It's been well over a year since Asus first showed off its Eee Keyboard concept, which packs a complete Windows computer into a keyboard that you can connect to a TV over a wireless HDMI connection. The idea is that you can surf the web, stream video over a home network, or do just about anything you can do with a PC on your TV. The keyboard also has a built in touchscreen panel for interacting with certain elements of the computer while you're watching a video or doing something else with the TV display.

Now, after a major redesign and a lot of waiting, Asus says it will finally get around to launching the Eee Keyboard in April. The question is more than a year later, are you still at all interested in this device?

Asus has also officially introduced the DR-900 eBook reader. It has a 9 inch display, WiFi, and optional 3G. Its battery is supposed to be good for up to 10,000 page turns.

While Asus hasn't made all the specs official yet, earlier this year specs were released for a mighty similar looking machine called the DR-950, which has a 1024 x 768 pixel display., 4GB of storage, headphone jack, and support for MP3, ePUB, PDF and TXT formats.

No word on a launch date or price yet.

Post from: Liliputing

Asus Eee Keyboard due out in April, eBook Reader coming soon

Did you really think book publishing would go the way of the music industry and publish eBooks without DRM? Amazon already wraps their eBooks in DRM for the Kindle and now, Apple will do the same for publishers in its iBookstore.

According to the Los Angeles Times, sources in the book publishing industry have indicated that Apple's FairPlay DRM the same DRM used for its apps and its audio and video content will be made available to any book publisher who'd like to use it.

While there hasn't been an official announcement on its use, it's unlikely that many publishers will decline to use it except for maybe O'Reilly who is outspokenly against DRM.

Has DRM stopped you from buying eBooks?

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

[Los Angeles Times]

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• Amazon Forgot to Mention That Publishers Can Skip DRM on Kindle Books [Amazon] (gizmodo.com)
• Amazon At War With Publisher(s) (mydigitallife.co.za)
• The Ebook Maze Today (rudyrucker.com)

Apple iBooks To Be Wrapped in FairPlay DRM is a post from: The Magical Tablet

Here's the official synopsis for Matthew Gordon Long's new film:

On a sun-dappled summer day a science expedition propels two children towards an enigmatic encounter at the edge of the their known world. Arriving on an isolated beach, they discover the wreck of a robotic squid submarine. The secret it holds within changes their lives forever.

Set in the nineteenth century, the film follows the two children as they pilot the squid sub all over Canada's West Coast, which is slowly turning into a hotbed for science-fictional weirdness. We love the look of the squid, the kid's "explorer" attire and the overall steampunk-lite feel.

Visit the The Anachornism website for more information, and we'll keep riding this mechanical squid for future details.

Bloomberg is reporting that Verizon is planning on adding official support for Skype to its handsets. The two companies are expected to announce a partnership at the Mobile World Congress on February 16, which will allow Skype calls to be made from Verizon phones using the provider's 3G data plan.

This would be a shrewd move on the part of Verizon. Voice calls are becoming a less and less of a profit center for wireless carriers. Look at the big price cuts that both Verizon and AT&T introduced last month: The biggest area of price savings is in unlimited voice plans. Data is still a premium, and in the case of Verizon, there are still data caps for mobile data usage.

For consumers, having Skype pre-loaded on a phone which Bloomberg says is to be on a range of low and high-end handsets might mean that instead of paying for a voice plan (or a more expensive voice plan), the option to get a better data plan and just use Skype when making calls might make more sense.

Bloomberg quotes IDC analyst Rebecca Swensen:

What's important is that Verizon understands that, at some point, they are going to be losing voice minutes to the data world. This makes their platform more valuable for end-users. It could be a differentiator for Verizon Wireless.

Although Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the US, it faces stiff competition from AT&T. Although AT&T's service is pretty universally reviled, AT&T has the iPhone and that continues to drive customers to the carrier. While AT&T is expected to lose exclusivity at some point, it is unclear when or if Verizon will get to carry the device. As it stands, AT&T will be the 3G data provider for Apple's iPad this April.

Skype works on AT&T's WiFi network and a 3G version is in the works as well. Depending on which carrier can offer 3G access to Skype first and on what phones could depend on how valuable this feature is.

If given the choice, would you drop your voice plan and just use Skype over 3G data for making and receiving calls? Let us know!

Tags: 3g data, mobile voip, Skype, verizon, voip

• It's based on Android 2.1. The build currently being circulated is identified as 2.1 version 1, mirroring the update just pushed to the Nexus One last week.
• Google Goggles is now pre-installed (no matter how unhelpful it may be).
• The browser's now multitouch enabled, just like Google Maps 3.4. Huzzah! No Flash, but then again, we weren't really expecting that.
• Interestingly, the home screen's still got the same look as 2.0.1, meaning it doesn't adopt the Nexus One's rotating 3D grid of app icons -- it's still got the pull-up drawer tab at the bottom.
• No active wallpapers. Bummer!
• The news and weather widgets introduced on the Nexus One are included. Maybe certain capabilities of 2.1 are going to be restricted to devices with minimum performance benchmarks?

Motorola Droid's next update to be Android 2.1, includes multitouch browser originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

By being more powerful we mean that the Eee PC 1005PE features 2GB of RAM, and 320GB of HDD. The screen remains at 10.1-inch of course with 1024x600 resolution. It's battery pack is still 6-cell 4400mAh with 11 hours of battery life and of course it is powered by Intel Atom N450 CPU running Windows 7.

Since it is not officially announced yet, no official pictures are available, even its price and release data are uncertain at this moment. But we will sure bring these information to you once they became available, so stick around.

via Blogeee

A post from the Asus Eee PC blog.

