Mazda2 Yozora edition – Click above for high-res image gallery
Canadian buyers can now get a Mazda2 with “2”s all over it, since that’s apparently what you’ve been dying for. The Mazda2 Yozora edition wears a suit of black as well as a rear spoiler, short antenna, chrome pipe and special alloys on winter tires summer tires, with an additional set of steel wheels on winter tires thrown in. And a decal theme that looks like it was designed by John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Just five hundred will be made at a starting price of $19,280 ($19,178 U.S.). Follow the jump for the details on its “captivating design,” or go straight to the gallery of high-res photos below.
Social networking companies don’t have it easy. Advertisers covet their users’ data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity. But most users simply don’t want to share as much information with marketers or other “partners” as corporations would like them to. So it’s no surprise that some companies try to have it both ways.
Monday evening, after an exasperating few days trying to make sense of Facebook’s bizzare new “opt-out” procedures, we asked folks on Twitter and Facebook a question:
The world needs a simple word or term that means “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.” Suggestions?
And the suggestions rolled in! Our favorites include “bait-and-click”, “bait-and-phish”, “dot-comfidence games”, and “confuser-interface-design”.
Although we didn’t specifically mention Facebook in our question, by far the most popular suggestions were variations on this one from @heisenthought on Twitter:
How about “zuck”? As in: “That user-interface totally zuckered me into sharing 50 wedding photos. That kinda zucks”
Other suggestions included “Zuckermining”, “Infozuckering”, “Zuckerpunch” and plenty of other variations on the name of Facebook’s Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Others suggested words like “Facebooking”, “Facebaiting”, and “Facebunk”.
It’s clear why folks would associate this kind of deceptive practice with Zuckerberg. Although Zuckerberg told users back in 2007 that privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates,” by January 2010 he had changed his tune, saying that he wouldn’t include privacy controls if he were to restart Facebook from scratch. And just a few days ago, a New York Times reporter quoted a Facebook employee as saying Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe in privacy“.
Despite this, we’d rather not use Zuckerberg’s name as a synonym for deceptive practices. Although the popularity of the suggestion shows how personal the need for privacy has become for many Facebook users, we’d prefer to find a term that’s less personal and more self-explanatory.
No, our favorite idea came from Twitter user @volt4ire, who suggested we use the phrase “Evil Interfaces”. The name refers to a talk by West Point Professor Greg Conti at the 2008 Hackers On Planet Earth conference.
Here’s Conti explaining Evil Interfaces to a puppet named Weena:
As Conti describes it, a good interface is meant to help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. But an “evil” interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don’t want to. Conti’s examples include aggressive pop-up ads, malware that masquerades as anti-virus software, and pre-checked checkboxes for unwanted “special offers”.
The new Facebook is full of similarly deceptive interfaces. A classic is the “Show Friend List to everyone” checkbox. You may remember that when Facebook announced it would begin treating friend-lists as “publicly available information” last December, the change was met with user protests and government investigation. The objections were so strong that Facebook felt the need to take action in response. Just one problem: Facebook didn’t actually want to give up any of the rights it had granted itself. The result was the obscure and impotent checkbox pictured here. It’s designed to be hard to find — it’s located in an unlikely area of the User Profile page, instead of in the Privacy Settings page. And it’s worded to be as weak as possible — notice that the language lets a user set their friend-list’s “visibility”, but not whether Facebook has the right to use that information elsewhere.
A more recent example is the process introduced last week for opting out of Instant Personalization. This new feature allows select Facebook partner websites to collect and log all of your “publicly available” Facebook information any time you visit their websites. We’ve already documented the labyrinthine process Facebook requires users to take to protect their data, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say that sharing your data requires radically less work than protecting it.
Of course, Facebook is far from the only social networking company to use this kind of trick. Memorably, users of GMail were surprised last February by the introduction of Google Buzz, which threatened to move private GMail recipients into a public “frequent contacts” list. As we noted at the time, Buzz’s needlessly complex “opt-out” user-interface was a big part of the problem.
OK, perhaps the word “evil” is a little strong. There’s no doubt that bad user-interfaces can come from good intentions. Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious. And when similar accidents happen over and over again in the same company, around the same issues, it’s more than just coincidence. It’s a sign something’s seriously wrong.
