Google and Verizon Sold Out the Internet

Net Neutrality Under Fire

I don't know what's more sickening, the proposal I have to talk about here or the fact that it's not likely that enough people are going to care about it to stop it. Google and Verizon have made a joint policy proposal that dresses itself as supporting net neutrality though it really smacks it in the face. It supports great ideas like transparency, protection of customers' right to send what they want over the wire, granting the FCC power to regulate the broadband access (but not its content), a commitment to using the fee on consumers' phone bills to help build a nationwide broadband network, and non-discrimination of traffic that would hurt competition. However, it only supports these things for wired networks, and given the pervasive nature of mobile Internet access and the hopeful future of 4G, this is a pretty enormous loophole. It's also conceptually silly to divide the Internet into wired and wireless where one of the two becomes a second class citizen. They claim this is because of the way that wireless works, but that's a total cop out. There's also other not-so-exciting provisions including the ability to create a separate network that an ISP can charge extra for if it's different from regular Internet access (whatever the Hell that means) and the power of network management to improve service quality. Network management assumes a lot of trust in companies that have traditionally only screwed their customers. In any case, isn't network management just a back door out of actually improving their networks to not need such management?

Senator Al Franken has rightly lambasted the agreement and called out how laughable some of the details are. I think his most potent argument is that it doesn't make sense that the major players in an industry get to write the rules on how they operate. Another really going point he brought up is regarding the future of what can happen if we let these companies do what they want.

Make no mistake, Google and Verizon have sold us out to ensure their success - they've shown that they don't care what's best for the continuation of innovation on the Internet. They're carving up the rules in a way that favors what's sure to be most profitable in the coming decades while making concessions to simply wired Internet. An Internet that's not neutral puts in danger free competition on the Internet by creating tiers to protect the websites that are already doing well without giving competitors a fighting chance. Write to your congressmen and tell them that this policy does not make any sense.

Xbox Live vs. Android Mobile Gaming

Engadget got the scoop on the set of launch titles for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 and it's not a bad list, but definitely nothing to stop the presses for. To be fair, we still haven't seen footage of Halo: Waypoint, Star Wars, or Castlevania, so Microsoft hasn't shown all their cards yet. Supposedly, performance is pretty solid, but I didn't see anything showing off what separates it from the iPhone, Android, or Palm Pre (which has a surprising number of 3-D games). What happened to the Xbox 360 integration that was demoed months ago?

Comparatively, there's very strong rumors of a Sony Ericsson phone that crosses a touchscreen Android phone with a PSP Go sliding controller. Heavy hitter franchises seem to be part of the equation including LittleBigPlanet and God of War. Given that the PSP already integrates with the PS3, if Sony can pull off an Android device that integrates with the PS3 with really strong titles, they could beat Microsoft to the punch and really put together a compelling product for casual gamers and hardcore gamers.

I don't think video games are something that should be underestimated when it comes to mobile platforms - when you look around in meetings and on buses, you see people playing games on their phones a lot. It's a burgeoning industry and that's why the iPhone got on the bandwagon with partners like EA very early on.

More Droids

After about a year now, the Droid 2 is finally here, which is the true successor to the original Motorola Droid phone since it has an improved physical keyboard. It seems to improve upon the Droid, which was already a pretty highly celebrated phone, in every way including the screen and camera.

Meanwhile, the R2-D2 Droid was announced. It will be available next month only and only online, so it'll be a true collector's edition type of phone. I think this is kind of weird - as cool as it is to have a unique phone, I'd be afraid of buying a phone that there's so few out there for Verizon to care about supporting. Of course, there's enough Star Wars geeks out there that this thing will almost surely sell out.

Facebook Places

After much talk and speculation, Facebook's Places API for geolocation check-ins has been announced and is now available to play with. It's supposed to play nice with Gowalla and Foursquare, but I can't imagine that those two companies don't feel threatened. Foursquare believes that it's a different enough product to co-exist with Facebook Places, but given how much more pervasive Facebook is, it'll be interesting to see what really happens. As silly as it may seem, these services have a lot of potential in that it's something that small businesses can really sink their teeth into, but their profitability is still yet to be fully mined.

Google TV Struggles

Google TV was announced not too long ago as a product that basically mashed up Chrome, Google, YouTube, and your TV to provide a rich television watching experience. Apparently I was one of only a few who thought this was a compelling concept if done right. So far not so good for Google as they struggle to sign on partners. They'd like to have content owners share information to help Google link live television with offerings on these content owners' websites, but traditional media still isn't sold on the profitability of what Google is setting out to provide.

Maybe Google needs better TPMs - how do you get this far in a product (i.e. as far as telling the public about it) without having dug into the feasibility of support from the people whose support you'd need? It may be that this is ahead of its time, but I think Google may have known it was kind of pie in the sky and that it could take years to really get off the ground - Google is the sort of company with the resources to be in it for the long haul. I really do hope they pursue it - I think getting video on demand to work well in the living room has been a struggle for everyone, including Apple, but each company to try makes a small dent in it.

The Small Stuff

Just a few quick articles in closing:

Gizmodo has an awesome article explaining common symbols, like USB and Bluetooth and other such techie things. They're not at all things you'd guess unless you really knew the inside story.

This is an awesome parody trailer of The Social Network substituting Twitter for Facebook. Even though I think The Social Network will be terrible (not even David Fincher can salvage that idea), I have to give props for its trailer being pretty good.

Speaking of Facebook, Giga Om has an interesting piece talking about why so many Facebook employees who have been there from the beginning are leaving now. It's mostly normal stuff when a new company starts to age, I don't think it's particularly telling.

If you know of any kids who show an interest in computers then please direct them to one of these tools to help teach kids the fundamentals of programming. It's like giving a kid lego blocks - they're the tools to build what's in their heads.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I really was hoping to get to a full post this week, but a number of things have come up that I'm not at liberty to talk about and so I'm at the point now that I'm past the point of exhaustion. Still, I do have some words in my head that I feel are worth giving up sleep to share, so I hope you'll enjoy my review of Scott Pilgrim.

Best Comic Movie Ever

It was with very little fanfare that I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on opening night. The ads were never really appealing to me and I felt like Michael Cera was being typecast so I figured this movie would be a flop. Still, there was enough positive buzz that I agreed to come along when a friend wanted to go and I'm floored at how opposite of a reaction I had to this film. Not only is it probably the biggest surprises of my life as far as movies go (not plot-wise, just in my feelings about it), but it's hands down one of the most fun experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.

The plot of Scott Pilgrim is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from the trailers: Michael Cera is Scott Pilgrim, who has fallen in love with a very alluring girl who, as it so happens, has 7 evil exes who have banded together to ensure that no one dates her if they can't. You really have to go into the movie accepting that this is the plot because it's not anything deeper than that, and that's a big part of what I love about it. This is one of the few movies I've seen in a long while that understands exactly what it needs to do and really nails it. It focuses on a few things and blows them out of the park. So even though the romance story is never fully fleshed out, it's the first movie I've seen that has felt like a comic book and a video game have come to life, slept together, and produced a child on the big screen.

I don't know how true it is to the comic book, but that's irrelevant because it stands on its own as something really smart if you can appreciate the references and things it tries to parody. You don't have to be a gamer or a comic book fan to enjoy the film, you're just guaranteed to love it if you are either. I never thought I'd see a movie that got so many things right about video games - everything from nonsensical fights to collecting coins where it doesn't make sense to a ton of subtle things that are just elegantly done. It's either subtle or obviously over-the-top, it never beats a joke to death. I laughed a lot - from even before the movie formally started - but I also saw very few promotional materials.

