While the app has been in App World for some time now, I got a chance to sit down with the folks at Verisign at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, and they showed me their VIP Access app. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a free download that provides you with an additional layer of security for your online profiles.

Once you register your VIP Acccess app, you get a new One Time Password every 30 seconds, which is securely stored on your BlackBerry. If your username or password is hacked, you still have an additional layer of security.

So if you have an account with eBay, PayPal, AOL or GEICO, this is worth the free download.

© Kyle for BlackBerry Cool, 2009

AOL is approaching its final moments at Time Warner, as the companies are heading towards the spin off revealed earlier this year. Time Warner has now officially put a date on when this is going to happen and as of December 10, 2009 AOL will begin to trade as an independent company on the stock market. The spin off comes nine years after what is regarded as one of the most disastrous mergers in history.

“The Time Warner board of directors has approved the final distribution ratio and declared a pro rata dividend of the shares of AOL common stock owned by Time Warner that will result in the complete legal and structural separation of the two companies,” Time Warner said in a statement.

“On the distribution date of December 9, 2009, Time Warner stockholders of record as of 5 p.m. on November 27, 2009, the record date for the distribution, will receive one share of AOL common stock for every eleven shares of Time Warner common stock they hold,” the company added.

What it boils down to is: Time Warner shareholders will get one share in the newly formed AOL for every 11 Time Warner shares they own. For any fractional share they may be entitled to they will receive a cash payment. Based on the $32 per share closing price and Time Warner’s market cap of $37.8 bi… (read more)

Whatever you might think of Gartner’s research and its silly “magic quadrant” system, I don’t think anyone could reasonably question that it was just Gartner’s opinion. Yet, a few months ago, we wrote about a company, ZL, that was so upset that Gartner put it in its niche quadrant, rather than the desired “magic quadrant,” that it sued. We didn’t expect the lawsuit to get very far (similar lawsuits over how Google ranks companies have been tossed pretty quickly). And, indeed, a judge appears to have found little worthwhile in ZL’s lawsuit, quickly dismissing all of the arguments, and noting that Gartner is free to have its own damn opinion, no matter how much others (or the subjects of that opinion) might disagree:

“Finally, ZL argues that Gartner’s representation that it provides ‘highly discerning research that is objective, defensible, and credible to help [customers] do their job better’ implies that its Reports contain objective assertions of fact. Gartner notes that this language appears not in the MQ Report but on its website and that the language describes Gartner’s research services generally rather than the MQ Report in particular…. More to the point, the terms ‘objective, defensible, and credible’ do not imply the assertion of factual information. Gartner argues convincingly that even if its self-description did refer to the statements within the MQ Report, its ‘sophisticated readers’ — corporate and government executives and professionals — would not infer that Gartner’s rankings were anything other than opinion.”

Still, the judge gave ZL an opportunity to amend the complaint, and the statement from the company indicates that it’s planning to try to come up with some other ridiculous argument against Gartner. Maybe it should just focus on satisfying what its customers want, and stop worrying about what some analyst at Gartner has to say.

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Based on today’s headlines, all eyes continue to be focused on the Senate — where Democratic leaders are still waiting for the revised Congressional Budget Office analysis of their health bill and plotting about when to hold the first procedural vote on the measure.

New Technology Helps Elderly Stay Healthy At Home
Every morning at 10 a.m. sharp, Juanita Wood, 87, taps “okay” on a screen to start up a device that takes her blood pressure and transmits the information to her medical clinic. At 10:30 a.m., her husband, Arthur, 91, touch-starts his own device, neatly lined up next to hers. The machine calculates his blood pressure and weight and sends them off, along with a blood sugar count that he enters by hand (Kaiser Health News and The Washington Post).

Analyzing Democrats’ Word Shift On Health Care
When President Obama and congressional Democrats began their drive this year to revamp health policies, they promised to expand health care coverage and to make it more affordable (NPR).

Deep Divisions Linger On Health Care
As the Senate prepares to take up legislation aimed at overhauling the nation’s health-care system, President Obama and the Democrats are still struggling to win the battle for public opinion. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Americans deeply divided over the proposals under consideration and majorities predicting higher costs ahead (The Washington Post).

Time Crunch Looms For Health Bill
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pressing to advance his version of health-care legislation past a key juncture this week in a bid to avoid a timing crunch that could otherwise kick the proposed revamp into next year (The Wall Street Journal).

Test Vote May Come Before Holiday
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has yet to introduce a health care reform bill, but he is still aiming to schedule a key test vote by the end of the week, Senate aides said Monday (Politico).

Reid Can’t Afford Any Defections
A number of centrist Democrats in the Senate are turning what normally is a simple procedural vote into a cliffhanger (The Hill).

