Submission Summary: 0 pending, 5 declined, 59 accepted (64 total, 92.19% accepted)
Submission + - Jobs Finally "Happy" with Unannounced Apple tablet (arstechnica.com)
Submission + - Watch This: 70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: T (slashfilm.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "cowmix writes "When TPM came out ten years ago, its utter crappiness shocked me to the core and wounded a entire generation of geeks. My inner child had been abused and betrayed. I moped around, talking to no one, for almost two weeks. I couldn't bring myself to see #2 or #3, whatever they were called. Now, a decade later, comes Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review , the ultimate, seven-part, seventy minute analysis of this mother of all train wrecks. Not only does it nail how the film blows, but tells us why. Time, apparently, does not heal all wounds." Or, if you prefer all 7 parts embedded in one page, you can check out slashfilm's aggregation."
Submission + - Will the Mobile Web Kill Off the App Store? (wired.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Mozilla seems to be throwing more gas on the debate of whether mobile web browsing or native (or even cross-platform) applications will win out in the long run. With the impending release of their new mobile web browser "Fennec", Mozilla hopes to create a streamlined experience with javascript and html that isn't a performance nightmare. "Web proponents such as Mozilla and Google dream that internet standards will enable any app to run on any device, just as Java proponents touted a “write once, run anywhere” vision in the 1990s. Similarly, Adobe’s Flash emerged as a cross-platform environment for creating animations, games and apps for the web. But many consumers and developers have complained that Java and Flash exhibit bugs, performance problems and security vulnerabilities, among other issues. And Java’s promises of universality didn’t quite work out, because different implementations of the Java virtual machine (not to mention wildly varying hardware capabilities) mean that, even today, Java coders need to rework their apps for each target device.""
Submission + - Google in Talks to Buy Yelp (nytimes.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "There have been many rumors floating around surrounding a possible buyout of Yelp by Google, but it appears that at least a few details have escaped painting this as a much more serious possibility. Pointing the needle to something north of $500 million, the acquisition would mean a substantial step into localized business for Google. "Google has been showing greater interest in the local business market in the United States. It has expanded its profile pages for local businesses, which include location and hours, maps and reviews from other Web sites. In June, Google gave local businesses the ability to manage what people see on their profile pages, similar to what Yelp does. Google has been reaching out to local businesses with simpler ways to advertise on the search engine. It is also distributing stickers that businesses post in their windows and passers-by can scan with cellphones to get coupons or information about the business. The deal between Google and Yelp could still unravel, one person said, particularly if another acquirer comes forward now that details have leaked.""
Submission + - $25,000 Of Communications Gear In A $500 Car (jalopnik.com) 1
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Ham radio appears to be more of an addiction than a hobby to the seller of this $500 Dodge. Every surface is covered with $25K in communications equipment for every conceivable band (FM/UHF/HF/VHF/SPACEMAN). A gallery of technological affliction below."
Submission + - EPIC Takes Fight to Facebook Over Privacy (technewsworld.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Several readers have pointed out the fact that the privacy group "Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)," has taken the fight to Facebook in a recent complaint filed with the FTC. Calling the recent privacy changes to Facebook "unfair" and "deceptive", EPIC's main complaints stem from the fact that personal information has become more available by default, especially to third-party developers. "'Facebook chose to change everyone's privacy settings, and it's clear from users, bloggers, security experts and others that it really was unfair and misleading,' EPIC's Rotenberg said. 'What we found was that through this transition, Facebook had nudged the settings toward further disclosure.' Facebook had said that its transition process would preserve any current settings, 'but they didn't show you what those were,' Rotenberg noted. Furthermore, 'the only option if you changed your current settings was to make information more widely available.' We're not happy about where things are,' he concluded. 'Facebook can't ignore the 100 million U.S. consumers who are generally unhappy with these changes.'""
Submission + - Woman Filming Sister's Birthday Party Gets Charged (suntimes.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "A 22-year-old woman from Chicago recently spent two nights in jail and could face up to three years in prison for taping four minutes of the new movie "Twilight: New Moon". Samantha Tumpach and family threw her sister a surprise birthday party at the theater and captured much of it on video, unfortunately two "very shot segments" was enough to make theater managers want to press charges. "Tumpach insisted she recorded no more than three minutes while in the theater — and said not all of the video she shot was of the movie. There’s footage of she and her relatives singing to her sister, she said. “We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her in the theater,” Tumpach said. She also took pictures of family members in the theater before the film began, but an usher who saw the photo session never issued them a warning, Tumpach said.""