Aside from those facets, the music is perfect for the movie. I almost felt like it had as much music as a musical without the baggage that would entail. The cast really contributing to pulling off the music though. I believed in them in their roles, as crazy as the world they lived in ended up being. I believed their passion for their music, and that was a cool feeling. The way they weaved music into the storyline was truly clever.

I can't leave out how much heart this movie had either. I don't mean gushy have-a-good-cry heart, I just mean that it actually makes you feel good to be a nerd if you're a nerd. It makes you want to go out and jam out on your guitar or play Street Fighter or something - I just felt pumped and enamored with how much the director seemed to love music and video games and comics.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a movie everyone will love. I can't imagine anyone hating it because it just makes you feel so good walking out of it, but I can see parts of it being harder to appreciate without being in your 20s or early 30s. It is somewhat of a niche movie, but I wouldn't be ashamed to show it to anyone (assuming they're at least a teenager). I will say that the writing is weak at times. Even though I did identify somewhat with the romance, it was still at times handled a little strangely. I can see people taking issue with the characters, but I actually liked how non-traditional they were. They weren't people you could totally peg down, but in a good way. One minor gripe I had was that the ending was possibly a little more drawn out than it needed to be, but I didn't really mind that much.

This movie is easily an A+ to me, and I urge you to please go and see it. It's only done like $10 million and I think it'll make it up over the course of its run in theaters and on home video, but I feel bad that the makers may not feel the love from the box office that I felt for this movie. I feel silly having had such a strong positive reaction to a romantic comedy action movie that appeals to the 12-year-old inside of me, but I can't lie: I enjoyed this film and can't wait to get it on Blu-ray.

Inception

I also saw Inception over the weekend and I know it's been talked about to death, but I just wanted to quickly say that I agree about it being a must-watch. You may want to see it before Scott Pilgrim because it's definitely not as light overall as Scott Pilgrim, but it's an experience on par with Memento. I really didn't think it was as complicated as people said it was - I mean unlike Donnie Darko, they actually explicitly explained ideas to you. Albeit, often in more words than necessary, but they did. Go see it in theaters because the visuals are truly stunning - not in the way that Avatar was, but more just from a creativity standpoint. If you want my score: easily an A.

A Prohibition on Software Patents

The Software Patents Situation

This article calls for the abolishing patents, but I don't think I fully agree so I'm going to stack them up with those in support of the prohibition of alcohol. As I'm sure we can all agree, Prohibition sucked.

The US patent system is by no means perfect, but I don't think I agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to protect their products. Just because it's being abused so badly in technology doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. When it boils down to it, the real problem with patents seems to be patent trolls. Granted, there's also a problem of patents being granted for silly things, but I think patent trolls are really what has created an patent arms race.

What's wrong with having patents for products you actually create though? Rather than squatting on an idea, I think you have the right to protect a genuinely good idea that you develop a product based on. I don't think you should be allowed to own ideas that never materialized or that you have no vested interest in other than to sue people because that's contrary to the basis of patents.

Blackberry Torch

A survey came out last week showing that less than half of all Blackberry users want to stick with RIM, but I think smartphones are a market where it's hard to predict what brand of phone you're getting next unless you're a month or two (or less) out from the decision.

Their newest phone is coming out in a couple of days and it's a doozy. It's a slider with a full physical keyboard, though a little thinner than typical Blackberry fare. Engadget has a full review. The OS is a pretty big shift here as it borrows elements from the iPhone, including a mobile browser worthy of the year it's being used in. It seems like the UI is a true evolution of the standard Blackberry OS, but there's nothing it has under the hood that 1ups any other current phone - it just joins the table they're already sitting at. One of the commenters said it best: it would be a great phone if it came out in 2008.

Wave is Dead

Google finally killed Wave, the little product that never could. Google went to great lengths to generate buzz for Wave before it came out, so what went wrong? Marketing to nerds is a tricky thing, and if you can't make a compelling case for it then they move on to the next shiny new thing. It's not enough to be a novelty, your product has to serve a definable purpose or set of purposes. I think wave was a great idea that didn't have enough practicality behind it. The curse of a great engineer can be not having the right direction. Still, I think it's cool that Google took the risk anyway. No risk, no reward - that's the story of any great CEO.

Other Stuff

A page derailed my night, so I have to wrap up early here.

Amazon launched the Kindle store in the UK.

Barnes and Noble is trying out new and used textbook purchases as well as rentals.

Android now has the largest smartphone market share in the US.

Make sure you keep your Windows machine protected - here's some great free antivirus choices.

This is a list of some Google services that don't get much attention despite being pretty nifty.

New Kindles

Black Graphite is the New White Plastic

The coolest thing to happen last week is probably the one thing I shouldn't talk terribly much about: the new Kindles. I'm just going to go on record that I work no where near anyone on the Kindle team and I have no knowledge of how that business operates or its strategy. Independent of being an Amazonian, I'm finally really excited about the Kindle now. I was definitely very skeptical when it first came out and was concerned when the iPad came out at its competitive price point. Though it's a totally different device, the comparisons are inevitable because of the form factor. Anyone who says reading a book is better on the iPad than the Kindle is definitely an Apple fanboy - it's technologically superior for reading plain text. At $139 for the entry WiFi model, it's finally at a price point fitting of a standalone book reader, and features better battery life (up to a month now), faster page turns, and better contrast ratio than the previous generation. I believe the reason for the switch to black graphite is probably because that makes it easier to read in sunlight, but you can still get it in white for the 3G model at $189.

I'm really curious now to see how Barnes and Noble will respond. Now that the Kindle has a model at $60 less and also available in-person at Target stores, the Nook is quickly losing what competitive advantage it had. Still, with e-Book sales outpacing physical book sales, there's gotta be enough to go around, but how big a piece of the pie will Apple and Barnes and Noble get compared to Amazon?

Ballmer is an Idiot

Steve Ballmer is really pissing me off nowadays. Ever since he's taken over, he's made many terrible decisions, including killing the Courier. This was the super creative tablet that Microsoft was working on that Ballmer decided to cut. Now he admits that the iPad is their number one threat and they need to compete with it. It's frustrating that he had a product that stood a chance against the iPad and threw it away, and now they have little hope of taking on the iPad. Microsoft has gone from being known for innovation to being way behind on market trends. Instead of trying to create another iPad now, why don't they either resurrect the Courier or invest in something totally different?

Windows Phone 7 and Free Bumpers

A lot of interesting stuff has been going on in cell phones. Ars Technica has a really good preview of Windows Phone 7 going in great depth into some nice UI touches and little nuggets of their impressions, like the keyboard being on par with the iPhone keyboard. Still, it's clear that there are a lot of question marks to be filled in. How well will the Xbox Live integration work? Will developers give the platform a shot? Given that someone leaked Microsoft's internal announcement to give all employees a Windows Phone 7 device, it's clear that Microsoft is definitely serious about the platform, so we just have to hope that it will all come together in the end.