Eee PC 1005PE-H Spotted, More Powerful than the One without an H

If the acquisition of Touchco wasn't enough of an indication that Amazon is preparing for a skirmish with the Apple iPad, this should make it perfectly clear. Mike Nash, a man who has quite a history of accomplishments at Microsoft for the past two decades, is leaving the company to work on the Kindle business for Amazon.

Before leaving Microsoft, Mike was the Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy and was responsible for pieces of Windows business strategy, ecosystem engagement, consumer security, Internet Explorer, and emerging markets, according to his bio on Microsoft's Web site.

In addition to his most recent role, Nash has had a string of historic positions at Big M including a role as the first product manager on the original Windows NT marketing team; the Corporate Vice President of the Security Technology Unit; and a driver of a number of Microsoft acquisitions in the security space.

There's been no official announcement yet from Amazon so we're unsure of Nash's focus within the Amazon team.

[Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet] [Amazon Kindle]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclszr.us/5

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• Amazon acquires Touchco and a Microsoft exec (macworld.com)
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Amazon Hires Mike Nash from Microsoft to Work on Kindle is a post from: Magical Tablet

I was messing around with the iPad simulator, and I noticed that I could fit 6 icons in the dock. There was no modding involved. Since the iPad has a roomy screen, this could be very plausible. And since I am a jailbreak person, I know how uncommon this kind of thing is. But it goes along pretty well with Apple allowing the modification of the background.

TUAWHow many icons on that iPad dock? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The iPad is not the transformational device so many Apple enthusiasts were hoping for. It won't turn all the content industries upside down, it won't be your primary computing device, and it's not even a bigger, better iPhone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad as a device to fill the gap between smartphones like the iPhone and high-end laptops like the MacBook and MacBook Pro. He said there needs to be a middle device, but it needs to be better than the alternatives at what it does. Netbooks currently fill the void, but according to Jobs, netbooks aren't better at anything. He and his colleagues at Apple believe that the iPad is.

Apple's website and promotional video call the iPad magical. We're told the iPad is the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and videos. Hands down. But it's not it's not even close. It's mighty cool, it's super convenient, and it's very sexy, but it's not even better than a netbook at some of those things.

This isn't the middle device folks have been waiting for because and I'm using Steve Jobs's own criteria here it's not better at anything than any other device on the market. It's a step in that direction, but the day hasn't come yet. Here are just a few of the ways the iPad isn't as magical as Apple claims.

It's Not the Best Way to Browse the Web

Steve Jobs said it needs to be a better web device than the alternatives. The Apple website says it's the best way to experience the web. Some variation of that phrase is repeated several times in the promotional video Apple has released. But it's just not true.

It might be one of the best ways to browse the web on a mobile device, but laptop and desktop computers even netbooks are still better. Most current websites were designed to be experienced on those devices with a mouse and a keyboard. Maybe the mouse isn't necessary, but you don't have to pop up a software keyboard to type in URLs on a netbook or laptop. Even if you lug around the keyboard dock, it will be a tad awkward moving between the keys and the screen to interact. You're sacrificing some usability for simplicity on the iPad.

Most importantly, the iPad's browser does not support Adobe Flash, the foundation of rich media on the web today. Adobe is planning to make it possible for Flash developers to develop apps, but it won't work on the web.

I'll admit that the decision not to support Flash is a logical one if you start at the right premises; Flash is responsible for countless reported crashes on Macs, and Apple can't control it to ensure quality of experience. Apple is banking on a transition to HTML5 and CSS 3 for rich web content. While that transition has already begun, it hasn't fully happened yet. Until it does, it's ridiculous to call this device the best way to experience the web when one of the most ubiquitous and essential web technologies is not supported.

It's an Unprecedented Win for Closed Computing

Many of the software restrictions that drive people mad when they're using the iPhone are going to be just as frustrating on the iPad. All the device's content apps, songs, TV shows, movies, books, you name it can only be processed through Apple's iTunes Store.

You won't be able to drag and drop or share files with other computers like you can with your laptop on your home network. You won't be able to download a program or music file from the web and play it on the spot. You won't be able to use any application that doesn't meet Apple's strict approval guidelines. It's closed computing at its most extreme.

Unfortunately we've come to expect that from our smartphones. For a larger device that's supposed to replace your netbook as a complete portable computing solution, though, this is almost unprecedented at least from a device that's likely to have a great deal of influence on the market and on the design of future devices. That's bad news no matter how you spin it.

It's Not Really a Competitive eReader

The Kindle owns the eReader landscape right now, and the greatest expectation for the iPad was that it would bury the Kindle. While the iPad's reader interface is indisputably sweet-looking and the list of participating publishers is promising, there are several ways it just won't beat the Kindle.

The most important issue is the price. The Kindle costs $260; so do Barnes & Noble's Nook and the comparable Sony Reader. The Kindle even comes bundled with free 3G network access, though it admittedly can't do anywhere near as much with it as the iPad can.

But if you are considering the iPad primarily as a reader, that price difference is a big problem. Also a big problem: The lack of an e-ink display. E-ink doesn't wash your face in eye-strain-inducing light like the displays on the iPhone, the iPad, and laptop computers do. It's meant to be a soft experience, just like reading a book. Without e-ink, you might not be able to tolerate spending four straight hours reading Stephen King's latest on a regular display, cool IPS tech aside.

Finally, as impressive as 10 hours of battery life is for a multi-purpose device like the iPad, the Kindle can run in reading mode for a week without recharging longer if Wi-Fi is disabled. Because it's trying to do everything, the iPad isn't the best at anything.