Submission + - Hearst Launching Kindle Competitor (engadget.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "The Hearst Corporation has announced their intention to launch an e-reader competitor to Amazon's Kindle and a supporting store and platform that is much more "publisher friendly." More details are also available form their official press release this morning. "Launching in 2010, Skiff provides a complete e-reading solution that includes the Skiff Service platform, Skiff Store and Skiff-enabled devices. Skiff will sell and distribute newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content. Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers, and deliver dynamic content and advertising to a range of dedicated e-readers and multipurpose devices. Skiff is headquartered in New York City and also has offices in Palo Alto, Calif. Visit Skiff at www.Skiff.com.""
Submission + - Salon.com Editor Looks Back at Paywalls (guardian.co.uk)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Techdirt pointed out an interesting retrospective by Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com, about their experiments with paywalls and how repercussions can last a lot longer than some might expect. "More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.""
Submission + - New Ad-Aware Offers Behavioral Detection (cnet.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Lavasoft has updated its popular malware and spyware detection and removal tool Ad-Aware. Rather than a dramatic redo, version 8.1 builds on the improvements made in the previous version. Read this blog post by Seth Rosenblatt on The Download Blog."
Submission + - Blogger Loses Unemployment Check Because of Ads (mdossodafdsf.com) 1
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Techdirt is reporting that one unfortunate, unemployed New York lawyer recently had her unemployment benefits greatly reduced because of the incredible $1/day she was earning via ads on her blog. "The whole thing sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, with NY State asking her to get a form from her new "employer" who didn't exist. Then NY Department of Labor started giving her all sorts of contradicting information, and eventually an "investigation" into her "business" — during which time her unemployment benefits were stopped entirely. She's now pulled the Google AdSense from her blog (total earned over the life of the blog $238.75).""
Submission + - Eee Keyboard Details Released (engadget.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Details on the new Eee keyboard previously held secret during the FCC filing, have now been made available. You can now take a look at the innards and a full spec sheet detailing exactly what is being promised. "Beneath the 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touch panel (with stylus) we'll be getting Windows XP Home running on an Intel Atom N270, 945GSE / ICH7-M chipset with Broadcom AV-VD905 video decoder, 1GB of DDR2 memory, either 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, 4-hour battery, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and VGA outputs, integrated stereo speakers and mic, 3x USB, headphone and mic jacks, and external WiFi / UWB antenna. The Eee Keyboard's on-board Ultra-Wideband (UWB) throws 720p content to your TV within a 5-meter range (10-meters for non-video transmissions) via a UWB receiver packing 2x USB ports, another mini-USB port, audio out, and HDMI.""
Submission + - FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire and Denial (linux-magazine.com)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Last Friday Bryce Byfield gave us a little insight into the fallout surrounding his article on sexism in the FOSS world. Unfortunately it seems that FOSS junkies did little better than the rest of the world with respect to sexism with similar levels of denial, abuse, and ignorance. "But the real flood of emotion comes from the anti-feminists and the average men who would like to deny the importance of feminist issues in FOSS. Raise the subject of sexism, and you are met with illogic that I can only compare to that of the tobacco companies trying to deny the link between their products and cancer. Because I took a feminist stance in public, I have been abused in every way possible — being called irrelevant, a saboteur, coward, homosexual, and even a betrayer of the community. I know that many women in the community have been attacked much more savagely than I have, so I'm not complaining. Nor am I a stranger to readers who disagree with me, but the depth of reaction has taken me back more than once. I think the reaction is an expression of denial more than anything else.""
Submission + - PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the Wor (telegraph.co.uk)
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Photosketch, a new image manipulation program that combines stick-figure sketches, internet image search, and pattern matching seems to be spreading like wildfire. Created by five Chinese students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore, the tool takes a basic sketch and simple labels and turns it into a polished image. "Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images," say the PhotoSketch team in an abstract outlining the tool. "We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful.""