A Centrist In Health-Care Debate, Lincoln Hears It From All Sides
When the Senate begins floor debate on a health-care reform package this week, the outcome is almost certain to rest on decisions made by a handful of moderate Democrats. None of those Democrats is feeling the heat as intensely as Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), who has become emblematic of the improbable distance that health-care reform has traveled, and how far it still must go before becoming law (The Washington Post).

When The Budget Director Talks, People Will Listen
Most people have never heard of Douglas W. Elmendorf. But all of official Washington is waiting to hear what he has to say. Mr. Elmendorf, a mild-mannered economist with a Harvard Ph.D., runs the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan agency charged with assessing how legislation, like President Obama’s proposed health overhaul, would affect the federal budget (The New York Times).

White House Healthcare Accord With Drug Industry May Be Going Sour
Reporting from Washington – Congressional Democrats’ intensifying efforts to pay for their healthcare overhaul and provide more relief for consumers are threatening to unravel a White House deal with the pharmaceutical industry and turn one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies against the legislation (Los Angeles Times).

Limited Effect Seen In Abortion Clause
Restrictions on abortion coverage approved in the House version of the health-care bill likely will affect the affordability of the procedure for only a small minority of women (The Wall Street Journal).

Bishops Reprise Old Abortion Fight With Higher Stakes
Thirty-three years ago this fall, a bitter, race-tinged fight over abortion matched Roman Catholic bishops and the House against the nation’s first popularly elected black senator, Republican Ed Brooke of Massachusetts (Politico).

Business Foes Of Health Care Revamp Ramp Up Effort
Business foes of health care overhaul legislation are outspending supporters at a rate of 2-to-1 for TV ads as they grow increasingly nervous over a final bill (The Associated Press).

Permanent ‘Doc Fix’ Unlikely
The American Medical Association gave Speaker Nancy Pelosi a huge boost earlier this month by endorsing her health care bill just days before the big vote. But it doesn’t look as if she’ll be able to return the favor (Politico).

Sign up to receive this list of First Edition headlines via email. Check out all of Kaiser Health News’ email options including First Edition and Breaking News alerts on our Subscriptions page.

Globally speaking, there is one clear leader in the LCD TV business: Samsung. The company commands a 23.2% share in this segment, with Sony (13.7%) and Sharp (7%) almost hopelessly behind (according to DisplaySearch). So in June this year already, Sony and Sharp inked a joint venture deal to produce LCD TVs together. And today, the Nikkei (Japan’s biggest business publication), reports that the two former arch rivals decided to further expand their alliance.

The newspaper says Sharp plans to deliver LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs as early as next month. Sharp has said it will start producing more LED-based products earlier this year, but the Sony deal is the first time another company is supplied with LED backlights. Backlights account for nearly 20% of overall costs in manufacturing an LCD TV. DisplaySearch projects that by 2013, roughly 40% of all LCD TVs on the market will have LED backlights.

Sharp and Sony will also join forces in R&D for next-generation backlights, the Nikkei learned. The goals are to cut costs and develop TVs with better picture quality and efficient power consumption. Both companies already started operating a Sharp LCD panel production plant in Osaka last month and suffer from losses in their LCD TV divisions.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Dave Girouard, the president of Google’s enterprise division, made an interesting admission earlier today, acknowledging that Google Docs isn’t right for the average person.  But Girouard also made an interesting prediction, putting Google Docs about a year away from seriously challenging Microsoft Office.

Let’s look at the current state of things first.  According to Victoria Ho, Girouard said that Google Docs is "much less mature" than other Google products, and he later continued, "We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet."

You can almost imagine a marketing team trying to tackle Girouard right then; such honesty probably won’t do Google Docs much good in the short term.

Still, the fact that Girouard (who’s spent almost six years with Google) was willing to face reality makes his forecast more noteworthy.  And Girouard indicated that a number of Google Docs updates will land next year, at which point businesses should be able to "get rid of Office if they chose to."

That’s more the sort of message Google’s marketing team could (and quite possibly will) get behind.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Google Docs Previews To Gmail

> Google Docs Gets New And Old Features

> Google To Start Crawling Google Docs Documents

Jill Blakeway, M.Sc, L.Ac.–

Whilst moderate exercise helps relieve stress and prepare a body for a healthy pregnancy, spending too much time in the gym can impair a woman’s fertility, according to a new study of 3,000 women published in last month’s edition of Human Reproduction.

In our book, Making Babies, we suggest that women who are trying to conceive do enough exercise to maintain a normal level of fitness and but that they do it in a way that makes them feel good physically and mentally, not drained or exhausted.  This advice is seconded by Sigridur Lara Gudmundsdottir, who led the study, ”We found two groups who experienced an increased risk of infertility. There were those who trained almost every day, and there were those who trained until they were completely exhausted. Those who did both had the highest risk of infertility.”