It's Not Worth It If You Have a Smartphone and Laptop

If the iPad isn't a good option as a middle device, it ought to at least be attractive to power users and enthusiasts who already have other devices. Unfortunately, it's not.

It's not significantly better at anything than either your iPhone or your MacBook. It can't be used as your daily workhorse computer on the go, because just like the iPhone's OS 3.1.2 the iPad's OS 3.2 doesn't multitask. And if you already have an iPhone, you can do basic information gathering, mapping, and so on while you're on the go without spending an additional $29.99 per month for 3G service.

Further, your laptop or netbook very likely has a web cam for video conferencing, and your cell phone probably has a camera (or even video camera) for capturing images. The iPad has neither.

Since the interface is graceful and satisfying, you might want to buy it as an extra device just for the experience, but at between $499 $829, that's not practical for most consumers.

The Anti-Hype

The iPad isn't going to be a phenomenon with either netbook users or power users. It's not better than existing devices at anything, and it's too expensive for most people to use it as a secondary device. I might have said something different if the rumors that the iPad would be all about a new push in the content marketplace were true, but that didn't happen. Instead, we got a cool toy.

Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, ereader, ipad, Kindle, Opinion

Our little Apple Tablet scavenger hunt has come up mostly empty-handed. Steve Jobs is gonna drop some knowledge on us today, and we're as in the dark (mostly) as we were weeks ago. And you know what? One of the main things we've learned from this little exercise is that the people who are most interested in today's announcement are also the least interested to learn anything in advance.

Here was one of the most fascinating and downright poignant responses our contest elicited, from a reader in India:

I want to make a kind request to you please to call your scavenger hunt off.

We all know why we are so intensely trying to find out the littlest morsel of information about the Apple Tablet and are hardly interested in any other company's slate device - only because Apple will create history with such a device.

I want to emphasize on the fact that Apple puts a lot of effort to building keynotes, which, for many people like myself, are like blockbuster movies. We never had the fortune of being at a live one, so we try to make the best of it being streamed online. Like you remember at the 2007 iPhone keynote, every other moment there was surprise. People had never seen anything quite like it before. And all of it coming from Steve Jobs made it a historical day in technology.

It is my earnest request to you, please let Apple do it again. We all want to know what the Tablet is going to be like. Your bounty offer may (and probably will) instigate people who want to sell their souls. I'm not blaming you or criticizing you. We don't want a few details or pictures to leak out before the official announcement. There's just a few more days left till Jan 27. Please let Steve Jobs introduce it the Apple way. Pretty please. It will be a lot more fun !

Would this guy have clicked through if we had received a real picture? Most definitely. Has he probably clicked on all of the hundreds of mocked up photos and videos? Almost certainly. But the fact that those were fakes was all part of the fun. Sure it's all a bit cynical in its consumerist frenzy, but the Apple's big, heavy-handed reveals are also a good time a bit of mystery, of (imagined) corporate intrigue, of envisioning suddenly-available outer space future products that were previously just the stuff of science fiction classics like Freejack and Demolition Man. (Classics, I tell you!) Remember the iPhone? When ol' Jobsy carted that thing out a few years ago it sufficiently blew most of our brain bones, and wasn't that kind of fun. I mean, rather than knowing all its details ahead of time?

Like blockbuster movies! That's sort of sweet in an irredeemably nerdy way, isn't it? There is something about the grandeur and anticipation of one of these keynote magic shows. Yes it's all nasty and capitalistic and cold and inhuman, but a little bit of excitement never hurt anyone, especially in these penurious times, when a Cosmo centerfold has assumed the regency and rules us all from his throne made of the bones of the New York Yankees.

That doesn't mean every scrap of purported "truth" about Apple's mystery tablet can't drive tons of pageviews (I mean, uniques!). But the real kick of feverish Lost guessing and obsessive Tablet rumoring is the pure joy of speculation with gleeful abandon. Here's the root truth of it all: No one actually wants to be proven right, because then it would all be over and we'd just return to our lives, the answer never actually being as big as we'd hoped, nay, dreamed.

It's a childish thing this entity we call imagination just turned a bit hard and practical by adulthood. No longer do we imagine whole unknown worlds existing in wardrobes or cupboards, but we can be fascinated with the possibilities of that ABC show starring the dude from Party of Five and the potentiality that Penny's computerbook from Inspector Gadget might sort of be real. The minute those youthful fantasies are quelled and quieted by cold hard facts, well... the whole activity loses a bit of its sparkle.

It's the kind of thing the internet can ruin too often. Take another small pleasure: movie previews. Remember movie previews? Oftentimes they were the best part of the whole moviegoing experience. What fresh new hell awaited us come springtime? What joys would poet-scholar John Woo soon be foisting upon us? It was nice to see some new things, things you'd never heard of!, before settling into your seat and getting progressively more bored by your feature presentation. They made movies seem big, eventful, singular. If you wanted to see what was coming up, you had to go sit in the dark and wait for them to show you. But now! Now you've got internet web sites all over the highway that'll show you a teaser sneak trailer for a movie that won't be out until Armistice Day 2014. They've got previews for everything, those internet people. And it ruins all the fun.

Sure it's still sort of exciting when they pop up on the online, but it ruins some of the formality, it just spreads and bleeds the thing out so everyone can see it. Movie previews aren't as controlled and specific anymore. By the time they're up on the flickering screen there, I've already seen them three times over. It's boring, it's vaguely sad to have basically ended this tiny pleasure I enjoyed as a kid. I don't know why I do it to myself. And yet I do.