I'm a little late on this since I missed last week's post, but Apple finally decided to respond to all the negative coverage of its iPhone antenna woes by giving away the bumpers that pretty much solve the issue. I have to bring up something that Molly Wood and others were predicting at CNet before this event happened: Apple never owned up to a problem and instead spoke at great length about how the problem had been overblown. It's definitely a smart strategy because it makes them look like they've been bullied into having to do this free bumper thing even though it's clear they had to know about the issue to create this case, which they hadn't done for any previous iPhone. In any case, it's great that they're doing the right thing now, but if they're only doing so until September 30 I wonder if they've figured out a hardware fix for the issue so that future batches won't have the issue?

Google has finally killed the Nexus One. Google has proved that people don't want a phone they can't play with at a store, even if it is a somewhat compelling product. It will still be sold abroad, but no more for US consumers.

Ars Technica has a ridiculously detailed review of the Droid X, and it seems like probably the best phone Motorola has put out in a while. Still, the UI seems to fall short of the Droid Incredible in visual flare. Plus, at a screen size rivaling the Dell Streak you have to wonder if anyone wants something that big in their pocket. There is such a thing as too big for a smartphone.

WPA2 Hole Discovered

WPA2 has finally been cracked - kinda. It was only a matter of time before a hole was discovered, and it doesn't render the standard useless but does damage it for enterprise use. It turns out that the standard's language allows for an authorized user on the network to send malicious packets to others on the network as well as sniff the packets of others. For most people, this probably isn't such a big deal, but could be worse for business use. The problem with fixing it is that all implementers would have to fix it, and it's unlikely to organize something like that. The next best bet would be a revision to WPA2, but there doesn't appear to be language in the standard to support something like that. It's a rather interesting conundrum.

Also in security news recently, Apple was deemed the company with the most security vulnerabilities in its software. So much for their claims of having the safest platform. The issues weren't in OS X, but rather in other ancillary products. Still, it helps debunk the claim that you can ignore security just because you have a Mac.

Funny Videos

I missed this a while back, but the guy who posted his customer service cartoon ranting about iPhone fanboys also posted one sticking it to Android fanboys. It's almost as hilarious.

In an example of social media marketing gone right, the Old Spice marketing guys decided to create a bunch of videos with Isaiah Mustafa responding to people on Twitter with short videos, including Alyssa Milano. They did a pretty awesome job.

Final Notes

I'm out of time, but here are a few other stories I found worthwhile.

Gawker has a funny post on the stupidest things caught on video that people said about the Internet, including the infamous Al Gore quote on his greatest invention. You may recognize certain terminology sourced from some of the videos.

I've seen reports off and on recently about issues with cell phone manufacturers and building screens, and it looks like HTC has had enough issues with AMOLED that they've decided to move to Super LCD for these devices. AMOLED hit the market a few years back and was quite impressive, but apparently still not easy to make.

If you're wondering what to load on your Android phone, PC Mag has you covered. Makes me a little envious on a few of those, I have to admit.

YouTube has increased their upload limit to 15 minutes, so now you can post longer useless videos.

If you want to see a real ninja badge, you have to check this out.

iPhone jailbreaking is now legal!

Hope everyone has an excellent start to their August.

Can Digg Come Back?

Digg v4

Turns out that I'm doing well enough after the surgery to blog, so thought I'd put together a little post since last week was a bit light on the news.

I didn't want to talk about it until it was actually in production, but several people have gotten their eyes on the next iteration of Digg, and it's definitely a bigger change than previous upgrades. The question is, is it enough to reinvigorate Digg? Unlike a lot of other folks, I really don't think Digg is dying - not by a long shot. They still get a lot of traffic, they've just been on a decline. Despite the fact that the new Digg looks way too much like Facebook, I think it has a ton of potential and is the best direction to take the social news site in.

Currently, Digg works by just having stories voted up by its users within various categories so that you read the news that the masses deem most interesting. However, this process has proven to be flawed as the wisdom of the masses isn't always so wise and often skewed by people who you don't agree with (i.e. fanboyism is rampant). The new paradigm unashamedly takes a little from Facebook and more from Twitter in that you follow individual sites and users to get the stories that they think are valuable instead of the general rabble. This is one of the few application of social networking these days that actually makes sense. I think most of us talk to our friends about some story they saw or read about and want to share on almost a daily basis, so Digg would be ideal for that.

Another cool feature is that websites can automatically submit their newest stories to Digg. I think this can add up to a winning combination for Digg. By getting the content providers more involved and empowering the little guy, I think they can bring back a lot of people that have probably left Digg in recent years. All they have to do is make sure it gets publicized well enough. If this doesn't work though, it could potentially be the beginning of the end for Digg, but I think Digg would have a pretty long tail even then.

Twitter and e-Commerce

Twitter is trying a new way to make money, but it's a rather unoriginal idea: twitter feeds for retail deals. This has been done by Amazon and several other sites as well as a ton of small businesses already. It's not that it's a bad idea, but I think it's bad that it took them this long to put something like this together. It's not the best sign of Twitter's future if they're this behind the curve.

YouTube Leanback and 2304p

I like how often YouTube experiments with new things. Last week two cool features were revealed. One of them is called Leanback, which feels an awful lot like a precursor to Google TV. It basically lets you experience YouTube on a bigger screen, or even just on your computer screen but with minimal user interaction unlikely typical YouTube browsing. It provides better flow between videos you'd be interested in given your subscriptions and viewing history, and you can search and immediately consume videos from your search results.

Less cool, because it's less useful, is the ability for YouTube to support more than 1080p resolution: 2304p (4096 x 2304). Very few people have displays that support this and is probably more ideal for a small theater than your living room, but I do like that YouTube is thinking big.

iPad Ad Second Look

For the record: I think the iPad is really cool for what it is. I have no desire to get one because I know I'd play with it for a while and then never touch it, but it is compelling. Still, I can't resist pointing out this analysis of an ad showing a scene from Star Trek on the device in a better format than you'd see in real life. Apple did this also with Flash on the iPad - why do they keep fudging their ads like this if they already have a product that makes people piss their pants? It's just in poor taste, and it's disappointing. The one thing I've always come to expect from Apple is quality, even in their advertising. The antenna scandal with the newest iPhone and iPad chicanery like this is just unfortunate.

Other Stuff

There are a couple of stories I noted that I found interesting but have nothing to say about, really.

Java developer is now one of the most difficult positions to fill in IT. It's ironic how many more people know C/C++ than Java given how much more confusing they are, in my opinion.

Facebook has bought Nextstop, which is in the business of user-generated destination guides.

Have a sunny week, everyone!

Apple's iPhone Launch Under Fire

You're Holding it Wrong

Believe it or not, I'm tired of doing derogatory Apple stories. Still, this has been too big a story to pass up, so I'm going to speak my piece about the iPhone 4 launch and keep it brief.

As is now pretty famous, it turns out that holding the iPhone 4 naturally affects the antenna such that you lose some signal and may be more prone to drop calls. AT&T is notorious in many parts of the country for dropped calls, so this is a pretty big drawback to a release that a lot of users seemed pretty pumped for, especially since a lot of folks skipped out on the 3GS in anticipation of it. This is a company that has built its entire brand on great design, so something like this is really an unacceptable blow to their brand.