As expected, Canonical today released the latest long-term support version of Ubuntu (v. 10.04, a.k.a., “Lucid Lynx”). This release carries considerably more weight than the usual bi-annual Desktop and Server updates because long-term support (LTS) come only biennially — once every two years. They typically don’t get treated to experimental feature additions, and are meant to be more stable. They do, however, include three years of package support for Ubuntu Desktop and five years for Ubuntu server. The last LTS versions Canonical released were “Dapper Drake” (4.0) in 2005 and “Hardy Heron” (8.04) in 2008.
This version of Ubuntu comes with a new color palette that departs from the usual brown, and a couple of new features directed at the demands of the everyday user. The popular Linux distro is definitely going for widespread appeal with this release.
One of the new features is the “Me Menu,” an interface for social Web sites like Twitter and Facebook built directly into the operating system. The tool is based on Gwibber and was originally intended to be a part of the “Karmic Koala” release, but did not make it into it, and was officially shown off as a part of Lucid Lynx last December.
Another is the new Ubuntu music player which has a music store and the Ubuntu One cloud file-sharing interface built into it. With the Alpha 3 release, Lucid Lynx also got full support for iPod Touch and iPhone, adding even further to the distro’s mainstream appeal.
FileForum user jcollake summed it up quite nicely today, “As for Ubuntu, I find it a highly valuable contribution to the Linux ‘sub-culture.’ It has introduced many new people to Linux and is an easy-to-use distribution. There are still areas — particularly in third-party hardware support — that aren’t quite as smooth as Windows, despite the best efforts of Ubuntu…but that’s not their fault…Bottom line is that they’ve done a good job, and it will work well for a lot of people — not everyone, but a lot.”
Motorola and Verizon spent a combined $100 million to advertise the original Droid and it resulted in the best selling Android device to date. The Droid is now the second best selling smartphone (behind the iPhone) and accounts for up to 17% of AdMob’s U.S. smartphone requests. Even the latest platform version breakdown from Google suggest that the Droid could account for up to 30% of all Android handsets that access the Market.
We were wondering if the Droid Incredible would receive the same treatment and it appears a similar campaign is in store. Verizon has already launched an Incredible mini site and the first ad spot just appeared on YouTube. We have also spotted Incredible ad banners on many of our favorite tech blogs.
Keep an eye our for Incredible ads and let us know what you find.
From Verizon Wireless: Forget what you thought you knew because you’ve never seen a DROID like this. The DROID INCREDIBLE, nothing short of its name.
The plug-in Prius goes much further and faster on electricity alone, but remains a Prius in every other respect.
Way back in the waning years of the last millennium, the Toyota Prius was born, becoming the first Toyota hybrid. Since then, of course, many other Toyota and Lexus hybrids have hit the roads, as have many from nearly every other automaker. But it’s the Prius—thanks to distinct (if unsexy) styling and industry-leading fuel economy—that remains the unofficial green-mobile for Toyota and the world.
Naturally, then, the Prius is set to become the first Toyota to make the next big leap in fuel efficiency for 2012 by going plug-in with its new Prius PHV, or Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle. And since 2012 is a long ways off—in our impatient minds, at least—we jumped at the chance to drive one of the 150 powder-blue preproduction Prius PHVs bound for the U.S. in 2010. All are part of Toyota’s Prius PHV pilot program that places vehicles with various utilities and government agencies to gather data on vehicle performance.
While reading the long list of threads on the touch HD2 section of XDA, I found something that might interest those hardcore HTC sense users. This mod/tab was created by a Russian Fed citizen on XDA, whose called xaoc747. He managed to envision a new way to display your compass, and GPS data, and has made it happen with the first release of his new Sense Tab.
This Tab contains many thing going on at once, and I am sure all HTC HD2 users that want the experience will loss a lot of battery in the process. But that’s neither here or there. If you want to have your GPS in your face and easily accessable at all time this tab comes with:
– work with GPS module without using a third-party navigation software – definition of current position – definition of object motion parameters for calculation between the current and previous points – Determination of directions and distances to given calculation points – recording of tracks (routes) in automatic and manual modes in a format Yandex maps with further viewing them – an analysis of the tracks (the specified distance route, maximum and average speed on the route and time of movement on the route) – Work with the payment points (in the format tags Yandex maps) – sending SMS with your coordinates in the automatic and manual modes for a given number – to set the maximum speed and control the speed while driving with the gradation by the fine
Now this might not be the best GPS system you will have on your Windows Phones(I personally use iGo,) but for a free software that looks good and comes with all these features… I only have one question, where do I sign up .