Though I suppose the whole ruined movie trailers thing isn't the same as a spoiler. A spoiler would be, like... someone telling me about Lost, I guess. Well, I haven't spent five sweaty years emotionally invested in just what the fuck the iTablet or iPad or whatever is all about, but it's still the same giddy joy of anticipation. In the end, what do we get out of either thing? Nothing, really. We're either $700 poorer or we're in six years of emotional debt to friends and family for being unbearably annoying about What Is In the Hatch. But screw it, we gotta take fun where we can get it and I appreciate it not being squashed.

So thank you Apple robot security guards for taking your whirring steel pincer claws and strangling that lab tech who was trying to smuggle an iNewspaper out of the office. That entrepreneurial fellow (he'd have been a hundred-thousandaire!) didn't die in vain. A not-so-well-kept secret is kept so for a few more hours, which will give me (and all of youuu) some dull sort of pleasure in an otherwise bleak and windswept wintry state of the union. Surprises are good almost always better than knowing even when it's about electronic products I don't understand and can't afford. Maybe even especially then.

It can be difficult to guess judicial decisions based on the judge's oral questioning of the lawyers, but it's certainly possible to see where judges are having trouble with an argument. In today's case, judges repeatedly went after the FCC's contention that it was acting legally in the Comcast case. Because Comcast's behavior ran afoul of an "Internet Policy Statement" rather than an official rule, the company claims that the FCC had no grounds for action until it made the Policy Statement into actual policy (which FCC Chair Julius Genachowski is trying to do right now).

Judges questioning the FCC's legal team said that the Policy Statement was "aspirational, not operational," that the FCC had not identified a "specific statute" Comcast violated, and that the FCC "can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good."

What difference would a pro-Comcast ruling make, given that the company has already changed its traffic management practices? It would "free us of this black mark on our record," said a Comcast attorney, according to the Wall Street Journal. That attorney, Helgi Walker, comes from the high-powered Wiley Rein law firm in DC. Ironically, former FCC Chair Kevin Martin, the Republican appointee who sided with the two Democrats on the FCC in the Comcast ruling, was himself a former Wiley Rein lawyer.

In a statement after today's hearing, current FCC Chair Genachowski said, "This case underscores the importance of the FCC's ongoing rulemaking to preserve the free and open Internet. I remain confident the Commission possesses the legal authority it needs and look forward to reviewing the court's decision when it issues."

That decision should come in the next several months.

You can think of KRonikle as krack for designer vinyl toy collectors.

And before you go off thinking that I'm talking about something else, this is a family friendly blog most of the time.

The KRonikle is the official blog for all things Kidrobot. They cover toy news, product releases and events that are being held at their various stores. This is standard fare these days but what Kidrobot has been able to do with their blog alone is a testament to building community around a passion designer toy collecting.

Designer toy collecting is something that Kidrobot helped to make popular by introducing street artists to the public vinyl toys. Often cute figurines that were swathed vibrant colors and a counterculture that prizes individuality. Mix good marketing on top and you have a combination that leads to a viable revenue stream.

Kidrobot has been growing at a steady pace over the last three years. What the KRonikle represents is their recent entry into blogging and community building online. By creating a central point that allows them to break news on their own sought after products they have the ability to be shape the conversation about the toys and their brand. The two are inseparably tangled since they manufacture most what they sell.

This allows them control with great accuracy images and news about these items. What it also does for them is allows them to have direct contact with the artists that work with them. These artists often make in-store appearances to do signings, customs one-offs and take questions from fans and up and coming artists alike.

The KRonikle is also an entry point for newbies to get accustomed to the culture by dipping their toe in it. Hanging with regulars and advanced collectors can be intimidating as they talk about the artists, the releases and the prices which can be astronomical. Often they are not so high but for a very limited piece or a one-off from an artist, like the stereotypical art world can has a higher cost.

This blog is a good example to show clients that may come to you to help them sell products from their real world business. It is a combination of community, news and products. It represents exclusivity as much as it represents the culture that covets its heroes.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Kidrobot Krushing with KRonikle is a post from: TechStartups.com

• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
• Select customers of Google Apps

Yesterday, we reported on the Southeastern Conference's (SEC) ban of social media at sporting events. The policy, which mandated that fans not disseminate any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event, drew sharp criticism from our commenters and around the blogosphere.

It appears that the SEC has come around, at least somewhat, and issued revisions to their guidelines for fans. While video will still be off-limits, it looks like tweets, Facebook status updates, and even pictures will be acceptable, so long as they are for non-commercial use.

The new policy reads:

No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a real-time description or transmission of the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of such Event. Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable. If the SEC deems that a Bearer is producing a commercial or real-time description of the Event, the SEC reserves the right to pursue all available remedies against the Bearer.

Absent the prior written permission of the Southeastern Conference, game action videos of the Event may not be taken by Bearer. Photos of the Event may be taken by Bearer and distributed solely for personal use (and such photographs shall not be licensed, used, or sold commercially, or used for any commercial or business purpose).

In other words, the SEC is intent on protecting the broadcasting rights of CBS, but casual, not-for-profit social media use by fans will be permitted. This is also what SEC Associate Commissioner of Media Relations Charles Bloom told The Buzz Manager Blog today for the most part, it's all about video.

Is that the right stance? As I said in my previous post and again today on CNN Live (embedded below), it's hard to see today's camera phones competing with the quality and scale of broadcast coverage. That said, the SEC has a point in wanting to protect what's currently an enormous source of revenue. But so long as complimentary forms of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and photo services are allowed, at least the conference is moving in the right direction for both the fans and itself.

Tags: college sports, SEC, social media

We recently posted about how 37signals increased their sign-ups by 200% with A/B Testing.

