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

• What he said about new tech In his commencement speech at Hampton University yesterday, the president threw out this gem: “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.” He also notes that it allows false claims to quickly gain traction.
• Why we (mostly) disagree May we note that all those new ways to get information empower us to hear a huge diversity of voices? While we agree that this technology has an addictive element to it, the fact of the matter is, it empowers a diversity of voices that didn’t exist even a decade ago. And plus, Obama’s arguments could easily apply to television or radio, if you think about it. We do agree with the false claims part, though. source

• http://وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر 

• » Admit it. You’re curious. Try it. We dare you. Either your browser sucks or it rocks. Here’s how you find out. source

• We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.
• Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman • Revealing the company’s plans to ditch its Flash-based distribution mechanism for HTML5. Why is this a big deal? Well, they’re about to turn hundreds of thousands of print-focused PDF documents into Web pages. This is a big deal for the future of the Web, because it’s yet another fairly large platform that’s about to switch away from Adobe’s software. Even Adobe, recently eviscerated by Steve Jobs, sees the writing on the wall here. source

• Key point: It’s not getting on the iPhone due to technology reasons. Steve Jobs’ 1,657-word manifesto on Flash is a really interesting document on the nature of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest fights. We don’t think Jobs has ever been this open. We’d like to see him keep this up in the future. It really makes his points seem reasonable. Here’s a summary that’s about a fifth of the size.

First: Let’s get this out of the way

• no Steve doesn’t mention the
  kerfuffle between Apple and Gizmodo over the leaked iPhone
• no Flash won’t be getting on the
  iPhone anytime soon, so lose
  those dreams now, guys

Cutting his six points to three

• one Flash is a closed, proprietary standard, and Apple’s goals for the Web are to use open standards such as HTML5. And lots of sites use these already.
• two Flash is another thing that has to run on a device that needs to be as lightweight as possible. This affects phone performance as well as battery life.
• three Flash is a technology that’s designed for PCs, not touchscreens. Plus, Adobe has been bad about supporting our platforms in the past, and could repeat here.

Key quote from his Steveness

• Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
• Steve Jobs • Sticking the dagger into the company’s technology. His main point? Flash isn’t a platform designed for mobile phones, and as he’s trying to push for the strongest app development on the platform he can, he wants to avoid putting a technology on his phones that adds one more thing to the load. But he’s clear that it’s not because of competitive reasons, like everyone thinks it is. We’re still not convinced. source

• Off record chat w/ Facebook employee. Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn’t believe in it.
• New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton • Tweeting something maybe he shouldn’t have. The tweet suggests that Mark Zuckerberg’s merely paying lip service to the idea of privacy, which is probably not something which helps his cause right now in the wake of the Open Graph push. Bilton, for his part, is facing a controversy of his own over his apparent misunderstanding of “off the record,” though in his defense, the source later said it was OK to leak the information without using their name. source

• one Apple sits on the steering committee of the task force that raided Jason Chen’s house.
• two Jason Chen, as you might imagine, owns a lot of computers; here’s what got taken away.
• three It’s still inconclusive as to whether the search warrant was legal. Some say yes; some no.

• The Hubble telescope turns 20, but like most of its effective life, it’s stuck in space today, all by itself. It needs friends. Endless photography is a good hobby, but not a normal lifestyle. Anyone got any ideas on how to make this massive telescope’s life a little less, you know, empty? source