10 Day Weather Forecast for Andover, MA (01810) - weather.com

This just in from weather.com:

Apparently December is not a great time to golf here – who knew? (The screen shot is the default 10-day forecast view – I didn’t select the “Golf Index”)

10 Day Weather Forecast for Andover, MA (01810) - weather.com

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : AT&T: Chokehold is “irresponsible and pointless”

Fake Steve’s latest volley

That’s what they told Cult of Mac in a statement tonight, and all I can say in response is, Um, have you read this blog before? Irresponsible and pointless are pretty much all we do around here.

But yes, we feel chastened. Frankly, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Then again, at least we didn’t rake in $40 billion in revenues and $10 billion in profit over the past nine months by selling a wireless network that doesn’t work right.

And at least we’re not saying one thing in our advertising (unlimited!) and another thing when we talk to investors at Wall Street conferences.

(Read the full post…)

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : AT&T: Chokehold is “irresponsible and pointless”

Is the Google Phone an Unauthorized Replicant? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Looks like they need a few more intellectual property lawyers in the Googleplex

As many bloggers have noted, the name Nexus One seems to be a reference to the cyborgs in the dystopian movie “Blade Runner,” which in turn was based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by the late Philip K. Dick. Both the film and the book feature a bounty hunter tasked with tracking down several rogue Nexus-6 cyborgs, the sixth generation in the line of Nexus robots.

But unlike Motorola, which licensed the Droid name from “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, no one at Google discussed the name with Mr. Dick’s family — and they’re not happy about it.

Is the Google Phone an Unauthorized Replicant? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Borders Invests in Kobo, an E-Book Store - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Borders joins the e-book race

Borders Group announced Tuesday that it is developing a new e-book reader and e-book service in partnership with Kobo, a spinoff from Indigo Books & Music, a Canadian publishing company. The Web service is already live at Kobobooks.com and will be integrated into Borders.com within the second quarter of 2010.

The partners said the new e-bookstore will also offers mobile reading applications and will be “device neutral,” allowing readers to download content to the most popular smartphones, including the Apple iPhone, Research in Motion BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android devices.

Borders Invests in Kobo, an E-Book Store - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Microsoft Tackles the Child Pornography Problem - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Check the full article and this press release for more details

Microsoft is contributing its software for free. And this is not the first time the company has donated its brainpower and dollars to the try to curb online child pornography. Its Child Exploitation Tracking System — specialized database and search software — is used by law enforcement authorities in 20 countries to share leads and help track down perpetrators.

Pursuing online child pornography, explained Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, is part of the company’s long-running campaign against digital crime. That began, he said, with efforts to combat software piracy in the 1990s. Going after viruses, spam and phishing came later. Most of those programs were aimed at protecting Microsoft business as well as reducing crime.

Microsoft Tackles the Child Pornography Problem - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

The Strange Story of 22 Million Misplaced White House Emails | The Atlantic Wire

See the full post for more details and speculation

In 2007, two Washington, D.C. watchdog groups sued the White House for the release of millions of official emails that went mysteriously missing under President George W. Bush. Now, the White House has agreed to release the emails. The emails run from 2003 to 2005, covering some of Bush's biggest scandals and decisions, from the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame to the early days of the Iraq War. The deal will not see all emails from that period restored, but only those from 94 specific dates, some of which were chosen at random. The Washington Post reports that this is because restoring the emails from old backup tapes is an expensive and time-consuming process. They will not be available to the public until 2014 or later.

The Strange Story of 22 Million Misplaced White House Emails | The Atlantic Wire

Iran, Google Wave, And Michael Jackson Dominated Twitter This Year - washingtonpost.com

From the wisdom of tweets…

Technology was slightly interesting, as "Google Wave" was the top term for 2009. Ever since the service was first revealed over the summer, it's been on the Trending Topics list pretty much constantly as people have been both talking about it and looking for invites. It's interesting that most people still don't seem to understand (or understand how they'll use) the service, but apparently they love talking about it. Something else interesting is that "Snow Leopard," Apple's new version operating system beat out "Windows 7," Microsoft's new operating system.

Iran, Google Wave, And Michael Jackson Dominated Twitter This Year - washingtonpost.com

Fake Steve Declares ‘Operation Chokehold’ on AT&T - Digits - WSJ

Sign of the times…

Fake Steve published a fictitious memo asking iPhone users to turn on data-intensive apps at noon Friday in an attempt to overwhelm AT&T’s network. “The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob,” he wrote.