If they just dealt with it responsibly, I don't think it'd be such a big story because I'm sure that for many people it isn't actively a huge problem. Instead though, they're claiming that a software glitch is to blame and, literally, that people shouldn't put their palm on the bottom part of the phone. What's truly outrageous is that they're selling a bumper that fixes the problem. So they knew far in advance that this was going to be a problem and decided to sell a way overpriced solution instead of giving it away for free. It's amazing how many people are ok with buying this thing. I personally wouldn't get one just out of principle until they gave a free solution. I know not all iPhone users are that silly, but I'm a fan of this really funny video criticizing an iPhone buyer. Too bad the guy who made it was fired from Best Buy, but Best Buy's terrible customer experience and management is a story for another day.

I'm not usually a big fan of class action lawsuits because they're often stupid, but I'm glad people are filing them against Apple for this. It's terrible to think that they can get away with selling an obviously flawed product. It's just unethical. It's like selling a car that explodes at the slightest touch knowing how unsafe it is *cough*Ford*cough*.

Aside from this flaw, the new iPhone seems like a cool product. Face Time is surely going to bring about many more phones with video chat, and the improved screen is going to lead to more competition in screen quality, as well. It's a bigger evolution than the 3GS was.

Hello Samsung Epic, Goodbye Kin

It looks like Sprint may finally be getting a cool Android phone with a physical keyboard soon: the Samsung Epic 4G. I'm sad to say that it may end up being my next phone if Palm doesn't come up with an improved Pre (I just need it faster and with better battery life). Engadget got their hands on it and it seems pretty damn snappy. I don't know if Samsung has the best track record, but I think Samsung has enough really solid products on the market in general (especially TVs) that they can still recover.

Sadly, it looks like Kin is a different story. Well, maybe it's not so sad since the Kin was an odd little device. Microsoft has finally axed the little feature phone that couldn't. While that article from Ars is a pretty great summary of the situation, my own take on the situation is that Microsoft was building for a market that didn't really exist anymore, partially because their product cycles are so long and they started work on it back when a successor to the Sidekick made sense. Microsoft has so many great engineers, they're just being mis-managed as a whole with these long product cycles and silly strategic decisions. I think it'd do a lot better to split up into a few key pieces that operate independently and try and drive down some of the politics.

YouTube and iTunes Hacked

The YouTube "hack" is actually pretty simple, but still an interesting story. They were susceptible to an injection attack, which just means that YouTube didn't sanitize comments well enough to check for people writing scripts in the comments and have them execute each time the page is loaded. This could mean a pop-up alert box telling you that Justin Bieber is dead. I'm pretty surprised it wasn't discovered sooner since that's a pretty obvious problem, but it could be that people knew and didn't make it publicly known.

What's much worse though is a still-developing story on reviews being doctored in iTunes by accounts getting hacked to buy hundreds of dollars worth of apps and write one-word reviews. What was once believed to be a single person turns out to be somewhat of a conspiracy as multiple people are apparently doing this. It's likely that Apple has known about this and kept it quiet, but whatever the case may be it definitely casts doubts on how controlled iTunes really is. Don't be too hard on Apple though: it's inevitable that the biggest app store would get targetted by disingenuous people like this.

There's actually one more security story, but admittedly less interesting. Foursquare had a security hole allowing people's private check-ins to be seen publicly. It was later dealt with, but the response time was definitely disturbing. Just another example showing that no matter what you set your privacy at online websites, you can't be 100% sure that it's protected.

Big Decision for YouTube

This story is a bit old, but didn't get a whole lot of coverage despite how big of a deal it is. A district court ruled that YouTube is immunity from being sued by Viacom for copyright infringement because they remove infringing material as soon as they're notified it. Basically, the fact that infringing content can be posted to YouTube is legal as long as YouTube takes down infringing content, but this is not enough for Viacom or the RIAA, who really want blood.

How do these people sleep at night? I can't believe that there are people out there who subscribe to this nonsense that the Internet should be on lockdown so that the rich can get richer.

Quickies

Ok, it's been a long week so I'm exhausted and need to get to bed soon, but there are a bunch of stories I don't have time to really discuss from the past couple of weeks that I think are still worthwhile.

CNN Money interviewed Jeff Bezos and I just loved his answer to what revs him up. He's really one of the greatest CEOs of our time.

Another low-key story that I think is really important is that some are pushing for HDBaseT to replace HDMI, which adds Internet connectivity to the audiovisual equation and looks very similar to Cat 5 cables.

Amazon has acquired deals site Woot, and their internal memo regarding it is really priceless. When I first read it at the office I was literally laughing out loud and distracting some co-workers.

It's been rumored for a while and is now official: Hulu is rolling out Hulu Plus for people who want Hulu as it is now, plus back-episodes from shows' entire runs. If they had more shows, I don't think that'd be such a bad deal, but I don't know what'd keep you from just getting it for a month and watching the entirety of whatever show you're interested in. Anyway, it's $10 a month, and ads are still going to roll.

Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189 and has released a new Kindle DX in black graphite at a new price of $379. From what I hear from current DX users, the new case is going to help with making it even more readable in bright light. Oh, and the old one is $20 cheaper.

If you're shopping for a new ISP, PC World has a great study of ISP speeds across the country based on people's broadband speed tests. Looks like Verizon FiOS is the winner in many areas - too bad they have atrocious customer service.

If you're shopping for an HD TV, Maximum PC has some excellent tips for you.

If you're a Java developer, you pretty much have to watch this trailer for "Java 4-Ever". It's not what you may think it is, it's much funnier. Not entirely NSFW, but mostly is.

Ok, I'm having my wisdom teeth removed this weekend so I anticipate being in too much pain to blog next week, but will try to post the following week. Peace out!

Homebuying for Dummies

It's really killing me that I can't scrounge up the time for a full post because E3 had plenty to talk about. However, juggling unpacking with my normal life has been more time-consuming than I envisioned. I should be back in action soon, but this week my time was taken partially by a speech I had to write for Toastmasters. So instead of a true post, I thought I'd just paste the entirety.

It's been a little while since I've delivered a speech because I made the bold decision back in late March that I was ready to buy my first home. Now that I've moved in, I feel a bit like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix when he was being programmed to fight: instead of kung fu though, I've learned a lot about the process of buying a home. It's not uncommon in Seattle for people to rent a place much longer than in other cities. Hence, I felt like it would be appropriate to talk about the part of my journey leading up to negotiating an offer, starting with deciding if you should buy.

Deciding whether buying a home is right for you is a very difficult question that there's not an exact method to. If there's one thing you take away from this speech, I hope it's that buying a home is a choice that only you, and possible your significant other, can control. Do not let peer pressure get to you like a bad after school special. To be precise, the right reasons to buy include that you're looking to settle down somewhere for at least 5 years, you have the job security to afford a mortgage, you want nicer amenities than a rental can offer, you want more room than you can get in a rental, or you want a place you can freely make changes to. The wrong reasons to buy are for a tax break, to make a quick buck in flipping the home, or simply for prestige. This is a major financial decision. Don't take it lightly and don't be afraid to rent a little longer to help you build up some cash.

Before you embark on searching for your home, you need to decide a budget. Ideally, you do not want to spend more than 28% of your gross income in monthly payments for your home, including taxes and homeowners' dues. Let that be a hard upper ceiling and then modify that ceiling to what you would be comfortable with given your usual budget. Take a firm stand here and stick with it. Wavering above your limit is a financial minefield. It's a very good idea at this point to get pre-qualified by at least one lender. This legally means very little, but an honest lender can encourage or scold your price range at this point. I had a great experience with Cornerstone and would be happy to speak with anyone afterwards in more detail about them. You can change your lender before you offer, so you're not committed yet.