You can download it, and install it with the instructions.
If you’re in LA this weekend, and you love SciFi and mad scientists — and c’mon, who doesn’t? — then you’ll want to attend the screening of “Monsters from the Id”, a documentary on mad scientists, 1950s movies, and the future of science in the US. Seriously, check this video out and tell me you don’t want to see this:
There will be a panel after the screening, talking about these topics as well. That trailer hits all the right notes, and features some of my favorite movies of all time (“War of the Worlds”, “Them!”, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “The Thing from Another World”, “Forbidden Planet”, und so weiter). Man, I wish I could go, but I don’t think I can make it. But don’t let that stop you. Put down the Krell brain enhancing machine and get moving!
It’s easy to be a foodie in your own home, where you have control over all of the ingredients you use, but when you’re traveling it’s not always possible. And I don’t mean traveling half way around the world, either. Ever had a sandwich at lunchtime that really needed something to give it some zip? There is a Foodie Survival Kit that lets you bring a complete set of spices wherever you go. Now, there is also a Chef’s Case that makes it even easier. This secret agent-style briefcase is packed with all kinds of gourmet ingredients – a.k.a. a foodie’s secret weapons – that are ready to go at a moment’s notice. The kid includes: Pomegranate Teriyaki Sauce, Lemon and Mint Chili Sauce, Garlic Chili Sauce, BBQ Figs Sauce, Red Wine Onion Sauce, Salt and Pepper Blend, Grilling Spice Blend and a Provence Seasoning Blend. All of these are made with all natural ingredients, no fillers, high fructose corn syrup or anything else like that.
Naturally, the case makes a great gift for foodies, especially those who have to be on the road a lot (you don’t always have the chance to hit up foodie hot spots on business trips, for instance). And it’s a great gift for yourself. When you’ve run through the contents of the case, you can refill with your favorite sauces and seasonings and pack it up for your next road trip.
Given a chance, what would you say to a top federal policy maker about rural broadband? I had my chance at the Broadband Properties Summit this week in Dallas with USDA Rural Utilities Services Administrator Jonathan Adelstein. I first saw him in the elevator and he asked me what I wanted to hear from him during his keynote. I asked him how we will get broadband to the countryside surrounding RBOC-served communities that have been CLEC’d by smaller independent companies who have cherry-picked the significant customer base in the town but are unable to overbuild the countryside. He told me that this was too hard of a question! As we got off the elevator, I saw that he was heading to the restaurant for breakfast alone. I overcame my natural shyness and asked him if I could join him and he welcomed me to his table. What followed was a very interesting discussion (at least for me!).
He was a very good questioner. We talked about the marvel of cooperatives as a model for rural broadband development. We talked about the appropriate scale for this type of cooperative development and whether new cooperatives could make it economically today as start-ups. Necessary scale versus local control – how does one find that balance. As Minnesota’s telecommunications providers get larger through acquisitions (CenturyLink purchasing Embarq and Qwest, growing independent telcos like ACS, Iowa Telecom and New Ulm Telephone), will the connection to the local community remain a priority?
The Broadband Properties Summit includes a focus on the business linkages between real estate development and telecom services. Telecom providers like ATT and Verizon pay real estate developers commission when tenants sign on with these providers. This got me thinking about if there was any real differences between an apartment building and a community? If communities are actively working to boost broadband adoption and subscriptions for community economic vitality, what is the proper role between communities and their providers on broadband promotion initiatives? I will be meeting with Minnesota’s telecom providers to discuss this very topic as we prepare to implement the Blandin Foundation’s MN Intelligent Community NTIA BTOP program.
I think it’s safe to say that if does come true Verizon will have the most impressive Android lineup even with the EVO on the horizon. Most people have been holding out for an Android with power and a physical keyboard, this may be the one all you have been waiting for.
This device was formerly known as the LG LU2300 which then turned into the Aloha. It has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 3.5-inch AMOLED touch screen at 480×800 pixels, QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.1, 720p video out, 5MP camera and D-Pad. According to AndroidCentral, this device will be released in the middle of May. If this is correct, more information should leak soon.