AT&T condemned the post. “We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers,” a spokesman said in a statement. “We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.”

Operation Chokehold has gotten some traction, however, as blogs and tweets have spread the word.

Fake Steve Declares ‘Operation Chokehold’ on AT&T - Digits - WSJ

Comcast tests service for television on the Web - The Boston Globe

The opiate of the masses, soon expanding further on PCs…

The dividing line between the Internet and television became a little thinner yesterday, as the nation’s largest cable company unveiled a nationwide test of a new service that lets subscribers watch their favorite shows online.

The offering from Comcast Corp., called Fancast Xfinity TV, demonstrates how cable companies are trying to attract and retain subscribers by integrating video entertainment services and the Internet.

[…]

The content will eventually include access to pornographic movies and TV shows. Comcast plans to make such programs available on Xfinity TV next year, after the company has added parental control features.

Comcast tests service for television on the Web - The Boston Globe

Text messaging becoming more popular than phone calls - The Boston Globe

See the full article for additional stats

The nation’s 270 million cellphone subscribers each sent out an average of 407 text messages in 2008, according to government statistics released yesterday by the Census Bureau. That is more than double the 188 messages sent by the average cell subscriber in 2007. The figures did not break down the texting by age, but the overall numbers understate the thousands of texts sent each month by many teens - balanced out by older folks who do not text as much.

“[…]

Her research found the average teen currently sends more than 2,000 text messages per month. About two-thirds of all teens use text messaging, mostly due to its simplicity as well as the privacy of being able to communicate without being overheard.

Text messaging becoming more popular than phone calls - The Boston Globe

FT.com / Technology - Oracle pledge pushes Sun deal forward

I think the key theme is “face-saving”…

The commitments themselves include increased spending on MySQL research and development, the creation of customer and storage engine vendor advisory boards, and a promise to maintain the MySQL reference manual.

Oracle also made certain licence-related pledges – which will be incorporated into contractual arrangements with storage vendors who currently hold commercial licenses with Sun.

Several competition specialists not directly involved in the case described them as “face-saving”, and questioned why such pledges could not have been offered or negotiated many months ago.

But the commission said: “Oracle’s binding contractural undertakings to storage engine vendors regarding copyright non-assertion and the extension over a period of up to five years of the terms and conditions of existing commercial licences are significant new facts.”

FT.com / Technology - Oracle pledge pushes Sun deal forward

Goo.gl Challenges Bit.ly as King of the Short - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

See the full article for more on the URL-shortening service competitive landscape

The new Goo.gl service is a direct attack on Bit.ly, a URL shortener developed in-house at Betaworks Studio. Bit.ly has fast become the de facto link shortener on Twitter and many third-party Twitter clients, and the service even raised a $2 million round of venture financing from investors that included Alpha Tech Ventures, the software industry pioneer Mitch Kapor and the early Google investor Ron Conway.

Goo.gl Challenges Bit.ly as King of the Short - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Books on Science - Essays Inspired by Microsoft’s Jim Gray, Who Saw Science Paradigm Shift - NYTimes.com

The full book is available for download here

Now, as a testimony to his passion and vision, colleagues at Microsoft Research, the company’s laboratory that is focused on science and computer science, have published a tribute to Dr. Gray’s perspective in “The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.” It is a collection of essays written by Microsoft’s scientists and outside scientists, some of whose research is being financed by the software publisher.

The essays focus on research on the earth and environment, health and well-being, scientific infrastructure and the way in which computers and networks are transforming scholarly communication. The essays also chronicle a new generation of scientific instruments that are increasingly part sensor, part computer, and which are capable of producing and capturing vast floods of data.

Books on Science - Essays Inspired by Microsoft’s Jim Gray, Who Saw Science Paradigm Shift - NYTimes.com

'Lost' Bush e-mail settlement requires that White House reveal IT practices [Computerworld]

Can anyone actually believe 22 million messages were lost due to “accidental” mislabeling? 

Without an automated archiving system, the White House relied on manual processes to archive e-mails, and that's when the problems evidently began. Files were mislabeled and commingled on back-up tapes containing all types of information.

Among the techniques used by the White House to determine whether e-mails were missing was modeling of traffic, from which they founds days that had statistically low e-mail volumes.

