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15 Oct 2009 10:53

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Tech: Microsoft and T-Mobile recover most users’ Sidekick data. Hooray!

  • They didn’t save everyone’s data, though. The public backlash created by Microsoft’s mishandling of Sidekick data is a least a little softer after the company announced that they saved most users data. T-Mobile has been getting the brunt of the attacks even though it largely isn’t their fault. Either way, this mess isn’t looking good for the company, which wants to be on the same page as Apple in the mobile sphere. source

13 Oct 2009 09:31

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10 Oct 2009 18:30

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Tech: T-Mobile’s massive bag of FAIL: Sidekick user data is GONE.

  • fail #1 T-Mobile’s Sidekick data network was down all last weekend into this week. That issue still isn’t resolved as we write this. Twitter users spent much of the last week (loudly) grumbling about this fact, killing T-Mobile’s rep online.
  • fail #2 Now, a much worse issue: Everyone who owned a Sidekick? Your user data is GONE. Kaput. Microsoft Danger relied on cloud hosting to serve data, and didn’t back up any of it. And the cloud went poof. Ouch. Bad move. source

03 Oct 2009 23:26

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World: Iran’s well along in knowing how to make their own nukes

  • They plan to MacGyver it. Great. You didn’t have enough other things to worry about, and now Iran has enough knowledge and data to make a nuclear bomb, United Nations members say. We’re going to hide in a bunker now. If you’re worrying about how we’re gonna update the site, don’t; we’ve managed to get wi-fi in there. source

03 Oct 2009 22:12

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17 Aug 2009 21:22

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Tech: Kudos to journalism experiment EveryBlock for making it happen

  • I often tell friends and industry colleagues that EveryBlock in is current incarnation is only about 5 percent of what we want to do with it. We’re now in a position to make this happen.
  • EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty • Discussing his company’s acquisition by MSNBC.com. This is a BIG DEAL for journalism, because EveryBlock’s experimental model, which leans on using public records and RSS feeds to provide a to-the-block organization of information in a city, is an alumnus of the Knight News Challenge, which encourages Web-centric approaches to journalism. Some have questioned whether what EveryBlock does is journalism; Holovaty has famously said he doesn’t care. For what it’s worth, EveryBlock got a warm welcome from NewsVine founder Mike Davidson, whose own MSNBC-owned site has only benefited from acquisition. • source

26 Jun 2009 18:08

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Tech: Mythbuster Adam Savage is trying to bust the myth of his AT&T bill

  • $11,000 amount Savage was charged on his most recent AT&T bill for data usage in Canada
  • 9 gigs amount of data AT&T claims the Mythbuster downloaded in a few hours; he denies this. source
 

02 Jun 2009 21:56

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U.S.: Latest reason we’re all gonna die: Nuclear data accidentally leaked

  • *forehead slap* Great job, federal government. The U.S. revealed in a newsletter yesterday that somebody messed up and released a 266-page document LOADED with information about civilian nuclear holdings as well as maps of where we keep all of the fuel for our nuclear weapons. The document was marked “highly confidential,” which sounds scary. Some experts claim the leak isn’t THAT big a deal, but it’s not the first data screwup while Obama’s been in office. source

23 May 2009 19:24

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Tech: Like the new Safari? Well, you won’t like what it leaves behind.

  • A huge collection of crud gets dumped into an obscure folder. Look, we love the new Safari, Apple, but we’re never going to clear out pages and pages of information inside a folder called something like “/private/var/folders/et/etuAKaR1GTeV9DVeRGfst++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari/Webpage Previews/”. And you save screenshots of every web site we go to, in case they make our Top Sites in the future. So, Apple, you may want to fix that. Jerks. source

26 Apr 2009 22:59

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Tech: Facebook will open up its platform to developers. Woo-hoo!

  • why? Right now, Facebook, everyone’s favorite pre-Twitter social networking site, is a walled garden. You can do some stuff in it, and it seems open, but you have to do everything within its interface. Twitter has gone out of its way to make the environment open for others, part of the reason it’s thriving. (That and Oprah.)
  • dangers Facebook’s opening of its garden to outside developers (which they’ll announce officially tomorrow) is mostly a good thing for users, but it’ll have to contend with people who have been burned by the service on issues ranging from privacy to design. Will users agree to yet another policy change? source