If you thought that the worst housing market collapse in 80 years would make Americans much less comfortable with buying a home as an investment, then you would be wrong. A new Rasmussen poll shows that most Americans still view a house as a great investment. This sort of news must really upset those who believe a house isn’t an investment to begin with.
In fact, a whopping 59% of Americans think buying a home is the “best investment a family can make.” 21% disagreed, while another 21% were unsure. Even if a home is an investment, there’s no guarantee that it will be a very good one. House appreciation doesn’t always occur, even in good economic times.
What makes this statistic surprising is that it’s changed very little since the financial crisis. Back in September 2008, it was only 7% higher, according to Rasmussen. Since then, houses in the U.S. have broadly experienced price declines. Many homeowners faced foreclosure. Yet, Americans still largely believe buying a home the best investment they can make.
In that context, however, Rasmussen also found that just 15% of Americans think it’s a good time for someone in their area to sell a house. 68% disagreed, and 17% were undecided. Of course, they’re right: the housing market continues to have a huge amount of inventory, as foreclosure hit a new record high in March. As long as inventory grows, it will be a buyer’s market.
This may appear to fly in the face of February’s seemingly good news that home prices experienced their first year-over-year increase since December 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index (.pdf). Yet, that increase wasn’t particularly impressive, considering it was due more to prices decreasing by more from January 2009 to February 2009 (-1.5%), than from January 2010 to February 2010 (-0.1%). It’s hard to celebrate a year-over-year price increase, when it’s in the context of month-over-month a price decline. As the home buyer credit ends this month, and demand evaporates, prices could suffer further. If interest rates go up, that will make matters worse for sale prices as well.
Hour after hour, department after department, the worst show on earth — City Hall’s Dancing for Dollars Budget Ballet — is playing out on Channel 35 this week.
Just as they have for the past 10 months, City Council members are breaking the public’s legs doing pathetic pratfalls and spastic missteps falling all over themselves with their top priority protecting city workers’ jobs — and their own, of course.
Forget tree trimming and sidewalk repairs — those are now the responsibility of property owners with the intent to shift liability and costs away from City Hall. Forget pothole repair. Forget there is just anything your tax dollars get you.
Your money is solely for the benefit of the system itself. Anything that most people get from city government falls under the category of “full cost recovery” so you get to pay twice for it.
There is no vision of a better city — let alone a great city — that drives the mayor and Council’s budget plan, just the preservation of the system itself by papering over the problem through transfers of money from one pot to another — every one of those transfers representing a city job saved, a public service eliminated.
It is survival of the un-fittest, this desperate attempt to protect themselves no matter how much damage they do to the quality of life of the four million residents.
Over and over, all they want to know is how they can protect the jobs of those who bring in revenue from the city’s people and businesses and how they can find other jobs for those who actually provide services directly to the public.
They don’t have a plan to actually fix what’s broken — wages and benefits that are no longer affordable, inefficiencies and low productivity in too many departments.
They only have their prayers and hopes for an Obama economic miracle.
It will take a miracle because their long-term inattention to how the city is run, their corrupt sellouts to special interests, their transformation of city government from a services provider into a jobs program are the back story for this unending crisis.
They don’t even know at this point whether the DWP will deign to give them get the $73.5 million promised to bail out this year’s deficit or the $257 they budgeted for next year.
Once again, we are facing a hypothetical budget, relying on the same plan to sell parking structures and other valuable assets that didn’t deliver a single dollar this year. CAO Miguel Santana gives them hope, they are better off now with $80 million hole based on optimistic projections for 2010-11 than they were when they passed this year’s budget with a $300 million hole before revenue projections turned out to be hopelessly optimistic.
They are living in a fantasyland while the rest of us live a nightmare with libraries and parks open only part-time and the infrastructure deteriorating and our rates, fees and taxes soaring.
In the end, they will cover the nakedness of their shame with the fig leaf of their pompous posturing and trust the public will remain apathetic and ignorant.
They are living in the past and unable to see winds of change are blowing hard, that hard times are waking people up and TV news’ sudden interest is filling their distracted minds’ with facts for a change.
In the name of saving LA, they are destroying it.
They think Neighborhood Councils should be out there trimming the trees and helping out in the parks even as they kill the Neighborhood Empowerment department, and refuse to share power with them.
