terms of service, user agreements, and privacy policies of popular websites.  Currently, TOSBack is tracking 44 policies, including Google, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and YouTube.  Every time a tracked site changes one of the user policies, TOSBack will post an update on its frontpage to let you know about the change.

For every update, there is a link to a TOSBack page showing a side-by-side comparison of the policy changes, or, the full text of the policy if it is for a new service.  The side-by-side highlights what has been deleted and added so you can quickly assess the policy changes.  If you’re interested in the policies of a specific site, you can use the side menu to filter updates by site or by highlighted policies.  For those of you who want things even simpler, you can subscribe to TOSBack’s policy update posts via its RSS feed. 

TOSBack helps you easily stay aware of terms of service and privacy policy changes that could impact not only your usage of a site, but how a site makes use of your personal information.  I recommend it as an essential tool if you make use of the web’s most popular services and want to keep track of your user rights.

Read: [Consumer Watchdog]
Site: [TOSBack]

Full Story » | Written by Merlyn Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 7 Jun 2009 | 7:23 pm

Oh dear: Palm’s Touchstone charger uses some $5 worth of components

$70 for a charger is asking a lot, but when Palm announced the pricing for the Touchstone, we all acquiesced because it was such a cool little device. And of course if you're getting a Pre, you really should have the thing. But it turns out that, while the Pre itself costs nearly as much to make as you're going to pay for it, the Touchstone charger is made of bargain-bin electronics that probably cost only a handful of ducats to manufacture. Highway robbery? Not quite, since Apple (among others) has been doing this kind of thing for a decade.

Source: MobileCrunch | 7 Jun 2009 | 7:08 pm

Pain levels measured in brain using MRI

British scientists say they have for the first time developed a way to use brain scans to objectively measure the levels of pain felt by patients. Using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have found distinct differences between the brains of people who are experiencing pain and those who are not.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 7 Jun 2009 | 5:27 pm

Shortages reported for Palm Pre’s opening day

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile

Mere hours after the Palm Pre went on sale at retailers across the companies, long lines and shortages of the mobile device were being reported.  Many Sprint stores had to start waiting lists in order to deal with the dwindling supply.  One store in San Francisco sold out of their initial stock of 60 Palm Pre phones in less than two hours and reported that many of the buyers already owned an iPhone.

Sprint has yet to release any sales data for the Palm Pre, but estimates for weekend sale range between 50,000 and 200,000.  The Palm had hoped that their timing of the release of the Pre would prove beneficial.  Apple is expected to potentially announce the development of a new version of their iPhone.  It is the hope of Palm and Sprint that the must have device of the year will be the Pre.

To make a push for sales, invite only events were held nationally by Sprint in order to give preferred customers the option of buying the Pre early.  There has been buzz building for several months about the Pre and it is the hope of Sprint that the device will surpass consumer’s expectations. 

Read: [Washington Post]

Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 7 Jun 2009 | 5:14 pm

Fans gather for launch of "iPhone killer" Palm Pre (Reuters)

Reuters - Small crowds gathered on Saturday for the official launch of Pre, the smartphone seen as Palm Inc's best chance to claw back market share from Apple Inc's iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd's Blackberry.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Jun 2009 | 4:58 pm

Experts warn of HIV problems in Britain

Medical experts in Britain say the Department of Health is not doing enough to highlight the risks associated with HIV, leading to its spread. The Sunday Times of London reported senior doctors have accused the British department of not properly testing specific high-risk groups such as black Africans and gay men. The lack of testing for the human immunodeficiency virus has resulted in individuals unknowingly carrying the virus that can lead to AIDS and spreading it via sexual activities, HIV specialists said. All men and women accessing medical care should be routinely offered a test, said Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 7 Jun 2009 | 4:09 pm

Lack of Palm Pre apps could kill Sprint

Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones

It’s been one whole day since the Palm Pre was released upon the masses.  One of the killer features of this phone was supposed to be its ability to have multiple applications open at one time.  That doesn’t sound like an amazing thing, but to be able to listen to the Pandora app while you are typing an e-mail?  That’s handy.

The only problem is that the Palm Pre’s App Catalog is woefully understocked.  Why exactly would Sprint and Palm not develop a multitude of applications for their savior phone?  Also confusing is the fact that the developer’s kit for the Palm Pre was only recently released.  Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said in a recent Cnet interview that both Sprint and Palm have plans to develop apps but that takes time. 

Way back at CES 2009 in January, Palm announced its webOS and how it was supposed to use standard web languages for its applications.  This should mean that it would be relatively easy to create applications for this operating system since there are so many web applications out there already.  You would think that these web apps would need some small modifications to get on the Pre. 

However, here we are after Palm and Sprint’s big day and the App Catalog is not as robust as necessary.  Yes, the other app stores took time to build their libraries of applications.  The only problem is that Sprint and Palm need this device to be a hit. 

A BlackBerry app store is just icing on the cake for RIM; that device has a huge group of loyal users.  The timing issue will probably hurt Sprint more than Palm since the Pre will become available on other carriers eventually. 

Maybe Sprint should get on that “Now Network” and tell its developers to get apps flowing as soon as possible to keep the company afloat.  They need to create a must-buy situation with the Sprint version of the Palm Pre before it’s too late. 

Watch: [Dan Hesse’s Interview]

Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 7 Jun 2009 | 3:33 pm

Garmin says Nuviphone should be ready soon

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones

With the Palm Pre, new iPhone, new T-Mobile Android phone, the summer is already heating up rapidly.  Who knows, the addition of the Nuviphone could be right around the corner, which would definitely create an interesting dilemma for new smartphone shoppers. 

On Friday, Garmin President and COO, Cliff Pemble announced some new details about the Nuviphone, specifically about availability in Asia and the United States.  The Nuviphone was announced by Garmin back in 2008, and here we are a year later still no Nuviphone to be seen.  The award for delaying a highly anticipated the phone the best goes to Garmin instead of Palm.  Anyway, so Pemble announced at a shareholders meeting on Friday that the Nuviphone is “getting very close” to launching in the States with a specific carrier. 

Originally, they were going to launch the Nuviphone as an open phone in the market, not having it be restricted to one carrier.  However, due to a large amounts of carriers wanting the Nuviphone, Garmin went back to the drawing board to work on the design of the smartphone.  In the end, they teamed up with Asustek and created two models of the phone, the Linux based G60, and the Win-Mo 6.1 M20.  In addition, they plan to launch an Android based Nuviphone in 2010

For those of us based in Asian countries, Pemble announced that the Nuviphone will be released as an open phone either this month or July.  Still, this makes an interesting case for all the new phones available this summer, especially if it is released in the States.  Consumers are going to have to make a tough decision between all these exciting new phones. 

Via [TWICE]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 7 Jun 2009 | 1:16 pm

Japan explores using cell phones to stop pandemics (AP)

AP - A few months from now, a highly contagious disease will spread through a Japanese elementary school. The epidemic will start with several unwitting children, who will infect others as they attend classes and wander the halls.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Jun 2009 | 12:37 pm