A lot of you are using WordPress, which makes A/B testing pretty tricky, so we've recorded a screencast tutorial to show you how to do it.

Editor's note: We'll be covering topics like A/B testing and marketing your web app at The Future of Web Apps London.

If you're new to A/B testing, here are a few resources to get you started:

• An Introduction to A/B Testing by Jesse Farmer
• Wikipedia definition
• Google Website Optimizer video tutorials
• Advanced Website Optimizer Tricks
• Official Google Website Optimizer blog
• Google Website Optimizer Tricks

The Video

Please note, if your goal page is on a different domain or sub-domain, you need to make small modifications to your tracking code.

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If you liked this article, feel free to re-tweet it to let others know. Thanks, we appreciate it :)

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Early Android 2.0 "Donut" build available, up and running on G1 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Cellphones

Security official suspended, turned over to authorities in apparent connection to Foxconn employee's suicide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A great number of celebrities have found Twitter is a great way to communicate directly with the public, without filtering by the news media or a record company. In Reznor's case, his fan base consisted of a few too many angry, depressed people to make Twitter a pleasant experience.

It turns out the industrial rocker's fans weren't too happy when he started Twittering about the joys of being in love. And so he warned that he was going quit the Internet: "You are right, I'm not the same person I was in 1994 (and I'm happy about that). Are you?"

Rather than fade away as Dave Matthews seems to be doing, Reznor followed up on his threat by just cold deleting his account sometime within the past few days (he posted as recently as July 17). Which is especially startling since Reznor has been a pioneer in using the internet to distribute his music and connect with fans. He's now discovered that it's possible to connect too closely and unlike internet fameballers trying to convert online fame into real celebrity, he doesn't have to pretend otherwise.

Look out mobile phones, because in a decade's time wearable systems may be the primary means of accessing the Web!

Sponsor

In the TED presentation, Maes refers to this system as a "sixth sense" - a sense that would give us seamless, easy access to information on the fly about situations and objects we come across.

The current system, albeit relatively clunky, could be purchased for as little as $350. Essentially it is made up of a webcam, a battery-powered 3M projector, mirror, phone and colored finger caps. But in 10 years - according to Maes, the period of time when this type of system might be fully developed - it could be one device and as small as a watch. Or indeed maybe even a brain implant.

This type of product will undoubtedly go well beyond what mobile phones are capable of now. As Maes put it, mobile phones currently don't have easy access to all of the relevant information we need on a daily basis. A mobile phone still requires a user to change their behavior, she said.

Plus the Web as we know it today is full of manual steps, such as visiting websites and searching for information. In 10 years time we'd hope that the Web of Data would be much better realized, for example product data easily viewed outside of its official website and no matter what the context.

One example given in the TED presentation was looking at a book in a bookstore. Currently to get access to reviews information, a person would need to take out their cellphone, open up Amazon's mobile website - or a relevant iPhone app perhaps - and search for that book. Whereas with the wearable internet device demoed at TED, the user simply wiggles his or her fingers and up pops the Amazon rating on the front cover (reviews data can be reached by opening up the book).

You can see the power of this as a next generation Internet interface, as it removes several manual steps from the process of receiving relevant, contextual information about something or someone.

We've blogged a fair amount about sensors this year, because they connect the real world up to the Internet. The wearables system relies a lot on them, for example the caps on Pranav's fingers. Add that to the many other points of connection to the Web and it's a powerful system; for example the book has a barcode that, in combination with the wearable device, will pull down data from Amazon.com via the Web.

The Internet as Sixth Sense

As explained in a Wired article earlier this year (found via h+ Magazine), a lot of the information that "helps us understand and respond to the world" doesn't come from the 5 senses humans are usually born with. It comes from computers and, increasingly, the Web. So the goal of this MIT wearable device is to "harness computers to feed us information in an organic fashion, like our existing senses."

We at ReadWriteWeb are very excited about next-generation Internet interfaces, such as augmented reality and so-called cross reality. These wearable devices strike me as being the most impressive future Web interface that I've seen in a while. Check out the video and see if you agree.

Stay's main beef with the changes is that no one was notified of these changes (to verify_credentials(), incidentally). Stay further reported that an email response from a Twitter rep stated that the company "assumed (apparently incorrectly) that people were only using this method occasionally."

Sponsor

The change in the API limits the number of username/password verifications to 15 per hour. According to the afore-linked developer wiki, "Because this method can be a vector for a brute force dictionary attack to determine a user's password, it is limited to 15 requests per 60 minute period (starting from your first request)." The wiki language was changed June 29.

Granted, Twitter has had a bit of a media tsunami on its hands lately, but we still must note that no official announcement has been made about the API changes. This seems to be the case with other API changes, as well. For example, earlier this month, API request limits were increased from 100 to 150, as several blogs and end users noted at that time. No official announcement was made; the information was confirmed, as with this most recent change, through an update to the API wiki.

Although the company is usually tight-lipped, do you think developers whose apps and livelihoods rely on the service and the API deserve a dedicated blog? Google Code is a great resource that acknowledges the ecosystem of apps built around that company's APIs.

Even if Twitter can't afford to support developers with resources of a Googlesque stature, we do tend to feel that developers who rely on the API deserve advance warning of certain changes, even ones the company might consider minor. As it stands, app developers are subjected to a string of pleasant surprises followed by sucker punches.

Content owners are looking beyond straight-up advertisements and product placements. One opportunity lies in the ability to immediately sell products seen in video content. To that end, startup Clikthrough has just raised $1 million for its interactive clickable video efforts.

Clikthrough is an interactive video platform that allows content owners to associate video with specific products and places and then push that content out. Clikthrough is not a destination site, does not have its own player, and says it can work with any third-party video publisher.

