After 9-year cookie ban, US Government wants to start tracking you online again
Nine years ago, the Office of Management and Budget issued a directive banning Federal agencies from dropping cookies on visitors' computers. On Friday, the White House called for public discussion about whether that policy should continue. Whether you see that as a nod to improved privacy protections and a smarter userbase, or sigh at the encroachments tracking tech has made in a decade, is perhaps a matter of perspective.
The announcement, blogged on the White House site by federal CIO Vivek Kundra and OMB associate administrator for information and regulatory affairs Michael Fitzpatrick and reproduced nearly verbatim in the proposal's listing in the Federal Register (PDF available), says that the point of the policy review is "to develop a new policy that allows the Federal Government to continue to protect the privacy of people who visit Federal websites while, at the same time, making these websites more user-friendly, providing better customer service, and allowing for enhanced web analytics."
iPhone prototype suicide case had previous violations, says Foxconn
Sun Danyong, the 25-year old employee of Apple contractor Foxconn who committed suicide after losing a prototype iPhone reportedly had a history of misplacing secret prototypes, Foxconn told reporters yesterday.
After a prototype next-gen iPhone that was Sun's responsibility went missing, he became the target of an investigation that allegedly involved physical violence and humiliation. Shortly thereafter, Sun plunged off of a twelve story apartment building to his death. Investigators said there were no other suspicious markings on his body and determined that it was suicide.
Western Digital ships 2.5-inch terabyte drives
Western Digital today announced its new terabyte storage solution in the 2.5" category, the WD Scorpio Blue SATA drive.
The 5200RPM 3Gb/s, 8MB Cache WD Scorpio Blue comes in both 750GB and 1TB capacities for $189.99 and $249.99 respectively. They feature three of Western Digital's trademarked technologies, WhisperDrive sound dampening, ShockGuard shock tolerance technology, and SecurePark technology, which reduces the time the record head is in contact with the spinning disc surface, ostensibly lengthening the lifespan of the drive.
Verizon to cut 8,000 jobs due to falling wireline revenue
Telecommunications company Verizon will be eliminating 8,000 positions in the next six months, said CFO John Killian in the company's earnings call this morning.
"Although we are taking steps to mitigate the negative impacts of the economy in the short-term, we also need to more significantly reduce the wireline cost structure over the next 12 to 18 months...As part of our ongoing program to resize and reduce the cost structure, we reduced headcount by more than 8,000 over the last 12 months. We plan to do more than 8,000 in force and contractor reductions in the second half of this year," Killian said.
AT&T raises ire of 4chan users after ISP blocks access to popular forums
AT&T reportedly blocked sections of message board 4chan, the popular wellspring of memes and clearinghouse for humor of questionable taste. For a short time yesterday, AT&T was blocking image boards (/b/ and /r9k/) with no explanation to its DSL and U-Verse customers or to 4chan's admins. Later in the evening, AT&T restored network access, but the site remained under a large-scale denial of service (DDoS) attack which continued into the morning.
While AT&T's blockage of img.4chan.org was confirmed, the relationship between the blockage and denial of service attack remains unconfirmed. Some reports (and some posters on /b/) claim that the DDoS attacks were coming from AT&T customers.
Apple and major labels try to bring back liner notes
In the vinyl age, the packaging of a record album was integral to the overall experience that album gave the listener. A good cover could help sell more albums, and detailed liner notes could serve as an enhancement to listening. As packaging shrunk with changing formats, most of the impact of the album packaging was lost. Meanwhile, album purchases have been on a steady decline for years as digital consumers favor single songs over whole albums.
Apple and the "big four" major record labels are hoping to change that by re-inventing the packaging of the MP3 album. In a project reportedly codenamed "Cocktail," Apple, Sony, Universal, Warner, and EMI are working on packaging interactive content with digital albums. Albums packaged with song lyrics, production and liner notes, video clips and photos could be the next new type of bundle in iTunes.
Have high-end Macs made Apple the preferred choice of snobs?
Just released figures from research firm NPD seem to suggest that Apple has a firm handle on the rich and famous.
In June, Apple owned 91 percent of the so-called premium computer market -- machines costing $1,000 and up. That's up three points over May's figures. Way back in early 2008, it was a mere 66 percent. Apple is clearly doing something right to attract the well-heeled.
NPD's Stephen Baker: How can Apple capitalize on its 91% premium PC share?
It's a very big slice of a shrinking pie. As the netbook form factor serves as a much-needed lifeboat for most PC manufacturers, driving average selling prices (ASPs) lower across-the-board, premium PC maker Apple is left with almost complete command of the higher end of the market. Those are the findings of research firm NPD earlier this week, as first reported by Betanews blogger Joe Wilcox. He computed the numbers NPD delivered, and concluded that in terms of revenue (not unit sales), more than nine of every ten dollars spent by Americans on computers whose prices are $1,000 or greater, are collected by Apple.
