eldavojohn writes: "Shortly after the frustrations from IE7, Gates claims that he is unaware that IE8 Secrecy has been alienating developers. Ten influential bloggers met with Bill on Tuesday and asked Gates questions about why they are no longer receiving information on IE. From Molly Holzschlag's blog: "Something seems to have changed, where there is no messaging now for the last six months to a year going out on the IE team. They seem to have lost the transparency that they had. This conversation [between Web developers and the IE team] seems to have been pretty much shut down, and I'm very concerned as to why that is." To which Bill replied: "I'll have to ask [IE general manager] Dean [Hachamovitch] what the hell is going on, I mean, we're not, there's not like some deep secret about what we're doing with IE." Deep secrets or not, the bloggers claim that Microsoft is quashing any attempt to discuss the matter or IE8. Does Microsoft have an obligation to keep developers informed about a new engine in IE8 or is it their right to keep what is proprietary under wraps from the competition?"
An anonymous reader writes: BusinessWeek has an article up on Verizon deciding to support Android. After passing on the iPhone and initially missing the Anroid boat, now Verizon says they're going to open their network to more devices, move their network to GSM-based radio technology (LTE), and now support Anroid. Is Verizon actually trying to become less evil or is this all for the press?
SoyChemist writes: "When she started her job as a new professor at UC Merced, Michelle Khine was stuck without a clean room or semiconductor fabrication equipment, so she went MacGyver and started making Lab-on-a-Chip devices in her kitchen with Shrinky Dinks, a laser printer, and a toaster oven. She would print a negative image of the channels onto the polystyrene sheets and then make them smaller with heat. The miniaturized pattern served as a perfect mould for forming rounded, narrow channels in PDMS — a clear, synthetic rubber."