The company is starting off with music videos because they are short-form and drive a lot of traffic. Clikthrough has 39 music videos up on its site to showcase, for example, how it highlights the shirt Kelly Clarkson wears (or the hotel she's in) so the viewer can learn more about it or purchase it.

Clikthrough can do this because when the record labels provide a music video, they also hand over a list of every item featured in that video. Clikthrough then pulls pictures and information from those product sites and associates them with the objects in the video on the back end before the videos are pushed out for distribution.

The company earns money by charging a set-up fee as well as a rev split for clicks generated for products featured, as well an affiliate fee for any purchases made. Additionally, because it knows what's in a video down to the exact frame, Clikthrough will be able to serve up better targeted ads.

Music videos are a starting point for Clikthrough, which has relationships with Phonogenic/Sony Music, Universal Music and Slip N Slide Records. The company has some nice musical backers as well with this latest round of funding coming from investors like Swedish music producer/hit maker Max Martin and Nick Byrne, who was a member of the Irish band Westlife. Clikthrough does not have an official partnership with Vevo, the forthcoming video site from UMG and YouTube, yet. The company is looking to expand its technology to TV shows and movies.

Clikthrough is certainly getting into a crowded space. Other companies doing interactive, clickable video include Overlay.tv and PLY Media, Zunavision and Innovid.

Based in San Francisco, the 2-year old Clikthrough has four employees and has raised $2.1 million in funding to date.

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Netbooks or Netbooms. Find out at Mobilize 09 New ideas and new contacts. 1 day. Learn More

The city of Boston is set to launch an official iPhone application for residents to file complaints about "neighborhood nuisances--nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights," according to The Boston Globe.

Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.

The app was ...

Originally posted at Crave

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it's being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice's BackPage.com.

That's all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.

In an email, Village Voice's PR firm accuses Buckmaster of leveraging the legal bind he's in to damage Craigslist's competition.

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn't make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they're proud of it: We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings, they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can't sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later submarine edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist's (relatively tame) adult service' section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) adult service' section of their own?

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We've put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We're fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don't endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren't going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn't viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it's all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York's Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver's Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM's products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

The story goes like this: the Boston Police tweet about incidents on the streets of Boston; one of their tweets was the following:

INJURED OFFICER: Officer from district 4 transported to Beth Israel Hospital, human bite to arm, suspect in custody.

A user named @willcady asked the following:

@Boston_Police if that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?

to which @Boston_Police replied:

@willcady Yes, absolutely

This short exchange, amusing as it may be (the subsequent Reddit thread is equally hilarious) tells us more about the benefits of Twitter as a tool for corporations/governments/public services than any study can. Twitter is the ideal channel for the Boston Police dept. to show its human face. I can't imagine any other communication channel that would be better used for both disseminating timely and essential information and creating a better public image for such an institution. Can you imagine a police department cracking jokes in their official PRs, or even at their own web site? On Twitter, however, it feels natural, and when you put the right person behind that Twitter stream, you can really show that you care about your users, customers, or - in this case - citizens.

Furthermore, it shows the importance of actually using Twitter as it's intended to use, not only as just another place to dump the contents of your RSS feed. Yes, you can do that, but then no one will actually read your tweets. But if people recognize that there's a real person updating those tweets, someone who really has something to say, Twitter can do wonders for your public image.

See also: The 7 Ways to Approach Twitter

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jodiecoston

Tags: Boston Police, twitter

TUAWFirst Look: Geocaching 2.0 for iPhone 3G originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last year around this time we featured an article on what BMW models are made where entitled Made in Germany? . BMWAG has graciously done this work for us this year by releasing a list of production facilities, what models are produced/assembled at each plant and the total number produced at the plant for 2008. This saved us a good deal of time and we thank them!

Worth noting in this official document is that the 5 Series GT will be in production this year as will the X6 Hybrid, but there is no mention of the new X3 or X1 which are both expected this year as well (now possibly in the Spring of 2010?). If you are questioning BMW producing cars in Asia, you will be happy to know that CKD stands for Complete Kick Down, and these are cars produced elsewhere in kit form and assembled for the specific local market in which they are assembled.

Full BMWAG PDF can be found here.

The orange juice brand was in the midst of launching redesigned packaging when a loud bus of vocal fans who liked the old packaging, thank you very much, raised hell. They liked the iconic picture of a large orange with a straw, making the juice easy to find in the crowded OJ aisle. After their protests drew a flurry of unexpected calls, letters and email complaints, Tropicana announced it would revert to the original packaging.

In an apologia, Tropicana president Neil Campbell said the disconnect was research: What we didn't get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn't something that came out in the research.

When traditional marketing research doesn't include input from passionate fans who love the brand and tell others about it, it risks creating a Tropicana effect.

Tropicana's research may have expertly divided its customers into demographics and "heavy users" vs. "light users," but it probably did not account for vocal, connected and passionate customers who know how to create a Facebook protest group in less than a minute or spread buzz via Twitter hashtags. Had Tropicana had a way to reach out to evangelists, this might not have been a story.

So what does Tropicana have now? Actually, it's pretty good: a second chance. A gift to convert that passion into something tangible. But Tropicana has work to do. There's no blog on their website, which still touts the "fresh new package." There's no official Facebook page. There's no Twitter account. (No, a brief Twitter campaign shirt-tailed to the old presidential campaign doesn't count.) It's a great opportunity to start a network or community for that busload of fans.