The researchers believe that high levels of physical activity consume so much energy that the body experiences short periods of time where there simply is not enough energy to maintain all the necessary hormonal mechanisms that make fertilization possible.

This correlates with the way traditional Chinese medicine sees the effects of too much exercise on qi. Qi is the word used to describe the body’s ability to warm, move and make transformations. For thousands of years Chinese doctors have cautioned their patients not to deplete their qi, if they are trying to conceive, because weak qi can lead to failure to ovulate or affect the embryo’s ability to implant.

The key is moderation. Too much exercise depletes qi whilst moderate exercise can help build qi. This is supported by previous research which has shown that moderate physical activity gives women better insulin function and an improved hormonal profile. In this recent study there is no evidence of impaired fertility through moderate amounts of exercise. Gudmundsdottir advises that women who want to conceive should still maintain their fitness but avoid extremes.

“We believe it is likely that physical activity at a very high or very low level has a negative effect on fertility, while moderate activity is beneficial.” she said.

Jill Blakeway is a Licensed Acupuncturist and Board Certified Herbalist. A former Professor of Traditional Asian Medicine she is the coauthor of Making Babies: A Proven Three Month Program for Maximum Fertility and The Fertility Plan. She is the Clinic Director at the YinOva Center in New York City, which is a complementary medical center for women and children. www.yinovacenter.com

Book Review: Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility

Chinese Medicine Brings Back The Libido

1 In 5 Women Suffer Pelvic Pain In Pregnancy: Ear Acupuncture Safe Therapy

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved

 

Google is going all-out in the enterprise front, constantly updating and adding new features to the Google Apps suite it offers businesses. Now it’s launching a new template gallery for Google Sites, the service which allows users to easily create and maintain a website. Anyone can install and use themes available in the public gallery, but businesses can also set up a private section to share templates at the workplace.

“The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages. Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more,” Scott Johnston, Google Sites product manager, wrote.

The company launched Google Sites a couple of years ago to enable users with no technical know-how to build their own websites. Anyone can use the stand-alone service, but the real target here is businesses that get it as part of the Google Apps suite. This allows them to deploy internal website or wiki for various tasks and also allows individual employees to create their own sites if they need to…. (read more)

Twitter may be slowing down in the US, but it’s showing no signs of stopping elsewhere. One feature, which seems to drive growth as much as anything else, is its mobility. Since its inception, users have been able to send tweets via SMS, but Twitter is now taking it to the next level with the announcement of a brand new feature, tweets, and photosharing via MMS in partnership with Orange UK.

“Today, not only has Orange UK turned on Twitter SMS, but it has added a first-of-its-kind special enhancement. Orange UK users can also send picture messages (MMS) to 86444 in addition to text messages because of a site that Orange UK has created called Snapshot,” Kevin Thau, the head of Twitter’s mobile department, writes. “Twitter does not charge for this service. It’s just like sending and receiving messages with your friends — your carrier’s standard messaging rates apply.”

Although, at one point, it looked like Twitter was ditching the SMS feature for good, texting tweets is making a comeback thanks to a number of new deals with carriers around the world. In the UK, users could already send tweets via SMS with Vodafone and O2, by sending a text message to 86444. Now, Twitter has also added Orange to the list and the feature is available through the same shortcode.

But the second part of the new partnership is a world first,… (read more)

There are many books or series that have caused a stir due to the themes contained within them. Here are a selection of the most controversial:

The Chocolate War

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“The Chocolate War” was written by Robert Cormier and was published in the 1970s. It is aimed at young adults. The novel explores protagonist Jerry Renault’s life at Trinity High School. Certain elements of the book’s plot, such as sexual content and violence have resulted in it being banned in a number of libraries.

Despite the book’s controversial themes, it is said to be one of the best young adult novels ever to be written. A film adaptation was released in 1988, with several scenes from the book being changed.

A sequel to the book was released in 1985, eleven years after the release of the original novel.

Lord of the Flies

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“Lord of the Flies” is a highly controversial novel by William Golding. It was published in 1954. The book tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who end up stranded on an island after their plane crashes. There are no adults present, which forces them to work together in order to survive. Their struggles and experiences on the island cause them to realise how dark human nature can be, which emphases the book’s allegorical meaning. The book is extremely violent in places, which has resulted in it being highly controversial.

The boys originally work together in an attempt to survive on the island, but their relationships are tested when the boys begin to form their own tribes. The metaphorical title, “The Lord of the Flies”, is another name for the demon “Beelzebub” and is presented in the form of a pig’s head surrounded by flies in the novel. Throughout the story, it is thought that the pig’s head is “The Beast”, but it later becomes clear that the boy’s actions have caused them to create “The Beast” themselves and it lies within them.

The book has been adapted to film twice. The first adaptation was released in 1963 and many changes were made from the novel, with some scenes being less violent in the film. The second adaptation was released in 1990 and again was less violent than the book, though more profanity was used in this adaptation.