You're still not ready to set sail on the high seas of house hunting though: you need to set your criteria first. Decide on your must-haves, and then pick a location with homes fitting your restrictions. Some buyers need to bask in the glow of natural sunlight while others can't live without a quiet patio for their morning cup of coffee. You will not find the perfect home. Before you even set foot in a potential home, understand that compromise is key. You would be surprised how cheap major changes can be, like painting walls or changing carpet. So keep only a short list of must-haves. Don't forget to make sure that the location you pick fits your price range: Redfin.com is a great resource to research this.

If you've made it this far, then you're ready to enlist the help of a realtor. While all realtors are mainly interested in making a sale, their advice can be invaluable. It's not a good idea to see a bunch of places without representation. It can be especially messy for your agent getting paid on closing if the seller thinks you found the place on your own. I used Redfin and had a great experience all around. I enjoyed taking charge of the search though. You'll need to turn to a traditional agent for a more controlled experience. My agent was mainly an advisor and kept all the paperwork in order. I had what's called a Redfin field agent to show me condos. Good questions to ask a traditional realtor include "how many clients do they have right now" and "how many sales have they made in your desired area in the past year".

Once you have your realtor, the fun really begins. You get to tour potential homes. Be sure to take notes at each place on things you liked and disliked. Take note of things like how much HOA dues are and what they cover, what appliances stay, whether or not there's parking, and don't be afraid to talk to residents to get their honest opinions. I recommend taking video tours of each place for reference later. The Flip Mino camcorders on Amazon are affordable and produce crisp picture and sound.

Trying to explain how you know you've found the one is like trying to explain how you fell in love: all you know is that it happened. One indication for me was that any place I saw afterwards paled in comparison, even though they were actually quite nice. You'll also be able to smell the aromas of a dinner party with friends and feel the joy of relaxing evenings on your couch. Even after you reach this point, I'd encourage you to see at least four more places and sleep on it. This is risky advice in a strong market, but I urge you to not rush this decision.

When you're ready to make an offer, the negotiations begin. I could give a whole speech on negotiations, but the one tip I'd like to offer for now is to be reasonable. Don't offer an offensively low price on a property you know is worth more - your agent can best guide on you on this.

Getting to the point of making an offer on a home is a long process. You have to decide whether to buy, set criteria, pick a location, get pre-qualified, and find a realtor before you can even start touring. However, you stand to reap many fruits in the purchase of a suitable house or condo. Last night, I walked out of the shower into my living room bathed in the orange light of sunset. I can't put a price on that, and I'm sure that you'll feel the same when you get the keys to your dream home.

No Post This Week

Between moving and other unexpected events over the weekend, no time for a post this week. I should be back in full force next week though.

Apple Under Investigation

The DOJ Investigates Apple

Once again, we have a slow news week. And, once again, I'm slightly relieved because I've been busy getting ready to move to my new place.

The biggest story happens to be an Apple story: the US Department of Justice is investigating Apple for suspicion of anti-competitive activities. It has come out since that the initial impetus for thee investigation was Apple disallowing Flash on the iPhone, but it has since shifted to center around Apple's agreements with music publishers to deny music to Amazon MP3. One thing I know is true (this isn't insider information, I heard this outside of Amazon) is that Apple has leveraged iTunes to threaten some publishers out of being a part of Amazon's $5 album deals and other promotions. I'm not sure that all these things are illegal, but I certainly consider them somewhat unethical. Regardless, I'm anxious to learn what goes on behind the scenes. iTunes has retained fairly large market share in the face of Amazon MP3, which has a pretty large selection and is on several mobile platforms, including Android, and has been pretty aggressive with cross-product promotions to drive traffic to Amazon MP3.

It definitely looks like Adobe may have initially filed the complaint. If that's true, it seems really childish. I think Adobe is really fighting a losing battle with Apple - the more they antagonize Apple the more they're hurting their relationship. There's nothing anti-competitive about disallowing Flash on the iPhone because it's freely available on Macs and PCs - I don't know that Apple actually has a majority share in smartphones in the U.S., but definitely not worldwide.

You have to love the irony that Apple is basically following the Microsoft life cycle. They've been getting bigger and bigger with success that seems to have no end and massive market shares in their strong sectors, and are now likely to be embroiled in antitrust litigation.

Flash on Android

Meanwhile, what is Adobe really doing with Flash on mobile platforms? There's finally a beta for Android, but it doesn't even support Hulu still and only works on Froyo (Android 2.2) due to API requirements. It looks like the issue with Hulu is legal, but if you're going to release a mobile version of Flash that's only of partial use, then what's the point? The hype for mobile Flash is so old that I don't know who's going to care when (and if) it finally does come out. So far, the speed tests aren't impressive.

Dell Launches Streak

Why does Dell keep trying to making portable consumer electronics that aren't laptops? Their latest creation is the Streak tablet, which is the analog of the iPod touch for Android: it's slightly bigger than a cell phone (5" wide) and is geared towards everything but making calls. This is by far one of the stupidest gadgets I've seen in a while. I didn't care for the iPad, but it was a beautiful device that had some niche use cases - this thing is useless. There are already great Android smart phones out there that can fit in your pocket, and if you want a bigger screen then you can get a full-on tablet like the iPad. This thing seems like it's for indecisive people: people who want a bigger screen but not too big. If this thing doesn't flop I'll be totally astounded.

The Next Apple TV?

I usually don't report Apple rumors since they're a dime a dozen, but Engadget has pretty reliable and believable word on the new Apple TV and it sounds like it could whoop Google TV, if true. It's supposedly based on iPhone 4, though with support for 1080p and at a $99 price point. It would focus on cloud storage, as well - which may explain the price point (less onboard storage). It would be cool if they leveraged Lala in this product, as well. Unfortunately, they're not likely to announce it until after WWDC so we'll have to wait a while longer to find out more. It sounds like it could be a pretty killer product if they pull it off right.

Tabnapping

This is a somewhat interesting malware possibility, although it may be tricky to implement. It's called tapnapping and relies on people opening a bunch of tabs (like me) and then forgetting which tabs they had open on what page. That way, it can redirect within a tab to the login page for your bank when you're not looking and you'll think you just got automatically logged off and need to log back in for whatever you were doing. Of course, it relies on your having been logged in on another tab to some sensitive website in order to successfully trick you, but if it tricks one people out of 10,000 then it could definitely become profitable. I don't think there are any major outbreaks of this sort of malware yet, but it could happen.

Final Notes

There are a few more quick stories left.

Verizon got a gym employee fired because his stupid friend posted pictures of a secret Verizon phone that he recoveredfrom a member who lost it, even after returning the phone. Kind of silly - if I worked out there I'd be pissed for the employee (though he was planning on quitting anyhow).

This article shows a really funny trend: Android has a much bigger edge against the iPhone in North America than the rest of the world. I would've thought the individual device manufacturers would have stronger distribution channels collectively than Apple around the world, but I guess not.

If you want to know what lurks inside the Windows Phone 7 architecture, check this out.

Chrome 5 is out and is really only a remarkable improvement for Mac and Linux from what everyone is saying.

Have a great week with more sleep than I'm sure to get!