Of course, customer evangelists needn't decide everything (that's always the straw-man argument), but you can't ask for their opinion and improve the odds of a $35 million bet if you don't know who they are.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

Redirects being abused by spammers

• Scripts that redirect users to a file on the serversuch as a PDF documentcan sometimes be vulnerable. If you use a content management system (CMS) that allows you to upload files, you might want to make sure the links go straight to the file, rather than going through a redirect. This includes any redirects you might have in the downloads section of your site. Watch out for links like this:
  

example.com/go.php?url=
example.com/ie/ie40/download/?

• Internal site search result pages sometimes have automatic redirect options that could be vulnerable. Look for patterns like this, where users are automatically sent to any page after the "url=" parameter:
  

example.com/search?q=user+search+keywords&url=

• Systems to track clicks for affiliate programs, ad programs, or site statistics might be open as well. Some example URLs include:
  

example.com/coupon.jsp?code=ABCDEF&url=
example.com/cs.html?url=

• Proxy sites, though not always technically redirects, are designed to send users through to other sites and therefore can be vulnerable to this abuse. This includes those used by schools and libraries. For example:
  

proxy.example.com/?url=

• In some cases, login pages will redirect users back to the page they were trying to access. Look out for URL parameters like this:
  

example.com/login?url=

• Scripts that put up an interstitial page when users leave a site can be abused. Lots of educational, government, and large corporate web sites do this to let users know that information found on outgoing links isn't under their control. Look for URLs following patterns like this:

example.com/redirect/
example.com/out?
example.com/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?

Is my site being abused?

• Check if abused URLs are showing up in Google. Try a site: search on your site to see if anything unfamiliar shows up in Google's results for your site. You can add words to the query that are unlikely to appear in your content, such as commercial terms or adult language. If the query [site:example.com viagra] isn't supposed to return any pages on your site and it does, that could be a problem. You can even automate these searches with Google Alerts.
  

• You can also watch out for strange queries showing up in the Top search queries section of Webmaster Tools. If you have a site dedicated to the genealogy of the landed gentry, a large number of queries for porn, pills, or casinos might be a red flag. On the other hand, if you have a drug info site, you might not expect to see celebrities in your top queries. Keep an eye on the Message Center in Webmaster Tools for any messages from Google.
  

• Check your server logs or web analytics package for unfamiliar URL parameters (like "=http:" or "=//") or spikes in traffic to redirect URLs on your site. You can also check the pages with external links in Webmaster Tools.
  

• Watch out for user complaints about content or malware that you know for sure can not be found on your site. Your users may have seen your domain in the URL before being redirected and assumed they were still on your site.
  

What you can do

• Change the redirect code to check the referer, since in most cases everyone coming to your redirect script legitimately should come from your site, not a search engine or elsewhere. You may need to be permissive, since some users' browsers may not report a referer, but if you know a user is coming from an external site you can stop or warn them.
  

• If your script should only ever send users to an internal page or file (for example, on a page with file downloads), you should specifically disallow off-site redirects.
  

• Consider using a whitelist of safe destinations. In this case your code would keep a record of all outgoing links, and then check to make sure the redirect is a legitimate destination before forwarding the user on.
  

• Consider signing your redirects. If your website does have a genuine need to provide URL redirects, you can properly hash the destination URL and then include that cryptographic signature as another parameter when doing the redirect. That allows your own site to do URL redirection without opening your URL redirector to the general public.
  

• If your site is really not using it, just disable or remove the redirect. We have noticed a large number of sites where the only use of the redirect is by spammersit's probably just a feature left turned on by default.
  

• Use robots.txt to exclude search engines from the redirect scripts on your site. This won't solve the problem completely, as attackers could still use your domain in email spam. Your site will be less attractive to attackers, though, and users won't get tricked via web search results. If your redirect scripts reside in a subfolder with other scripts that don't need to appear in search results, excluding the entire subfolder may even make it harder for spammers to find redirect scripts in the first place.
  

• You can also use Webmaster Tools to remove URLs. Chances are that the spammers have also hacked and abused other sites to generate links to the spammed section of your site. If you see suspicious sites or spammed forums linking in, feel free to report those to us, preferably with the verified spam report form in Webmaster Tools.
  

Today at CES the company has unveiled several major upgrades to the product. First, there's Android support; FlyCast already works on the iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry, and now it's available for the T-Mobile G1 phone.

Furthermore, FlyCast now exists as a desktop version for PC and Mac; it's an Adobe AIR application, but Linux isn't mentioned anywhere, I'm afraid. You can download it at the official web site.

Other improvements include unlimited song skipping for over 300 channels, an upgraded program guide, Facebook Connect support, local weather info through AccuWeather.com, and support for AAC+ and Windows Media streams.

Interested in more iPhone and Android resources?

- 8 Android Apps Worth Paying for (and Some That Aren't)
- 40+ Free iPhone Music Apps
- 10 Free Music Based Games for the iPhone & iPod Touch

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Imeem Brings Streaming Music to Android and Google G1
Billboard Top 100 Now Includes Yahoo and AOL Music
eMusic Launches 10 Internet Radio Mashups
Pandora Comes to Windows Mobile
AOL Europe Signs Radio Deal With CBS For Last.fm Partnership
First Complete Software Suite to Operate on Google Android Surfaces
Justin.tv Launches Two New Channels, Debuting Wild 94.9 with Guest Rhianna, and PHasion

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla General Counsel, wrote that after research efforts were conducted that Mozilla came, to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds. As a result, we're planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds (these changes should go into the current beta for testing). This means that, upon download and launch, the Firefox Start Page for RU locale builds will use Yandex for search queries, and the search bar will default to Yandex.