The Harry Potter series

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The “Harry Potter” series is one of the most popular children’s book series of all time. The first instalment, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was released in 1997. As the other instalments followed, the series quickly became a phenomenon and by the time the fourth book “Goblet of Fire” was released in 2000, the series had become one of the most successful children’s series of all time.

The series is loved by millions of people all over the world, both adults and children alike. A successful film franchise has followed as well as merchandise and even a theme park,. The series, which consists of seven book sin total, has won dozens of awards and has had a huge impact on the public. Midnight launch events were held for the release of the novels, during which fans would queue for hours to receive their copy. The success of the series has made its creator JK Rowling one of the richest authors of all time.

Despite the millions of fans though, the series has also caused much controversy, mainly due to the fact that it contains witchcraft. Many religious groups believe that the series promotes witchcraft and many people, most notably Laura Mallory have attempted to have the books banned. Mallory made several attempts for the books to be banned in the children’s school library as she believed that the series promoted taught and promoted witchcraft. Despite all her opinions on the series, Mallory has not read any of the books, stating that they are “too long”. After she failed to get the books banned, she made several appeals, but was rejected.

Rowling has also be accused of plagiarism several times, the most famous being the Nancy Stouffer case, in which Rowling was accused of stealing ideas from Stouffer’s “The Legend of Rah and the Muggles”.

The inclusion of Rowling’s fictional band “The Weird Sisters” in the film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” also caused a stir when a band with the same named filed a lawsuit for not being credited in the film. The case caused many Harry Potter fans to react angrily and Jarvis Cocker, who appeared in the film as a member of the band and wrote several of the songs used in the film, was forced to drop a planned “Weird Sisters” album due to the lawsuit.

The Catcher in the Rye

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“The Catcher in the Rye” is a popular novel originally aimed at adults. Written by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951, the book has now become popular amongst young adults. The book follows the life of fictional protagonist Holden Caulfield, who is expelled from preparatory school.

Sexual references, profanity and drug and alcohol use have made the novel one of the most controversial books of all time. The novel was famously linked to the murder of John Lennon due to his killer, Mark Chapman, idolising the fictional Holden Caulfield. The character has also said to have influenced other murderers.

No film adaptation has been yet been made as a result of J.D. Salinger not wishing to have his novel made into a film. However, the book has been referenced in a wide variety of films and the popularity of Holden Caulfield has caused many characters in films to be loosely based on him. One of the most obvious references is “Chasing Holden”, a 2001 film where the protagonist, who compares his life to Holden’s, seeks out J.D. Salinger in an attempt to murder him. The book’s huge cultural impact has also led to it being mentioned in a wide variety of television programs and even in other novels and in various songs.

American Psycho

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“American Psycho” was written by Bret Eastern Ellis and was published in 1991. The story focuses on Patrick Bateman, who is a serial killer. Patrick is the brother of Sean Bateman, who was the protagonist in Ellis’s earlier novel “The Rules of Attraction”. Patrick is a serial killer and the book explores his life, which consists of torturing and brutally killing a string of women, as well as drug and alcohol abuse.

The novel became highly controversial as a result of the sadistic acts carried out by the protagonist, which included cannibalism, sexual abuse and necrophilia. . The murders are described in graphic detail and the book is banned in some countries. In some countries, the book is only allowed to be sold to those aged 18 or over. The book was also criticised for the amount of violence inflicted on females.

A film adaptation was released in 2000 and has since become a cult classic. Ellis’s earlier novel, “The Rules of Attraction” was also adapted to film in 2002. Patrick Bateman’s role in “The Rules of Attraction” was less pronounced and the story instead focused on his brother Sean, who although is not as sadistic as Patrick, struggles to show his emotions and is a very cynical character. “The Rules of Attraction” film adaptation was more satirical than “American Psycho”, though the film often contained very dark scenes, including the famous suicide scene.

Of Mice and Men

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“Of Mice and Men” is a very popular story that was written by John Steinbeck and published in 1937. This novella tells the story of two men, George and Lenny who are ranch workers. The men are best friends but are complete opposites. George is intelligent whilst Lennie has difficulties mentally. Lennie has incredible strength, which often causes problems and eventually leads to him accidentally killing a woman, resulting in a tragic end for the two men.

The story has become extremely popular and there have been several film and theatre adaptations. The story was banned from a number of libraries due to the use of profanity and racism, as well as the subject of euthanasia.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

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“Lady Chatterly’s Lover” is a popular novel written by D.H. Lawrence. It was originally published in 1928. The story focuses on Constance Chatterly, who begins an affair with Oliver Mellors as a result of marriage difficulties.