It’s only a matter of time before it all falls apart — unless, of course, you believe in miracles. So we either need to throw these political bosses out and replace them with genuine public servants or get down on our knees with them and pray for LA.
In my neighborhood, as I walk my dog around every few days, I often wonder if any of the houses there are on the market. What’s more, I think about how they compare with my home’s value. Enter Zillow: an app on the Android Market that aims to answer these questions.
Apart from searching active listings in your general area, the app can display historical data such as property values, previous sale dates, factual information (bedroom/bathroom count/square footage/etc.), and comparables for other homes in the area. This is done by utilizing your GPS location, pulling up an inlay of Google Maps, and then overlaying the data as clickable houses. Red means “For Sale”, Purple means “For Rent”, Yellow means “Sold”. Often these listings are coupled with pictures pulled from the same listings hosted on Zillow.com.
In addition, you are able to search for a particular property and see all of this same data, which makes it very useful for people who want to either check out a home they may be interested in purchasing (or renting), or just to satisfy their own curiosity. Much like in Google Maps, there are layers that can be applied, so the user can view the map of houses in Satellite view, Traffic or, if available, using Street View. These all make for fun ways to search for homes, and make it that much easier to develop an informed decision, all from the palm of your hand.
Pros:
Uses familiar Google Maps to overlay data on
Has a separate list view for immediate listings with pertinent data
Listings include historical data, sale prices, pictures and comparables in the area
Constantly updates with Zillow.com
Includes selling realtor’s contact information
Needs Improvement:
Sold houses lose pictures and other data after sale
Not all addresses have data available (may not be a bad thing)
Doesn’t include MLS # in the listing, so must go by address
Final Verdict: Overall this app is a great tool for the average homebuyer and provides up to date information on homes that are available for purchase or rent. While not all important details are included, there’s no doubt the information contained therein is a powerful tool for making an informed purchasing decision.
Note: This review was submitted by Eric Johnson as part of our app review contest.
Schrödinger, a New York and Portland, OR-based maker of chemical-simulation software for drug development and research, has received a $10 million equity investment from Bill Gates through Cascade Investment, Gates’s private investment and holding company. The news was reported earlier today by the Wall Street Journal. The money will be used to support R&D projects to advance the state of the art in computer-aided drug design. Schrödinger (love the name) says its software “has been used by nearly every major pharmaceutical firm worldwide as well as hundreds of smaller firms and academic and government research laboratories.” The company was founded in 1990.
The Associated Press reports that 27-year-old Justin Travis and 28-year-old Michael Carter were both killed after a roof collapsed Wednesday night at the Dotiki Mine in Western Kentucky. The mine’s safety record should raise eyebrows.
State and federal records show more than 40 closure orders for the mine over safety violations since January 2009.
Records show inspectors from the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing have issued 31 orders to close sections of the mine or to shut down equipment because of safety violations since January 2009. Those records also show an additional 44 citations for safety violations that didn’t result in closure orders.
MSHA records show the mine was cited 840 times by federal inspectors for safety violations since January 2009, and 11 times closure orders were issued.
The records show 214 of the citations were issued in the first four months of this year, and twice inspectors issued closure orders this year.
The two deaths mean that 32 coal miners have dies in Appalachia in April alone.
Calls to the office of Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), who represents the district where accident occurred, weren’t returned Thursday.
GUANTANAMO BAY — Stephen Xenakis, a retired brigadier general in the Army medical corps and a psychiatrist as well as a general practitioner, didn’t have time to conduct a thorough examination of Omar Khadr, who complained this morning of pain in his eye. But Xenakis did have the chance to look at Khadr — who has conjunctivitis aggravated by the shrapnel that remains in his eyes, leading him to cry in court this afternoon, as well as elevated blood pressure — and he called Khadr’s condition “urgent.”
“If Omar Khadr were a young man who came into an emergency room, and I’m speaking here as a general physician,” Xenakis told reporters, with “his history of having had the head wounds that he did, the shrapnel that is still in his eyes, the opacity — that is, clouding of the lens, the emergency surgery that he had on his left eye, he had some procedures as well on the right eye that still retains shrapnel, and he complains of this headache — mostly also with pressure of nausea — then this is a condition that becomes urgent.” He recommended Khadr’s case “be referred to as quickly as possible to an ophthalmologist, to be evaluated to see if these symptoms are attributable and treated as acute conjunctivitis or something more serious.”