The Google-Mozilla relationship in essential to both parties: it gives Google massive distribution, and provides Mozilla with most of its revenue. And yet the Yandex move, plus Google's debut of Firefox competitor Chrome, must surely cause a little friction in this mutually beneficial relationship.

[via CNET]

More Resources From Mashable

-23 Best Social Networking Toolbars and Plugins for Firefox
-The 10 Best Google Maps Extensions for Firefox 3
-8 Google Reader Extensions for Firefox 3

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Report: Russian Search Leader Yandex Set for Massive IPO
Russian Search Leader Yandex is Hungry for International Renown
Firefox 2 Security Fixes Released
400 Million Firefox Downloads
YouTube Mobile, Yandex, Orkut Polls, Amazon PPA, FunMobility, Motorola, MobilePlay, The Onion, Jott, Congoo
Mozilla Officially Ends Support for Firefox 2
Mozilla: Would You Like a Virus With That Add-on?

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New Feed Bundles

We're not seeing the update on our accounts yet, so if you're in the same boat you're likely to see it on yours within the next few days. Still not happy with the simplified Google Reader? Try recently mentioned Helvetireader for another minimalist Reader skin.

Vancouver businessmen Wayne Crookes, once an important federal Green Party of Canada official, sued Jon Newton, the operator of p2p.net, for linking to four articles that Crookes alleged were defamatory.

In Crookes v Wikimedia Foundation Inc., 2008 BCSC 1424, Justice Kelleher ruled that a simple link to a defamatory article this does not amount to republication. The defamation was contained in the article, not in the simple act of pointing to it.

Justice Kelleher's ruling drew a parellel between links and footnotes in printed articles.

Although a hyperlink provides immediate access to material published on another website, this does not amount to republication of the content on the originating site. This is especially so as a reader may or may not follow the hyperlinks provided.

Further, he recognized that link text could support defamation, but that simple linking does not.

It is not my decision that hyperlinking can never make a person liable for the contents of the remote site. For example, if Mr. Newton had written the truth about Wayne Crookes is found here and here is hyperlinked to the specific defamatory words, this might lead to a different conclusion.

Linking is a footnote; it is a signpost pointing to a viewable object. I'm glad to see it supported as part of Canadian free speech. I'm also glad to see that the few websites with policies asserting they can prevent other sites from referencing them through links receive ridicule for their attempts to govern references to them.

As Mr. Newton noted, They're links, the genius of the Net. Allowing the public to refer to publically posted materials with links affirms a rudimentary function of the web.

ShareThis

VIA has apparently confirmed that the next generation HP Mini-Note will not use VIA processors. HP is expected to launch a new netbook called the HP Mini 1000 this week (possibly as soon as Wednesday), and from what I can tell, it will have a 10 inch display, a cheap plastic case (unlike the sturdy aluminum case used in earlier models), and it will likely have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, much like almost every other netbook released in the US since this summer.

DigiTimes reports that a VIA official says that the new HP Mini-Note models will not sport VIA chips, but that HP will continue to sell the existing line of HP 2133 Mini-Notes through mid-2009.

That doesn't mean VIA is going to just curl up in a ball and roll away though. The company today announced the launch of a Global Mobility Bazaar program designed to make low cost computers available in the developing world. VIA is working with Microsoft and 15 Chinese PC makers to create an infrastructure for producing mobile computers with 7 to 15 inch screens that will be available for the equivalent of about $400 or less in regions including Eastern Europe, India, South America, and China.

While we may not see a lot of VIA C7-M or VIA Nano-powered computers in the US or western Europe in the near future, this initiative could result in an awful lot of computers in developing nations being powered by VIA chips. And who knows, if the VIA Nano lives up to its promise overseas, perhaps we'll see major western companies like HP take another look at the chip maker's products in the not too distant future.

via UMPC Portal

Post from: Liliputing

(via engadget)

UPDATE: there is an excellent tutorial and review of the update on the Electric Vagabond.

Sponsor

Adobe's Official Word

According to Betlem, Adobe is working on the iPhone Flash Player, but the iPhone is a closed platform. In other words, it's entirely up to Apple as to if and when they will allow the player onto the iPhone.

You may remember it was only earlier this spring that Apple CEO Steve Jobs deemed the current version of Flash Lite, the scaled-down version of Flash for mobile phones, as not being good enough for the iPhone. According to Jobs, Flash Lite would spoil the iPhone experience. He also noted that the desktop version wouldn't work either as it would run too slowly on the iPhone. What he called for was the creation of a "missing product in the middle."

Apparently, Adobe has heeded that call and has been busy building that middle-of-the-road version. The only question now is whether or not it will be good enough. At this point, Apple may be feeling the pressure to make Flash work considering Microsoft's recent licensing of Flash and Reader LE on Windows Mobile.

When Will It Arrive?

As to when we will see Flash on iPhone, it's anybody's guess. However, according to AppleInsider, the iPhone/iPod Touch software will be updated next month to v2.2 beta 1. Included in the update will be a newer version of Safari, which has been redesigned to relocate the Google Search bar to the right of the Address Bar. Also in the update will be a new App Store which will feature a new categories page with large category icons and more spacing between each listing.

We suppose it's too much to hope for that the new version of Flash would be pushed down with this upcoming update as well, but Apple has been known to surprise us before.

POLL: What Do You Think About Flash On iPhone?

We're looking forward to having Flash on the iPhone, but we're curious what you think. Has it been difficult for you to use your iPhone/iPod Touch without it? Or do you think "good riddance!" having never liked Flash in the first place? Please take our poll and let us know your thoughts.

Does iPhone's Lack of Flash Bother You?
( surveys) Discuss

"It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."