The book caused much controversy due to its explicit sexual content, as well as the use of profanity and it was banned in several countries, including Australia. When the book was published in 1961 in Britain, a trial was held as a result of the obscene words used. The publishers of the book were put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The book eventually became available to the British public in a second edition, which was published in 1961.

There have been several adaptations of the novel, including films and television movies.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a highly controversial novel written by Mark Twain. It was published in 1884. It is a sequel to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”.  “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” focuses on the continued adventures of two young boys, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. The book caused controversy due to the amount racism used. It has been banned in several libraries.

Despite the controversy, the book has been adapted to film many times, including a 1974 musical and a 1976 Japanese anime series.

Other sequels in the series include “Tom Sawyer Abroad” and “Tom Sawyer, Detective”.

With the web reaching more people in more countries everyday translations are becoming even more important. There are a number of translation services online and one of the best just got a big update. Google Translate was already impressive with support for 51 languages and some interesting features, but Google took it to the next level with a completely overhauled interface. The biggest feature and the most useful one is the new real-time translation, allowing you to get the results instantly.

“Today, we’ve launched three new features as well as a new look and feel for Google Translate — a service that helps people access information throughout the world by enabling them to automatically translate text and and web pages into their own language. Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today,” Awaneesh Verma, product manager for Google Translate, wrote. “Along with our shiny new layout, these new features should make it faster and easier for you to translate text between our 2550 language pairs.”

The new interface is simplicity at its best, typical Google, with all of the features you need and almost nothing else. There’s a text box, drop-down menus to choose the languages and a somewhat redundant “Translate” butto… (read more)

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a fitting end (if it is really the end, hard to know when it comes to such a long running and interesting series) to the adventures of the very unusual duo of a Lombax and a sentient robot.

The first installment in the series arrived in November 2002 and just seven years later, there are five games in the original series, including a ground breaking one on the PlayStation Portable, three videogames in the Future series, featuring the one reviewed here and another spinoff on the PSP, which puts Clank in the spotlight. It’s been a good few years of Ratchet and his partner, and Sony platforms have benefited from the exclusive nature of the franchise.

Right from the onset, it must be said that Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a refinement of the gameplay elements found in Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty and not a leap from the designs used there. There’s nothing mind-blowing innovative here but the people at Insomniac do not need to inject anything new into the series at this point, as almost all aspects are solid and coherent, providing challenges while not inducing frustration.

This is not Halo where each new release needs to introduce fresh tactics and shooting mechanics in order to allow for enjoyment on the part of gamers. This is Ratchet… (read more)

Adobe is making a big push today with new versions of its popular media platforms Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR. With Flash Player 10.1 prerelease (a cross between a beta and a release candidate), Adobe actually brings a lot more features than the small .1 update in the version number would have you believe, including support for multi-touch and other media capabilities. More exciting though is the new AIR 2.0 beta, a hefty release with a bunch of new features and updates.

The biggest new feature in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 pre-release is multi-touch and gesture support. Obviously, you need a device with a touch screen, but the technology is becoming increasingly popular, especially in mobile devices and also in desktops and laptops, now that Windows 7 has shipped with full multi-touch support. Moreover, the runtime can take advantage of the hardware decoding capabilities, available in most of today’s devices, to render H.264 encoded videos. Adobe says this saves energy, improving battery life, and also uses up less resources.

The latest Flash Player is the first step towards realizing the goals of the Open Screen Project, with which Adobe aims to enable developers create a single app that would work on any device, mobile or desktop, without the need to be specially designed for smaller scr… (read more)

We pointed out recently that Brazil was allowing groups of hackers and security experts to hack their e-voting machines, something that the e-voting industry has always resisted angrily. The e-voting companies have never been able to adequately explain why experts shouldn’t be able to try to hack the machines, and all it did was lead to more distrust over the machines. However, the Brazil test has been concluded, and there’s some good news: no one was able to crack the machines. However, with all the hack attacks, officials did learn a few things that are helping them to improve the overall process with the machines. It’s really amazing that we still don’t have something similar happening in the US.

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Tokio | Cairo [blprnt.com] is a novel visual text comparison tool, which enables the discovery the similarities and differences between Obama’s famous open address to the Muslim world, given in July at the University of Cairo, and his recent speech delivered at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

Several keywords were shared, such as ‘America‘, ‘world‘, ‘common‘, ‘human‘, ‘responsibility‘. At the far extremes, the speech in Cairo was about ‘Islam‘, about ‘Palestinians‘, about ‘peace‘, ‘faith‘, and ‘communities‘. The Tokyo address was about ‘China‘, ‘North Korea‘, ‘security‘, ‘agreement‘ and ‘growth‘. In addition, Obama makes many more mentions about ‘peace‘ in Cairo (in Japan, this word seems to have been replaced by ‘security‘), and far more mentions of ‘prosperity‘ in Tokyo. Interestingly, “Though one of the five occurrences of ‘rights’ is in reference to China, it appears from this analysis that there may have been a deliberate plan to keep the ‘human rights part’ of the speech separated from the ‘China part’“.

