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12 Oct 2009 20:17

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Tech: Don’t shut it off! T-Mobile’s massive Sidekick nightmare

The Sidekick problem is so bad that T-Mobile isn’t currently selling them. Oh, and they have 800,000 pissed-off customers. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Oct 2009 11:11

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Tech: Snow Leopard has teeth: Apple’s new OS has a really big bug.

  • Do not log into the guest account. Since last month, users have been reporting a major Snow Leopard flaw on Apple’s support forums. Essentially, if you log into a guest account after you upgrade, then log out and go to your regular account, everything’s gone. And you can’t get it back. Yikes. This is not the kind of thing that users run into every day, but it’s a common enough feature to freak us out. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 9 Comments • Permalink

30 Sep 2009 20:37

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Tech: Why should Google Books stay alive? It’s for the common good.

  • A delivery system for books that few people want is not a business one builds for financial reasons. Over history, such projects are usually built not by the market but by mad emperors. No bean counter would have approved the Library of Alexandria or the Taj Mahal.
  • Slate columnist Tim Wu • In a passionate plea to keep the Google Books project alive. Wu explains that the project is in jeopardy due to the fear of monopolistic concerns by Web competitors and the Justice Department. Wu emphasizes that Google is doing it for the public interest alone, and they’re doing a great service by keeping all these out-of-print books alive. Even considering copyright and all that other stuff, that’s a great reason to keep something like this alive. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Sep 2009 23:54

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Tech, U.S.: Barack Obama sez you should watch your back on Facebook

  • Well, let me give you some very practical tips. First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.
  • President Barack Obama • Discussing the danger of posting your entire personal life on Facebook – because, as everyone with half a brain knows, that stuff comes back to haunt you like a child you had with a filmmaker you were working with. Or a bunch of AIM messages with a congressional page. Or a lewd bathroom encounter in a Minneapolis airport. Or a stash of money hidden in a freezer. We could go on, but you get the idea. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Aug 2009 11:08

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Tech: Slate cuts the crap, just gives you the Slatest news, simply.

  • And good for them. Really. OK, we’re kinda sad because it appears they’ve stolen our idea to some degree, but Slate’s newest site, The Slatest, is a news aggregator that doesn’t get bogged down by lots and lots (and lots) of links, like, say, Digg, Reddit, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, and … we could go on. A handful of really good news stories, linked in such a way that you know what you’re clicking, with a giant freaking ad that doesn’t get in the way. We approve. Good show, Slate. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 4 Comments • Permalink

23 Aug 2009 12:05

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Tech: A Facebook quiz designed to make you question your privacy

  • Clever. And scary. Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that Facebook quizzes can essentially take any information they want about you and your friends for purposes of a stupid, useless quiz. To prove a point, someone developed a quiz based on the ACLU’s article – one that actually takes said information. Keep this in mind next time you take a stupid quiz, guys. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

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
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

03 Aug 2009 21:02

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About: The Associated Press is dead to us. We’re not covering their stories.

  • © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
  • The slogan that runs at the bottom of each Associated Press story • We copied it from the bottom of one of their articles. Why? Because it’s silly in the day and age of the Internet. Of course it’s going to get copied and redistributed, paraphrased and quoted. It’s how information spreads. But not anymore from us. We quit. This was the last straw. You used to be great, AP, but now you’re just a giant beast of another era. Even your efforts to reach younger customers fail. So, we’re no longer linking to your stories on this site. Or, if we absolutely need to (which, considering the wide variety of content online, we don’t need to), we’ll link to you guys using a NoFollow tag. Think we should do this? Let us know. We’re up for any opinion you have on this matter. We simply want the AP to respect the rights of its audience. It’s only fair.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 5 Comments • Permalink

28 Jul 2009 10:39

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Tech: Old scanning hotness: Barcode. New scanning hotness: Bokode?

They’re smaller and can be detected from long distances. The easier to tag things with. Just don’t tell the Cuecat about this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Jul 2009 16:28

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Tech: TechCrunch on publishing leaked documents: It was “fair game”

  • That doesn’t mean we are entitled to do anything we like in order to get to that information. But if it lands in our inbox, we consider it fair game. And if we have reason to believe it will be widely published regardless of what we do, the decision isn’t a hard one.
  • TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington • Regarding his site’s decision to post confidential documents acquired by a hacker and sent to them. (We admittedly published one tiny piece of the puzzle, linked from them, but would happily take it down by request.) This policy is perhaps a bit loosey-goosey and might just get them in trouble. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 8 Comments • Permalink
 
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