Goodbye, Lost and 24

The End of an Era

There was surprisingly little news last week that was interesting at all, which is fine by me because I'm exhausted from the past week of my life and I just got paged a little while ago so I'm looking ahead at more exhaustion. Still, since I saw the finales of Lost and 24 I thought I'd give some spoiler-free thoughts and then talk a bit about the few stories I thought were worthwhile from last week.

I'm exaggerating a bit in the heading here: my life does not revolve around television. I'm not one of the Lost fans who live to watch it - I simply enjoyed watching it. For me though, these shows kind of do represent the end of an era for me - mainly 24 though. It was the first show I started watching with solid acting behind an awesome cast that always had me engaged. Of course, it dwindled in recent years but it was my first ensemble cast show that I couldn't get enough of. Lost was the first sci-fi show I really took a strong interest to. So it's weird thinking back to when I started watching these shows, it seems like forever ago.

As I figured, the series finale of Lost was as divisive as it could be. Let's face it: there was no possible way for it to satisfy everyone. It's kind of sad how mad some people got when the finale didn't force feed them the answers to all the show's mysteries. That's one thing I respected about Veronica Mars and that I came to respect from Lost: it catered to viewers who wanted to figure things out, not to people who only want a passive experience. If fans of the show re-watch the last 5-10 episodes, I think you'll find that most of the big questions were answered. The finale just put a bow on everything so we can all have closure on the show - that's it. That's what a finale is supposed to do, in my opinion. Explaining 6 years of information in two and a half hours would be silly. I personally really loved it. I was so worried that the ending would go for a lame or far-fetched conclusion to things, but instead it went for a more logical one when you think back on the past season. Of course, I'm a sucker for character-based stories and care more about those interactions than just plot, but I digress. If you were waiting out Lost to see if the ending was good, I say watch it if you're willing to accept that you'll be confused a lot and will have to piece a lot of little things together. Sure, we never found out what the deal was with Dharma or little things like that, but the main plot line was ultimately resolved despite how much some people argue it wasn't. If you're one of the ones who disagree, then I'm going to direct you to this explanation. If that doesn't satisfy you then surely the writers couldn't have.

As for 24: I was a bit let down with this season. It was enjoyable, but it felt very mediocre compared to season 5, which is now a gold standard for action dramas. So if you missed this season, then you didn't miss much. I think it's still worth seeing, but don't go out of your way for it. I think the show ended the only way that it made sense to end it given the nature of 24, and I was glad for that. I was afraid that they'd go for something really crazy to end the show, but I'm glad they instead went with a more sensible approach. Excellent acting across the board. Not the most intense 24 season finale by far, and definitely not the most tragic, but I was glad that it wasn't a cop out.

Google TV

This is pretty big: Google has announced Google TV. It's one of those things that you have to say "it's about time" when you hear what it is. It's essentially a product that tries to bridge the gap between our computers and our TVs that the Internet has created. It's a bit short of what I expected out of what had been called IP TV, but given the fact that Google will have open APIs I think that it has plenty of room to evolve. If the principles behind Google TV were to merge with TiVo I think I'd piss my pants. It's really just a way to consume web media and interact with rich content on your TV, but it doesn't bring together dealing with your traditional television content. Apparently we'll see hardware this fall and we'll know more then.

Google Wave Now Public

Google Wave is now available for public consumption! If you don't know what that means, you'll want to start here. I'm interested to see where this will go now that the hype surrounding its initial announcement has died down. It's a really cool product, but it feels like a solution looking for a problem. It would be cool if integrated with Google TV though for better interaction with remote friends and family during TV shows.

Diane Birch

I'm fading fast here so I'm going to leave you with a video I took from a Diane Birch concert I took last week. It's a cover of a 90s classic:



The concert was really awesome, by the way. I posted another video here if you liked that one. I highly recommend supporting her if you liked that video, too.

The Facebook Uprising

Bring Your Pitchforks on June 6

I'm really tired. I'm not sure why exactly, but I'm tired and I have a lot to do this week so I'm going to have to shorten this post a bit if I want to get it out at all. So I'm going to focus in on just a few really big stories and briefly highlight a few others. I've cut quite a few stories I would've talked about if I had more time, but oh well.

Clearly, the biggest story last week was Facebook. I have to admit that I'm surprised at the reaction the tech media has had to Facebook's recent changes with turning your profile information into links to pages that expose you and other privacy changes Facebook has made recently. We let this happen gradually over time by not reacting enough to Facebook's previous changes, and now that they've really jumped the shark it looks like people are finally ready to step up and say something. I expected a reaction similar to previous changes, but it looks like we're getting really passionate posts from blogs and respected news publications every other day crying out against the changes, some of which are nicely summarized in this picture. It's a bit misleading, but it's not really exaggerating things when you boil down the facts. It's not likely going into great details about those points make the situation better.

The Huffington Report reported on a group of individuals who have decided to send as clear a message as possible to Facebook: an organized boycott of Facebook. They're planning to all delete their accounts on May 31 and are encouraging everyone to do the same. Of course, even after you delete your account Facebook will still have access to your data, but it may put a heavy enough dent in their numbers to wake them up and realize that this isn't like when people got a little annoyed by Facebook's past indiscretions. It's going to be hard to get everyone to quit Facebook though (myself included) so I'm actually in support of their second idea: don't use Facebook at all on June 6. It'll probably be much easier to convince people to do that. It may not be as powerful, but it may actually hurt Facebook's wallet.

After reading this interview with an anonymous Facebook employee, you may not find their movement so extreme. Like many startups, it looks like Facebook began without much long-term vision. It was all about getting a product to market, which is reasonable except that it ended up breeding a culture where privacy isn't a top priority. Half of the interview sounds nuts, but then the other half sounds more reasonable. A group of NYU students are actually trying to build their own Facebook called Disapora that actually respects privacy. Sadly, there's no word on when it'll actually be out whereas now is exactly the best time for them to ship and capitalize on Facebook's bad press. It's an interesting concept, but you've got to wonder if they can really stick to their morals in the face of investors wanting them to satiate advertisers, if it ever takes off. These guys seem smart though so I hope it works out.

The Flash Dilemma

I wonder if Apple predicted that the controversy regarding their disapproval of Flash on the iPhone/iPad would go on for this long? In a ZDNet article that almost seems to have been swept under the rug in everyone's mind since it was posted, it was revealed that a Flash demo on a Nexus One crashed twice. Granted, the rule of thumb for demos is that things will never go exactly as you plan, but you have to admit that, even in that philosophy, two crashes looks pretty bad. It's worth noting that he was using an outdated version ofFlash in the demo, but it's not like the build was months old or something.

Some people have noticed a technology called "Gianduia" popping up in random places that looks to be Apple's competitor to Flash. The reading I did on it was kind of boring and went over even my head, but if Apple were to make that an externally facing technology then I hope people would be a little insulted by the hypocrisy given their repeated argument that Adobe Flash is flying in the face of open web standards.

Part of why this story dragged on another week is that Gawker's Ryan Tate engaged in an e-mail exchange directly with Steve Jobs regarding Flash and porn on the iPhone and Steve's responses were well crafted and interesting. I don't buy his we-want-to-do-the-right-thing argument one bit, but I do believe that they just want to promote the user experience their envision. Whether you agree with that or not is for you to vote for with your dollars - there's no need to whine about it. There's nothing wrong with being willfully ignorant of what Apple's doing if you're happy with their products. They're not torturing anybody, they're just conducting business.