Note that this visualization tool was previously also applied to compare two very similar articles published on head injuries in the NFL.

By Chris Maxcer, MacNewsWorld

So Facebook developer Joe Hewitt tweets that he’s ditching the super-popular Facebook iPhone app, and TechCrunch, clearly sensing there’s more to the story here, reaches out to learn why.

“My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies,” Hewitt told TechCrunch. “I respect their right to manage their platform however they want; however, I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.”

Hewitt’s decision, of course, has sparked a mini firestorm over the so-called tyrannical Apple, with critics asserting it has a terrible App Store approval process, despite the approval of more than 100,000 apps so far. Hundreds of comments later, there’s the notion that Android is a better, more open platform, and if key developers move to Android from Apple, then “it’s over” — this last bit from none other than Robert Scoble on the TechCrunch comment board.

Really?

I know a nurse with a jailbroken iPhone that can play a game where a monkey urinates into a moving toilet. I know a grandmother who uses her iPhone to check the price of wheat. Both owners can easily get what they want from their iPhone. I have a hard time imagining any set of applications so compelling and only available on an Android-based phone — but not on an iPhone — that would get them to switch over to an Android phone. What if the nurse lost the ability to jailbreak the iPhone and play the monkey bathroom game? Based on what I know about the nurse, I doubt there’d be too many tears shed.

Still, there will be a few million people willing to switch and try new things, no doubt about it. But there’ll be millions more quite happy with the 100,000 apps they have available.

Moving on to the real noise

I’ve run into more than a few developers in my life, and two traits stand out: First, the best have a sort of focused brilliance. They are indubitably intelligent and capable of looking at foreign languages (a.k.a., “code”) and understanding how funky characters and spacing relates to hardware, software and user-generated events. Let’s not dismiss this lightly. It’s one thing to learn to speak a foreign language like Spanish, and it’s an entirely other thing to write a novel in Spanish.

Developers are pretty much doing the equivalent of writing novels in foreign languages. It’s hard work, takes time, and often enough they become emotionally invested in their efforts. In 2007, TechCrunch, by the way, called Joe Hewitt an “iPhone God,” and he seems to be pretty well-respected and talented.

And the second trait?

They tend to like things their way, and they tend to get irritated when people with power over them expect something that’s not congruent with what they want.
Kind of Like You and Me

So the developers I’ve run into — which is an infinitesimally small percentage of all developers in the world, mind you — are a lot like you and me when it comes to their second trait. We’re just not nearly as smart.

Let’s break down the two sentences from Hewitt above. He is “philosophically opposed” to the existence of Apple’s review process. Sounds like a guy who doesn’t like anyone peeking over his shoulder and ultimately deciding what gets to fly. Fair enough. Writers have editors. Sometimes the editors get it wrong. Most often, they get it right, and sometimes their criticism makes the product much better. If they get it wrong too often, writers can walk away. And sometimes they outright reject the work of a writer.

Being opposed to a review process is a personal thing. Let’s not confuse this with a so-called “failed” Apple App Store policy.

As reported, Hewitt then added that “gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.” Ouch. No one on the outside likes a gatekeeper, but “infesting the lives”? Right on — I don’t like it when anyone screws up my brilliance. I once built a fence in my back yard, and before I could even begin building it, I had to go to my city, draft some specs, and get a permit. There’s a retaining wall near one portion of the fence. Because there’s a tiny possibility that some idiot might trespass through my backyard and climb my fence and leap without looking, I had to build a much shorter-than-planned, see-through fence.

My point? This stuff is part of the cost of living with other people.

Stupid? You bet — until some guy is chased by police through my backyard, leaps the big fence I originally wanted, and breaks his back on the other side. Lawsuit ensues, and I lose my house. Look, there’s money on the table for Apple, but I guarantee that Apple, which lives in the lawsuit-happy state of California, isn’t interested in losing its house at 1 Infinite Loop.

Here there be monsters

What about when there is no walled garden? (Sure, Facebook is a walled Web garden, but let’s not get petty here.) Anyone with a jailbroken iPhone get Rickrolled recently? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. (OK, I’ll admit it, I Rickroll myself at least once a year just to remind myself how to jump into a chain link fence and bounce back looking cool. I might need that someday.)

But for jailbroken iPhones, there are real problems for those who haven’t changed their default root passwords. A new hacker tool identified as “iPhone/Privacy.A” by Intego can compromise an iPhone by letting a hacker silently copy user data, including e-mail, contacts, SMSes, calendars, photos, music files, videos, as well as any data recorded by any iPhone app.

But that’s just for open jailbroken iPhones.

