Letter From the Editor (and Only Contributor)

I know I treat this blog poorly. I make it another statistic among the myriad neglected blogs of the infosphere. It pains me, it really does. This is supposed to be a place for me to expound at greater length on various topics, and I just haven’t had much time to do that lately. A full-time job and a full course load in the evening work evil on my aspirations toward the aforementioned expounding.

But I still participate actively at Twitter and toss up at least one post a day at joebeta.com. So, while I’m neglecting this blog, head over there for a daily dose.

Palm confirms HP acquiring them for $1.2B

In case you didn’t hear, we just announced a merger with a little shop down the street called HP. That little shop happens to be the world’s largest technology company, and certainly one of the most revered companies in all of tech-land. Can you say “webOS acceleration”? We’re pretty excited, and pleased we surprised the world again. Go here for more information.

via blog.palm.com

Read the press release from HP here:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100428xa.html

Captain Morgan the Cat Recharging His Moto Rokr Bluetooth Headphones, and Himself [Image]

As a supporter of both open source and excellent audio quality, Captain Morgan the Cat is big into high-bitrate Ogg and hearts his A2DP bluetooth headphones, despite their lack of ambient noise cancellation and hollow bass frequencies.

They’re his go-to subway phones, and he’s not ashamed.

– Sent from my Palm Pre

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

Light side vs dark side [Image]

More laborious preparation for an ungraded oral argument or another glass of wine and bed?

– Sent from my Palm Pre

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

Goodbye Midtown, Hello El Rey

It looks like the long-empty shell of the Midtown’s sleazier flavor–on Chestnut in the low 20s somewhere–has been abruptly replaced by “El Rey,” which, while I haven’t been inside yet, looks like it has retained the diner layout (and liquor license?) and might be a Mexican cantina sort of place.

Longest. Sentence. Ever.

– Sent from my Palm Pre

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

Rights-holders In Yoor Packets, Smeeling Yoor Daytahs? [PDF]

Joint-submission-re-IPEC.pdf (213 KB)
View this on posterous

There is much to-do in the geekosphere today about development in the United Kingdom and the United States regarding intellectual property protections in the age of ubiquitous internet connectivity. Here is a nugget from Cory Doctorow, in an article about the Digital Economy Act, ACTA, and comments recently-submitted to the American Intellectual Property Czar by the MPAA, RIAA and other rights-holders:

I'm not such a techno-triumphalist that I believe that the free and open internet will solve all our socio-economic problems. But I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.

via The Guardian 

CNET's Molly Wood talks about the comments to the IP czar in her own post, referencing the Gizmodo rant on the same. Molly said:

The comments call for bandwidth throttling and shaping, network filtering and deep-packet inspection (especially on college campuses), and accelerated federal investigations into the theft of "pre-release music and movies…as this is one of the most damaging forms of online copyright theft and requires immediate attention and swift action." Dive in anywhere. It's a minefield of overreaching, unbelievably punitive, alarmist language.

via CNET 

She also mentioned the recent GAO report that cast doubt on the extent of damage caused by infringement.

These two commentators just underscore the developing current of opposition to what trade groups with deep pockets and no interest in preventing a squelching of the rights and freedoms of non-infringing citizens are doing to push influence national policies around the world.

Thoughts?

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

Betty White the Cat Gets Her Conehead On, Cuteness Ensues

Betty White the Cat went to the doctor, got spayed, and needed an Elizabethan collar. I don't like them, and I feel bad for her, but at least she's safe. And it's cute as helle. I mean, look!

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

“Alleged driver of car that hit Temple [Law] student surrenders to police” — Via Philadelphia Daily News [Quote]

Nicholas Hasselback, a senior at Temple University, turned himself in to police yesterday, accused of being the hit-and-run driver who critically injured a Temple University Law School student early Sunday on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

via philly.com

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

“Were 3rd-grade boys asked to dress as girls?” — Via Philadelphia Daily News [Quote]

her son’s third-grade teacher at the Maude Wilkins Elementary School in Maple Shade, Burlington County, [NJ,] was asking the class, including the boys, to dress as women during a fashion show for a Women’s History Month pro-ject.

via philly.com

I’m from Maple Shade. I wish we were in the news for something better than this, but oh well.

Boys were allowed to wear anything women would have worn at some point in history, which seems to leave the door wide open for dressing as, well, boys.

Which brings an interesting point to mind: people look confused when a boy dresses like a girl, but not when a girl dresses like a boy.

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

“Caller ID Spoofing Now Illegal in the U.S.” — Via DailyTech [Quote]

After much debate, the House has passed the bill Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010” [PDF], H.R. 1258, an amendment to the Communications Bill of 1934.  The bill effectively bans caller spoofing in the U.S.  The Senate already passed a similar bill in February, so President Obama should soon sign the Act into law.

via dailytech.com

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.

Twitter Rolling Out Stream-Integrated, User-Specific Spam, Calling It “Advertising” — Via Twitter Blog [Quote]

Q. What will users see?
A. You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate. Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

via blog.twitter.com

Will “Promoted Tweets” be as useful to us as other forms of relevancy-based online advertising? After all, an algorithm’s idea of “relevant” differs vastly from what I actually consider relevant.

And, I was talking this morning to @chrissmari — http://twitter.com/chrissmari — about Google’s ads. While I never click on the ads served up at google.com, she said she occasionally clicks on one of the “relevant” ads served up in Gmail, because they’re so often hilariously irrelevant. I’m the same way.

But, at the end of the day, even if Twitter achieves relevancy, which is extremely doubtful, I predict that the overwhelming majority of users will be 1) eager to seem progressive and say “maybe it won’t be that bad” and then, finally, 2) powerfully annoyed by this development once it lands in their streams.

I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.

So, assuming I’m right (which, if you know me, you know I love to do)…

Two potential responses from javascript ninjas who don’t want to choke on “relevant” ads in their Twitter streams:

Passive = Script for removing Twitter ads from our streams

Aggressive = Script for automagically reporting Promoted Tweets as spam

This was cross-posted at joe, beta.