Let me cram in two more quick Apple stories. In the saga over the "stolen" next-generation iPhone, it has been revealed that Steve Jobs contacted Gizmodo directly to get a response that was an e-mail almost in the realm of extortion. They wrote it in a very clever way, but if you read between the lines you may come to my conclusion that Gizmodo was being sleazy. Lastly, Mac Rumors noticed that the new iPad ads are almost a sequel to the ad campaign for the hapless Apple Newton. I'm sure Apple is hoping for very different results this time.

Android Outsells the iPhone

I wish this was the biggest story of last week because it's such a cool one. Google Android, when you look at all the phones running the operating system, outsold the iPhone last quarter for the first time. Some analysts believe it's due in large part to Verizon's buy-one-get-one-free promotion, but I think it's more than just that. Android phones are just finally cool and the iPhone hasn't been new in a while.

If you're really excited about Android though, you should check out Froyo (Android 2.2), or at least AndroidPolice's impressions from trying it out on the Nexus One. It turns out to be quite a bit more performant.

Speaking of the Nexus One though: Google will no longer be selling it directly and will instead work with partners to actually sell it in stores. It may be too late for this to turn the phone into a financial success, but it's their only hope of salvaging the situation. The phone received much critical acclaim despite, unsurprisingly, not getting a lot of sales (since you can't play with it in a store).

The Rest

I'm going to go through these even faster then normal.

Steam (probably the best service for downloading and managing quality games) is now available for Macs and Valve is giving away Portal for free. Act now because that game is ridiculously fun for all ages.

Billshrink has a great infographic on wireless dissatisfaction in America and pricing comparisons.

Sprint will start selling the HTC Evo 4G, the first 4G phone ever, on June 4 for $199 (subsidized). That's a pretty standard price for a new high-end smartphone, but Sprint is obviously a small player so we'll see how the release goes.

If you have Windows 7 then you really need to check out this article on how to speed it up. It's already fairly fast for me and some of these tips make it even better.

YouTube finally fixed how private videos work to make more sense.

The FCC is allowing the MPAA to activate set top box controls to deactivate pieces of your home theater system if they think you're breaking the law. Definitely scar stuff.

Ars Technica has a great article on the government plan to bring 4 Mbps Internet to the whole country. It's a very steep bill for taxpayers.

Iron Man 2

Let the Summer Blockbuster Season Begin

Since I saw Iron Man 2 on Friday I figure I might as well share my thoughts before we get into the normal stuff.

The original Iron Man is without equivocation considered one of the best comic book superhero movies ever by any comic book geek. Definitely top 5 if not top 3. Given that Iron Man was never a blockbuster franchise like Batman or Superman, I thought it was definitely special what Jon Favreau was able to accomplish with Robert Downey, Jr. and the Iron Man universe. It was a better origin story than Batman Begins in terms of pacing and probably a few other things and just a fun all-around summer movie. That's really huge shoes for a sequel to fill. Did it get it right? That's hard to say, to be honest. I think when people's expectations are high like they were for this movie you've gotta be perfect to really blow them away, and this movie didn't do that. Nonetheless, I thought it was a more than acceptable sequel and definitely well worth seeing.

Plot-wise, this movie takes over literally right where the first one left off and shows how the ending (which I don't want to spoil) gave rise to physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) as a villain using Stark's own arc reactor technology. Meanwhile, Tony Stark is dealing with the adverse health effects of the arc reactor in his chest while being watched closely by Nick Fury (Sam Jackson). I don't want to spoil anything by revealing any more than that, but suffice to say it's an interesting, though comic book far-fetched, storyline that diverts somewhat from the Iron Man comic book storyline to tell its own story. I thought it was actually a pretty well-written story. You have to really forgive the hand-waving with regard to the technological expertise of some of the main characters, but I personally watch 24 and am already well-seasoned in that.

I thought the acting was superb across the board. Robert Downing, Jr was possibly even better in this movie, Scarlett Johansson was the perfect casting for Black Widow (so glad that they didn't go with Emily Blunt), and Gwenyth Paltrow was still as sexy and sophisticated as ever. Johansson's role was a pretty decent female empowerment character (sans a couple of her outfits) and I was glad to see that they didn't really overdo it. I think some hardcore fans will be a little disappointed with her portrayal, but I thought it worked in the context of the movie. I think the re-casting of Rhodes was noticeably weird. I think Don Cheadle would've been fine if he was in the original as well, but whenever I saw him I just kept picturing Terrence Howard. I was happy overall with Mickey Rourke, he did his hokey Russian accent well.

The problem is that Iron Man 2 didn't bring to the table what Iron Man did because it didn't break the formula of superhero movies like that one did. It felt more like a continuation of the previous movie instead of something totally new. So less like The Dark Knight, which was a huge breath of fresh air, and more like X-men 2. The action scenes were great and the movie was so much fun to watch - especially the well-timed humor. However, it felt like a comic book movie. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means that it can't be extraordinary. I still give it an A- and strongly recommend seeing it yourself while it's on the big screen. Just don't bolt after the credits - they snuck in an extra scene like in the first one. It's not life-changing or anything, but it's something that will give you goosebumps if you're a comic book geek.

Kin Available this week

I know you've been waiting with bated breath so here it is: the new Kin will be available in Verizon stores on May 13 and is already available online. The creatively named Kin One and Kin Two are priced at $50 and $100, respectively, but apparently will have interesting data plan like the Sidekick.

However, Pre Central aggregated some of the reviews and they don't seem to be very positive. It seems like the phone was pretty half-baked overall and an uneven experience. The ideas from the original presentation that I originally raved about were apparently poorly executed. It looks like Kin Studio, the online timeline of your phone, is pretty decent, but the Kin Spot and a number of other features are disastrous user experiences. Despite the pricing being good, I'd be surprised if these flew off the shelves and insulted if people chose them over the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, which are usually easy to find at those price points and have a lot more features, like pretty good call quality.

Treasury Site and Google Chat Hacks

There were a few security breaches last week, the most flagrant of which I felt was the U.S. Treasury websites being compromised and giving malware to its visitors. Well, technically they redirected to a Ukrainian site that gave out the malware, but what an embarrassment to that IT department that these guys injected HTML code. I'm guessing it was some sort of XSS variant, but they're being hush on the details. They already look bad - hiding the truth from the people who pay these idiots' salaries isn't going to make them look any better.

I thought I'd throw in this AP story about a vulnerability in how your web site requests are routed that could be disastrous if exploited. The bottom line is that TCP/IP, the protocol that the Internet operates on, was not built with security in mind because it was not designed for massive public use. I think this is something the U.S. government should step into to motivate a fix. The private companies apparently don't have a strong interest in fixing things but an attack on how Internet packets are routed could be really bad for our infrastructure.

Techcrunch was tipped off on a pretty big vulnerability last week regarding Facebook. It turns out that in where in your Privacy Settings you can see how other people view your profile, you can also see who they're chatting with. Rather than applying their restriction to how you view your profile, they basically gave you a window into their Facebook, more or less. You could even mess with their friend requests. Who knows how many people have exploited this without reporting it. It really calls into question Facebook's quality assurance principles. It's fixed now, but disturbing that it was out there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Facebook Under Fire

Riding off the coattails of that story, let's talk about the rabble growing against Facebook. It used to be that Facebook's changes were an annoyance that people just got used to. Now though, multiple people are being very vocal about their problems with Facebook and these editorials are getting a lot of eyeballs.