For regular iPhones, how about the class action lawsuit filed by Michael Turner against Storm8 (PDF available here) over the alleged “practice of accessing, collecting and transmitting without notice or consent the wireless telephone numbers of iPhone users who download Storm8’s games to their iPhones via Apple’s App Store.”

If true, well, ouch. This is a fairly benign violation, but an app could easily act as the gateway to identity theft and real monetary damage for consumers. Apple missed this one, but as a consumer, I like the idea of Apple vetting some apps.

Let me say that again: I like that Apple is vetting the apps.

I don’t believe that Apple always makes good decisions. I think Apple makes mistakes. But I also think that great, fantastic apps will find a home, if not with Apple, then elsewhere. This is how it is with great novels. If the writer is persistent and the work is truly fantastic, it’ll find a publisher. Same goes for some movies. And what about monetary success Download Free eBook – The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales and acclaim? There’s a bit of cosmic luck involved. Sorry — it’s the way the world works, and I don’t see it changing any time soon. Cosmic luck.

Meanwhile, Apple is a distributor

If you’re a distributor, you get to the make the rules.

Every day around the world, distributors and retail stores — which are just like the App Store — are rejecting products. Someone is making choices at the distribution level every single day. Those decisions are made behind closed doors, and they involve money as well as esoteric on-the-spot choices.

Here’s an example: A guy creates a new hammer. He takes the hammer to Home Depot because he wants Home Depot to sell the hammer for him. Home Depot looks at the hammer. It’s got good balance. They whack a few nails with it, but on the last whack, a shard of metal flies off the hammer and strikes the tester in the eye. Oops. Poor quality metal. Hammer is rejected. Is the process open and clear? Probably not. Am I glad that Home Depot rejected the hammer? You bet. I trust the Home Depot brand to do these sorts of things, and I expect them to sell quality hammers. Just one example.

But the hammer guy doesn’t give up. Maybe he upgrades the quality of metal in the hammer, then goes to Lowe’s. The gatekeepers at Lowe’s look at the hammer, see that it’s a nice hammer, but hey, it’s essentially the same as an existing hammer that Lowe’s already sells. Sure, it has a hole at the end of the handle where a person could string a lanyard, but everything else, the size, weight, ergonomics — basically the same as the Lowe’s signature hammer. Sorry, hammer dude, Lowe’s is going to reject your hammer.

You see how this goes in the real world? The Apple App Store isn’t any different.

The only difference is that the people working through, avoiding, or using the App Store — developers, hackers, and consumers — all live in a Web world where it’s easy to complain about it.

Speaking of complaints, I’ve got one: How come Wal-Mart sells the “low-end” Hanes underwear while Target sells the “high-end” Hanes underwear? Oxymorons aside, the low-end Hanes has a thinner rubbery waistband, while the high-end Hanes underwear has a wider, more cloth-covered waistband with a sharper Hanes logo graphic and better thread density. Same manufacturer, but Wal-Mart only sells the lesser quality version.

What gives?

Obviously, someone at Wal-Mart thinks that all Wal-Mart shoppers want the cheap Hanes underwear. I shop at Wal-mart, but I want the better Hanes underwear — can’t get it at Wal-Nart! So I go to Target to get my underwear. Should I be angry that Wal-Nart is selling the crappy underwear? Am I claiming there’s a fundamental problem with the Wal-Mart decision process?

Is Wal-Mart going to fail because their gatekeepers are choosing to sell lower-quality underwear?

Nah. I still spend plenty of money at Wal-Mart. I go to Wal-Mart for what Wal-Mart is good for. I go elsewhere to get what others do well. None of this is going to make or break the iPhone. If anything, a flawed iPhone App Store approval process will ultimately result in more choice and better apps — for everyone, on the iPhone and on Android or Windows Mobile or RIM, Palm, and even Samsung’s new mobile operating system.

Apple is looking to protect itself, and Apple is looking to maximize profit. Those are clear and clean efforts. I might not like them, but I trust them. Steve Jobs wants to sell us quality products at a price. Steve Jobs sells. There’s nothing underhanded about this. It’s not even evil.

At least it’s clear.

There’s really only one way it’s going to change. Developers need to create astounding applications that don’t run on the iPhone. A lot of them. Of course, how many developers with astounding applications really want to avoid the iPhone App Store marketplace? Right. How many successful novelists won’t allow their books to be sold by Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble?

Hewitt might be one of these guys who can succeed on his own. He told TechCrunch he wants to focus on open Web applications to “make the Web the best mobile platform available” rather than support a system that requires middlemen. It’s a noble cause. I like the idea.

I just think we’re a long long way from anything iPhone App Store being “over.”

Originally published on MacNewsWorld

© 2009 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2009 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

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By Carmi Levy, Betanews

I feel a little sorry for Psystar. But only a little, because the Mac clone maker should have realized it couldn’t rewrite history.

