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14 May 2010 20:25

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Tech: iPhone-gate: Gizmodo declined Jobs’ offer for business reasons

  • Right now, we have nothing to lose. The thing is, Apple PR has been cold to us lately. It affected my ability to do my job right at iPad launch. So we had to go outside and find our stories like this one, aggressively.
  • Gizmodo Editorial Director Brian Lam • In a written response to Steve Jobs after Jobs called. Lam wanted Apple to give him a written note saying the phone was real. Jobs declined, and the rest is history. This is bad for Gizmodo (and Brian Hogan) because the letter makes it clear that they put personal interests above doing the right thing. It sounds like extortion, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be crazy if this was enough to take Gizmodo, a major site, down? This makes it seem entirely possible. (A good summary of the legal documents is here.) source

14 May 2010 20:06

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Tech: iPhone-gate: Steve Jobs called Gizmodo personally to get it back

  • Here’s how we imagine the call went: “Hi, this is Steve. You sons of #&((@& better give me my #(&@(&! phone back or I’m going to hit you with a legal thrust so hard you’ll cower the next time you see an Apple product. I hope you die of malaria, Brian Lam. There will be no net that wannabe philanthropist Bill Gates can give you that will protect you from MY wrath. You should see what I did to Eric Schmidt after he released the Nexus One. You’re the scum of the earth. Do what you know you should, #(&(@!(. BYE.” source

14 May 2010 15:00

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Biz: So yeah, the plant where Children’s Tylenol was made is a disaster

  • This inspection report is pretty close to being the worst I’ve seen. It suggests that basically the FDA found an issue with almost every system at the plant.
  • Temple University professor (and former Johnson & Johnson employee) David Lebo • Regarding the conditions of a Pennsylvania Tylenol plant that was shut down recently by the Food and Drug Administration. The shutdown followed a mass recall of many children’s drug products by the manufacturer. Nearly three dozen complaints were filed regarding the drugs, which including foreign materials. The FDA’s report suggests that there was lacking quality control that made some of the drugs superpotent (as scary as it sounds). We’re guessing that this PR crisis won’t be fixed as easily as that other one. source

14 May 2010 14:56

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Tech: Was Google’s Nexus One online storefront a failure?

  • YES people prefer buying phones in person, not online source

14 May 2010 12:28

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14 May 2010 12:13

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Offbeat: Great: The phrase “Buffalo Cougar” has entered the lexicon

  • When he got to us I asked if I could hug him. And when I did I just said, ‘he’s a hottie, with a smokin’ little body’.
  • Luann “Buffalo Cougar” Haley • Regarding her WTF encounter with president Obama yesterday. Haley tried to play it off as a joke that the president was in on, but we all know the truth. She’s the new Monica Lewinsky. Or the new Linda Tripp. We’re still trying to figure that one out. source

14 May 2010 12:07

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Biz: Seattle’s Best pre-fabs its way into being “the coffee of the poeple”

  • Starbucks owns this brand. That’s all you need to know. The company has owned this coffee offshoot for about seven years, and now plans to market it as if it’s the Old Navy to their Gap. To that, we say, “Caribou Coffee.” source
 

14 May 2010 11:58

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World: In Indonesia, a plot to kill Obama during a state visit was foiled

  • They had some very ambitious plans. Inspired by the Mumbai attacks a couple years ago, a group of Indonesian militants planned to trigger a number of attacks on Jakarta on August 17th, when Obama was planning to come to town for a state visit, in an attempted coup. The group, reportedly a splinter group of the al-Qaeda-tied Jemaah Islamiah group, was busted back in February during a raid. Wow. source

14 May 2010 11:35

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World: The Thai Red Shirt protests are hitting a head, and then some

At least four have been killed and 81 more have been wounded as Thai military attempts to seal off an area of Bangkok the Red Shirts have used for camping out. source

14 May 2010 11:12

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Tech: Are Facebook’s privacy issues getting overblown by a mob mentality?

  • It’s completely out of hand, and it’s just another example of an online mob getting out of control. I’m embarrassed to see people I respect stopping one step short of calling for physical violence against Zuckerberg.
  • TechCrunch guy Michael Arrington • Regarding the seemingly high level of rage some have focused on Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, especially after these years-old messages leaked to the press. We’re with Arrington. We think people are completely overreacting and looking for a way to completely discredit the Facebook founder because they don’t like recent changes to his service. Granted, privacy is a weird thing with Facebook, but the backlash is just getting over-the-top. source