For the Apple faithful, being able to quote any Microsoft-like market share number in their favor is like Christmas come early. It means there's a genuine market segment where Apple is in complete control. But as those who know Apple very well are saying -- folks like NPD Vice President of Industry Analysis Stephen Baker, who is responsible for the numbers Wilcox cited and who spoke with Betanews this morning -- Apple has a little secret: It doesn't really care about market share.
EC: Microsoft will consider Windows 7 E 'ballot screen' for other browsers
In a public memo this afternoon, the European Commission has stated that Microsoft has offered to include a "ballot screen" with choices of Web browsers, including Internet Explorer 8 and others, as a way for the company to comply with the EC's directives. Last month, the company decided that it would remove IE8 from Windows 7 for European customers only, though that move alone was initially met with skepticism by the continent's legislators, who claimed that the move by itself would not restore choice to consumers.
Microsoft formally acknowledged the proposition minutes ago. Its public statement, given by General Counsel Brad Smith, includes the following: "If this proposal is ultimately accepted, Microsoft will ship Windows in Europe with the full functionality available in the rest of the world. As requested by the Commission, we will be publishing our proposal in full here on our website as soon as possible. While the Commission solicits public comment and considers this proposal, we are committed to ensuring that we are in full compliance with European law and our obligations under the 2007 Court of First Instance ruling."
Google Latitude released for the iPhone...browser
Yesterday's introduction of Google Latitude for iPhone could have been a big deal if the product being announced was actually an application. Instead, Google's social Geolocation product is a Web app that must be run from inside Safari. As such, it's being described as toothless, crippled and worthless by reviewers all over the Web today.
Why was it released as a Web app when it has been available as a standalone app on all the major mobile platforms for five months? Google has been quite upfront about that, saying, "We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a Web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles."
Mozilla: We'll keep pushing for Ogg Theora in HTML 5
The software maker with the ability to rectify everything for the open source community in the field of free video is Google. Right now, its YouTube division relies upon Flash video, whose codecs require Web browsers including Google's own Chrome to have plug-ins installed. If YouTube merely had the option of supporting an open source standard such as Ogg Theora -- a standard supported by sites including France-based DailyMotion -- in one fell swoop, the balance might shift in favor of Ogg's being adopted, as was originally planned, as the basic codec for HTML 5's <VIDEO> element.
But that project was suspended late last month by HTML 5's principal caretakers, who perceived a stalemate between the proprietors of online videos including Google, the manufacturers of Web browsers who are also interested in maintaining high performance levels, and the rights holders to the various technologies that still underlie modern video codecs. Now Mozilla, whose Firefox 3.5 is the biggest browser so far to include built-in HTML video support, says in a statement to Betanews last night that it will press on with its support of Ogg Theora despite the setback, perhaps in hopes that online video services may come to adopt the codec as a de facto standard.
Microsoft 'Laptop Hunters' ad gets changed at Apple's behest
Thanks to Apple's well-publicized complaint about Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" advertisements (Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer called it "the greatest single phone call in the history that [he'd] ever taken in business,") the ads have been changed.
Apple's legal department called demanding that Microsoft change the "Laptop Hunter" ads because they are factually inaccurate. In response, Turner said, "We're just going to keep running them and running them and running them."
Palm Pre gets iTunes sync again
Only nine days ago, Palm Inc.'s flagship touchphone, the Pre, lost its unofficial compatibility with iTunes when Apple updated the media management software to fix "an issue with Verification of Apple devices." After users updated the software, and plugged in their Pres, they found the software no longer recognized the device for syncing.
Already, an over-the-air WebOS update (v1.1) has been made available which renews the device's ability to be paired with iTunes. The update includes new feature support in Exchange ActiveSync, the ability to include emoticons in e-mail, MMS, and SMS, and the new NFL Mobile Live app from Sprint. As an additional jab at Apple, when Palm's Vice President of Business Products, John Traynor announced the update in the company's blog yesterday, he listed all of these features, but saved the iTunes fix for last, and prefaced it by delivering Steve Jobs' now trademark line: "Oh, and one more thing..."
Live long, Prosper...and crunch those numbers
This episode of Recovery is brought to you -- literally -- by the free Wi-Fi at the Sacramento Amtrak station. Isn't it funny how the train station can offer it but most airports don't. Funny. Ha.
I spent some time this week bopping around Prosper, the peer-to-peer lending site. I'd signed up with them several years back, intending to test the system for a write-up at Another Publication. I liked what I saw so much so that I stuck with it until economic events last year caused the service to go temporarily dormant. They're back now and I thought I'd see how my people were doing.
Twitter extends a hand to clueless potential users
Afternoon of July 23, 2009 • David Letterman's comments about Twitter being "a waste of time" earlier this week gave fans of the service a good laugh, but the 62-year old chat show host who doesn't "know anything about the Twitter" actually posed a sound question. When posting a message, where does it go?
This kind of question probably wouldn't even occur to a regular user of the service, but to those unfamiliar with feeds, status updates, live blogging, and the like, Twitter offers very little to grab onto. Getting started is not as easy as it could be.
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