Its latest courtroom loss — where a US District Court judge last week sided with Apple and said Psystar can no longer sell hardware based on hacked versions of Mac OS X — will in all likelihood bring the whole concept of clones to an inglorious close. And none too soon.

Another case of history repeating itself

We’ve been down this road before. In 1982, when a fully tricked out Apple II Plus cost an order of magnitude more than a modern-day low-end PC or netbook, there was ample room in the market for knockoff hardware that offered the same user experience for less. If your choice was a relatively inexpensive clone or nothing at all because the name brand offerings were simply too rich for your budget, the choice almost made itself.

Franklin Computer, which introduced machines based on Apple’s motherboard design, reverse-engineered ROMs and openly copied operating system, was an early and perhaps the best known example of the breed. Unfortunately, it also learned rather quickly just how aggressively Apple would protect its turf. Barely two months after Franklin’s first machines hit the market, Apple sued the upstart clone maker. After a six-year, often-nasty legal battle, Apple forced Franklin out of the clone business for good.

Of course, Apple wasn’t completely averse to the idea…except when it wasn’t on its own terms. The company licensed Apple II ROMs to Bell & Howell and Tiger Electronics, and by the mid-90s had launched an official Mac clone program as well. This short-lived dalliance ended abruptly, however, when Steve Jobs returned to the fold in 1997. System 7-based machines from such companies as Power Computing, Motorola, and UMAX died a quick death after Jobs terminated the licensing deals forged during his absence. The company’s message, then and since, has been clear: The only hardware that runs any Mac OS will be a Mac box designed and sold by Apple.

You’d think that Psystar would have gotten the message.

The not-so-hidden cost of cloning

Twenty-seven years after Apple first went postal on third party clone vendors, it’s a safe bet that Mac clones are finally a dead business. While there will always be hackers perfectly willing to reverse-engineer any combination of hardware and software to allow anyone to run some flavor of Mac on non-Apple hardware, it’s equally safe to assume that solutions like these will live on the fringe of the market. So-called “hackintoshes” make for fun conversation, of course, and there’s doubtless a visceral thrill associated with running an Apple-sourced, partially modified OS on something as cheaply mundane as a netbook. But would you stake your business on such a solution? Probably not, and there’s the rub.

Clones introduce a level of unpredictability into the user experience that makes them a ridiculous proposition for any kind of business use. When a vendor-forced system update, patch, or bug fix can easily break a hacked solution, it’s difficult to understand the value proposition of saving a couple of hundred bucks on hardware. If you’re building a spare machine in your basement on the weekend, by all means have at it. If you’re buying a fleet of machines for your company, however, the risks of not going with something more mainstream will almost certainly result in your spending more time than normal keeping things functional.

And as you try to calculate the TCO of a clone-based solution, don’t forget to attach a dollar figure to all those hours you and your IT folks will spend on your cheap-yet-unsanctioned hardware/software. That extra IT time quickly negates any up-front savings. The equation doesn’t change much if your business is too small to justify a full-on IT department. Even if you’re a company of one working from home, can you really afford to lose your system when the vendor of record decides to break the clones once and for all? Can you trust that every court proceeding from here on out will be decided in the clone vendor’s favor? Platform stability, never a strong suit for clone makers, is a crucial component of proper IT-business strategy.

Living with Apple’s choice

We can argue ad infinitum over how Microsoft’s embrace of open availability of its OS on commodity hardware allowed it to build a much larger ecosystem than Apple’s closed strategy that inextricably and permanently tied its hardware to its OS. Could Apple have sold more copies of its OS had it opened it up to a larger number of hardware vendors? Certainly. Would it have been as capable of defining and controlling the end-user experience? No.

And given how the end-user experience has always been at the very core of Apple’s value proposition — indeed the very basis of its ability to command the prices that it does — it’s easy to see why Apple would consistently protect its rights and move to shut down wannabe-clone vendors at every turn. It’s a mindset that doesn’t just stop with Macs: This culture continues to serve it well as it oversees the growth of the iPhone/iPod touch platform, and has almost certainly helped fuel Apple’s brand value.

As we examine Apple’s mobile experience, we can whine all we want about how tightly it controls how its devices run, how apps are submitted and approved, and even how they’re installed and used. But like the Mac before it, the mobile landscape is Apple’s to control.

As much as clone vendors like Psystar have banked on the Robin Hood-esque notion of allowing those who could not otherwise afford a Mac to have some sort of access to the Apple experience, the apparently permanent truth is that Apple, whatever it’s selling, has no intention of ever giving up its overarching control of the combined hardware and software environment that it created. And whether we like it or not, this is the business model that the company has chosen in its pursuit of profit. Don’t like it? Buy something else, because the era of pretending to be something we’re not is finally drawing to a close.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009