One blogger gave his ten reasons why you should quit Facebook while Wired calls for an open alternative where things make sense instead of following the whims of Facebook. This was mostly prompted by how Facebook is now sharing a lot of information about you to developers taking advantage of its new APIs and how the fact that Facebook encourages you to turn your text in your profile to "Pages" means that you're exposed through these "Pages" as being a fan of that thing to the world. Of course, there have been plenty of offenses leading up to this (how you can never really remove yourself, how your information is being passed along to third-party application developers, etc.), but ultimately their misleading policies have really become cause for some concern.

If you're stubborn like me and are hesitant to quit Facebook cold turkey, at least consider abating the amount of information you feed to it.

Final Notes

Ok, I'm running way behind on what I wanted to get done tonight because of a nap I took earlier. I'm going to have to cut out sooner on this post than originally planned. Here's what else I had for you:

Apple is now in the middle of an antitrust suit for anti-competitive practices. It's not clear if this is because of their ban on Flash or their patent lawsuits against HTC, but it'll be interested to see what happens. Some of their practices are unconscionable, but I'm not sure that they're illegal.

The FCC is still pushing forward on net neutrality trying to find a way around the court decision ruling that they can't regulate the ISPs.

The U.S. ranks 30th in the world in Internet speed. Even Andorra is beating us. Ouch.

Netflix is moving more of its computational power into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Smart move. Much more efficient than buying and maintaining your own hardware for solving those big problems.

This is a pretty eye-opening breakdown of the cell phone providers in America by customer satisfaction and dropped calls.

Check out all the new features coming in the forthcoming Kindle firmware upgrade including password protection and better sharing capabilities.

It looks like Amazon has one of the biggest databases in the world, and it's pretty exciting that I help process some of that data every day. Anyway, check out who has the other enormous databases.

If you want to know what's on TV the Interweb, check out Clicker.

If you're on Windows and didn't know about Microsoft's Fix It tool, then go check it out now.

Last but not least, Google made a really awesome video advertising how fast Chrome is compared to things like sound and a potato gun. It's a lot of fun to watch.

HP Takes Over Palm

HP Buys Palm

For the past 18 years, Palm has been the little company that could. Despite having been a frontrunner of innovation in PDAs starting with the Palm Pilot and creating the first true mainstream smartphone in the Treo 650, Palm lost its way in the past few years and now finds itself in the hands of HP in a $1.2 billion deal. It's not technically a done deal yet, but it's pretty much sure to complete. You can see Rubinstein's letter to the company here. It sounds like HP is not only interested in Palm's huge patent portfolio but also keeping webOS alive with more smartphones and possibly tablets. Given the strong indications that the HP Slate tablet based on Windows 7 has been killed, it makes it more clear why HP would want Palm. The iPad's sales are, ostensibly, exposing a market for tablets not concerned with the power of a full computer but rather interested in the easy UI, something that webOS could definitely provide.

While I'm not sold on there being a very big market for tablets in general, I do think it's a good thing that HP bought Palm. HP hasn't made the best hardware decisions in the world, but they do have a lot of cash. Assuming that they don't fire a bunch of people from Palm, which I think is unlikely given that their interest in webOS, I believe they're ultimately going to re-think how they market the next webOS-based phone and pump a lot more into R&D for future iterations than Palm could afford to. Ultimately, if HP can't make webOS viable than no one can. I still believe that webOS has a decent base of developer support and a pretty stable platform - we just need new hardware to get people excited about and it needs to be available on multiple carriers.

Apple's War on Flash Continues

Once again, the media has really overblown Apple's dismissal of Flash on the iPhone. As a result, Steve Jobs has actually written an open letter explaining why there are are no plans to support Flash on the iPhone or iPad, and this has made the debate even more heated between those who agree with Jobs and those who think that Apple is being an evil purveyor of their closed garden. The letter actually has a number of good points, the best in my opinion being that Flash wasn't designed with touch interfaces in mind. There is no rollover event with touch like there is with a mouse, and that's actually a commonly used event in Flash. However, as good as those points are, the letter is ultimately just a MacGuffin. The real reason that the iPhone won't support Flash is the same reason Apple removed arrow keys from the Macintosh keyboard: Apple wants people to re-write their applications better to provide a quality experience for their customers. Plus, it gives them more control over the platform if they dictate the rules than if they allow Flash to dictate rules, as well.

Personally, I thought it was silly for Jobs to write this letter. Whatever the reason is for Apple not wanting Flash on the iPhone, they can do whatever they want. This shouldn't be a shock to anyone. The iPhone has always been a walled garden. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, especially given how strong sales are for the iPhone, but the fact of the matter is that it has always given Apple the precedent to do what they want.

Adobe countered quickly via an interview with the Wall Street Journal and seem to be taking things rather personal. Ultimately, they believe that the letter spreads lies and that Adobe's vision is a multi-platform technology whereas Jobs wants applications to only be developed for their walled garden. Take it with a grain of salt, but Adobe has a video on Vimeo claiming that Flash has better performance than HTML 5, even on mobile phones. We should be able to see for ourselves once Flash hits webOS, Blackberry, and Android 2.2 later this year. This is really going to be a make or break year for Adobe. If this Flash release flops, as I'm afraid it may given its push backs, Flash may begin a downward spiral as HTML 5 becomes the only viable game in town for mobile devices.

Google's Foray into TV

Google was linked to a couple of interesting television stories last week. First, it was discovered that Google has added TV episode search. Then, Wall Street Jounal's sources revealed that Google is going to be announcing TV set-top box software this month. It doesn't seem to provide anything new compared to what TiVo or Boxee offers right now, but the announcement has yet to be officially made.

Possibly more interesting: Verizon FiOS will now offer YouTube and Internet radio right on its users' TV screens. They're first cable provider that's actually embracing YouTube instead of fearing it. Then again, their huge push for laying fiber in the past few years has been more progressive than most of its competitors.

Broadband Access

Sometimes Slate can really hit it out of the park. They responded to a quote from the Verizon CEO claiming that U.S. broadband is #1 in the world with an article explaining that the US is ranked 15th in broadband penetration, has some of the highest prices per bandwidth, and competition is often a duopoly. To make matters worse, broadband rates are often mis-advertised. It's a good sobering read and a reminder that we need to encourage the FCC to take action.

Final Notes

Alright, I've been distracted all night but I really need to get to bed now so it's time to wrap up.

Microsoft's security intelligence report last week revealed that most attacks on Vista and Windows 7 systems are against third-party applications rather than Windows itself.

By this time next month, Lala will be dead. It's a travesty, but not totally unsurprising since Lala has never been profitable and Apple really bought Lala for the talent.

Microsoft has confirmed the Courier, their secret folding tablet, and announced that they have nipped it. It looked cool but must not have been feasible.

The guy who sold the iPhone HD that was found has been discovered and claims he wishes he turned in the phone to the bar owners now instead of being a jerk and selling it to Gizmodo. Even though he's probably not technically a thief, I think he was way unethical.

Apparently Microsoft has had a running comic on people's real life IT stories.

Comcast has won Consmerists' infamous "Worst Company in America" award. Congrats, you've earned it.

This is a great resource for helping develop cross-browser compatible websites.

Have a great week!