'Lost' Bush e-mail settlement requires that White House reveal IT practices

URL Shorteners from Google, Facebook, help Wave, and prove why it's needed

Interesting times; the article continues with a critical assessment of Twitter’s communication capabilities

Google today announced a new URL shortener, and Facebook appears to be testing one of its own.

That's right, two more in a crowded field of URL shorteners, the weirdest little function in the short and colorful history of the internet.

For those not familiar, URL shorteners are needed in those cases where a long Uniform Resource Locator is too long. The URL is the stuff inside the address bar, and a shortening service will make a unique, but short, URL and when it is entered that service will redirect the user to the actual page desired, the one with the long URL.

URL Shorteners from Google, Facebook, help Wave, and prove why it's needed

Monitor: Better ways to collaborate | The Economist

A timely e-mail reality check from The Economist 

Yet despite recurrent complaints that “e-mail is broken”, little seems to change. Other collaboration tools have popped up in recent years—including instant messaging, blogs, wikis (web pages that users can edit), social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, web-based applications and micro-blogging services like Twitter—but none has managed to dethrone e-mail. Indeed, many of these services rely on e-mail as an underlying signalling mechanism. When someone posts a comment on your blog, sends you a message on Facebook or starts following you on Twitter, how do hear about it? You get an automated e-mail. Accordingly, people commonly use a combination of various messaging and collaboration tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, in both their personal and business lives.

Monitor: Better ways to collaborate | The Economist

The five worst tech products of 2009 | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

Google Wave is #1…

1. Google Wave

With its mission to replace email, or at least be what email could have been if it were invented in the 21st century, Google Wave launched on to the technology scene with grand ambitions in 2009. Announced at the Google I/O developer conference in the spring, Google Wave became a hot topic in the fall when Google’s policy of making the Beta available via invitation-only created a feeding frenzy on social networks for people clamoring for Google Wave invites. From the very beginning I said that this was one of those products that looks great in a presentation but makes no sense in the real world. After trying Google Wave when the product was released into the wild, my opinion hasn’t changed (and others such as Robert Scoble have come to the same conclusion). Google Wave is basically a super-chatty IM client, and a badly overhyped one at that. The only use I can see for this product is for geographically dispersed project teams collaborating and brainstorming on documents and product development ideas in real time. Email has nothing to fear. Google Wave will not be stealing its throne.

The five worst tech products of 2009 | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

Stephen R. Covey Grants E-Book Rights to Amazon - NYTimes.com

Another Kindle milestone

Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle e-reader and one of the biggest book retailers in the country, will have the exclusive rights to sell electronic editions of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and a later work, “Principle-Centered Leadership.” Mr. Covey also plans to gradually make other e-books available exclusively to Amazon, which will promote them on its Web site.

The move promises to raise the already high anxiety level among publishers about the economics of digital publishing and could offer authors a way to earn more profits from their works than they do under the traditional system.

[…]

Arthur Klebanoff, chief executive of RosettaBooks, said that Mr. Covey would receive more than half of the net proceeds that RosettaBooks took in from Amazon on these e-book sales. In contrast, the standard digital royalty from mainstream publishers is 25 percent of net proceeds.

Stephen R. Covey Grants E-Book Rights to Amazon - NYTimes.com

22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found - Yahoo! News

Strange days indeed

Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, according to two groups that are settling lawsuits they filed over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.

The two groups made the announcement as they settled lawsuits that they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

[…]

The two groups say the 22 million White House e-mails were previously mislabeled and effectively lost.

22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found - Yahoo! News

Now if we could just get a picture of Bigfoot holding a Google phone | Good Morning Silicon Valley

A timely Google Nexus reality check  

Then again, maybe there’s less to all this than meets the eye. Google has already taken a major role in the design of T-Mobile’s G1 and the Motorola Droid, and it has even sold a pair of unlocked phones, the Google Ion and a G1-clone called the Android Dev Phone 1, to developers previously. So maybe that’s all Google’s holiday treat for employees amounts to — getting a reference Android 2.1 device out into the field for some real-world testing, the better to advise its hardware partners. Unless additional leakage is imminent, we may have to wait until early next year for any clarity, but in the meantime, Google’s dogfooding has already accomplished one positive thing for the company — with the Droid’s launch buzz receding, suddenly everybody’s talking about Android again.

Now if we could just get a picture of Bigfoot holding a Google phone | Good Morning Silicon Valley