Several of us asked Xenakis if that indicated Khadr has been given insufficient medical care. He backed off that characterization, and said that he considered the severity of Khadr’s treatment consistent with discovering the condition last night, when Khadr apparently began complaining of pain. Asked about the blacked-out ski goggles Khadr was forced to wear to be transported from his cell to court, Xenakis added, “The medical opinion I was prepared to render is that the goggles aggravated his medical condition.”
I asked if Xenakis would recommend the Joint Task Force responsible for the Guantanamo Bay detention facility not place the goggles on Khadr tomorrow if Khadr appears in court. “Personally, if I was making a medical decision, because the goggles aggravate his condition, I would probably recommend they not be used,” Xenakis said.
Barry Coburn, Khadr’s lawyer, said he didn’t want the hearing delayed, as it has taken years for Khadr to receive any form of justice, and this most hearing has been delayed several times already. But he said “there’s a humanitarian issue in ensuring the pain is treated,” and if he’s not treated, “that level of pain, by its very nature, impairs his ability to participate in his defense. That’s just a matter of basic fairness.”
Suzuki announced today that it is launching its nationwide “Free Gas for Summer” sales promotion. The incentive offers three months of free gasoline on retail purchases of any new 2010 Suzuki Kizashi, SX4 SportBack, SX4 Sport sedan, SX4 Crossover, Grand Vitara and Equator.
“Suzuki recognizes the economic challenges Americans continue to face and thought this promotion was a great way to provide relief for car buyers,” said Koichi Suzuki, executive vice president, American Suzuki Automotive Operations. “Working through our U.S. dealer network, we’re happy to extend this program to consumers across the country, providing potential buyers even more reason to consider purchasing a Suzuki during the summer shopping season.”
Suzuki is recognized as the second most fuel-efficient automaker in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) with 29.7 mpg, as reported in the EPA 2009 Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends Report,
The Suzuki “Free Gas for Summer” sales program kicks off May 1 and runs through Aug 31.
It seem like just a few days ago BMW came forth stating that its use of carbon fiber on upcoming vehicles would become a high-volume deal. Now Green Car Advisor reports that Daimler, never willing to be a step behind, has also announced plans to increase its investment in the material. Daimler has enlisted the help of Toray Industries, a Japanese textile company, to help make carbon fiber body parts for Mercedes-Benz vehicles beginning in 2012. The parts will reduce vehicle weight and help the company meet upcoming CAFE regulations. The first Mercedes product to be adorned with carbon fiber will be the SL-Class.
Daimler choose Toray Industries due to its expertise in carbon fiber. Though not a common name to many, Toray is actually the dominant force in the industry, controlling 34 percent of the global market. This will be Toray’s first venture into making car parts out of carbon fiber. The company’s current automotive-related experiences with the material has been limited to supplying carbon fiber yarns to Ferrari and various aftermarket companies. Daimler and Toray will work together on development of the carbon fiber reinforced plastic body parts and production will be carried out at a Toray facility in France.
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is finally confirming that it has been secretly developing a tablet computer of its own—but only in announcing the project’s demise. In a statement provided to Gizmodo, a Microsoft spokesman says that while the tablet—nicknamed “Courier”—will be “evaluated for use in future offerings … we have no plans to build such a device at this time.”
Microsoft isn’t saying why—but the device was slated to come to market by the end of the year at the earliest. Considering that Apple’s iPad has already been a big hit and that there are already so many other tablet-like devices—including Windows-based ones from third-parties—about to go on sale, the company may have thought the market was too crowded for a branded device of its own. Just yesterday, Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) said that its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm (NSDQ: PALM) would mean it would be bringing Palm’s webOS to slates and tablets in addition to the phone.
Conspiracy theorists (like me!) will also note that the aura surrounding the device already served a very useful purpose for Microsoft, in its attempts to counter iPad buzz. For instance, word of the “Courier” first leaked during the fall— when speculation that some sort of tablet computer from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was on the way was at a high point. And, on March 5, when Apple said that iPad sales would begin April 3, new photos of the Courier just coincidentally surfaced on Engadget. Now that the iPad is out and selling well, perhaps Microsoft decided it was no longer worthwhile to keep up the tease.
![Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx"](http://images.betanews.com/media/4905.jpg "Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx"")
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