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The second link from the slashdot summary, describing the current product, is extremely short, and is essentially the same text as the slashdot summary. A longer and better article is here. This page has technical specs: 12-inch touchscreen (1024x768 4:3), via nano, 1 GB ram, 4 GB flash, wifi, accelerometer, camera, 3 lb, currently running ubuntu.

Sorry, but $300 is not "dirt cheap," IMO. Zareason.com or system76.com will routinely sell you a full-featured desktop system for $300. WalMart and Sears have sold desktop machines like the Everex gPC as cheap as $200. Target has had the eeePC for $280. This is not even something you'd want to use as a full-function computer, so I'd say $300 is actually pretty expensive. Of course some people may be willing to pay for style or convenience. But as far as convenience, I'm not convinced I'd want something portable like this that didn't have a lid to protect the screen.

"Dirt cheap" is going to be ARM-based computers retailing for $50-100, which we'll probably have within a few years.

When I first saw the project, I thought that it was entirely too klunky

Eary Image

Where it's at now, however...

Current Prototype

Is looking much more impressive.

I'm actually siding with Last.FM here, just for the reason that TechCrunch deleted mine and many others comments if it was about *anything* against their view or if you defended last.fm. The most recent article about last.fm downtime was also hilarious try to make bad comments about them (and see the writers comments in that article :). Now, I do not know anything about which side is valid. But by far last.fm has answered questions and what they have been accused of, while TechCrunch keeps removing comments that dont side with them. For me that says something.

The story shows nothing. It's true last.fm is being slow and should come back suing them if this is really made up. But meanwhile, TechCrunch and Arrington haven't shown to be exactly great examples of journalism, so I won't lose any sleep over what they write.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/23/another-blanket-denial-by-lastfm/

1. Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly build. [The same memory and CPU hogging bug has been reported many, many times over a period of seven years.]
2. Yes, this bug exists, but other things are more important. [The bug eventually takes 100% of CPU power, and makes Windows XP unusable, even after Firefox is killed. The bug affects the heaviest users of Firefox.]
3. Yes, this bug exists, but it is not a common occurrence. [Numerous users have reported the bug. See the links.]
4. Works for me. [The bug is complicated to reproduce, so the developers did a simplified test, which didn't show the bug.]
5. No one has posted a TalkBack report. [If they had read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too, or a TalkBack report is not generated. TalkBack does not generate a report if Firefox is hogging the CPU. TalkBack cannot generate a report if the bug takes 100% of the CPU time.]
6. If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. [They didn't bother to reproduce the bug using the detailed information provided.]
7. This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. [The other bugs aren't specified.]
8. You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. [But the same use does not crash any version of Opera.]
9. I don't like the way you worded your bug report. [So, he didn't read it or think about it.]
10. You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself. [Then when you have done most of the work, tell us what causes the problem, and we may fix it.]
11. Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the users.
12. If you are saying bad things about Mozilla and Firefox, you must be trolling. [They say this even though Firefox and Mozilla instability is beginning to be reported in media such as Information Week. See the links to magazine articles in this Slashdot comment: Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.]
13. Your problem is probably caused by using extensions. [These are extensions advertised on the Firefox and Mozilla web site, and recommended.]
14. Your problem is probably caused by a corrupt profile. [The same bug has been reported many times over a period of five years. One of the reports discusses an extensive test in both Linux and Windows that used a completely clean installation of the operating systems, not just a clean profile. The CPU hogging bug and instability was just as severe.]
15. If you are technically knowledgeable, you can spend several hours (or days) trying to disc

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10235906-37.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/happiness-in-slavery-nin-iphone-app-approved-with-no-changes/

The app was unchanged from when it was submitted. That Reznor quote is misleading--regardless of the tactics they tried prior to approval, in the end the version approved was unchanged from the original.

that Google Goes With Moats.

The hype was perhaps not large in volume, but it made up for it with extravagance. I think TechCrunch started it off, but it was on Slashdot too.

"Citation please. How has social networking sites become "so integrated into our society?"

Well, for one, I seem to recall a completely inexperienced and unqualified presidential candidate winning the most powerful job in the universe based partly on the fact that he was *cool* enough to use Twitter. Here's one of 4,790,000 citations on that available via Google: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/13/barack-obama-overtakes-kevin-rose-on-twitter-mccain-is-nowhere-in-sight/.

Picasa is a popular image management program that has supported facial recognition since last year: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/02/picasa-refresh-brings-facial-recognition/

I havnt used it, so im not sure how good it is.

This is just another reason why DRM is not a benefit to the consumer and why consumers should *not* support DRM.

Which reminds me, anybody know the status on TechCrunch's open source tablet?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/13/ashton-kutcher-promises-to-punk-ted-turner-if-he-beats-cnn-to-a-million-twitter-followers/

From TFL:

So Kutcher is throwing down the gauntlet. In a video released on YouTube today (embedded below), he's promising to "ding dong ditch" billionaire Ted Tuner (founder of CNN) if he beats CNN to a million Twitter followers. What is a ding dong ditch you may ask? Well, it's when you go up to a person's house, ring their doorbell, them run away and watch as they look around to see who's there. Yes, it's kind of a wussy version of stuff they used to do on Kutcher's hit MTV show "Punk'd."

In releasing this to the Internet and tweeting it out, it's pretty clear that Kutcher wants to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. That should be enough to put him over the top, but he may need a little more help as singer Britney Spears also remains ahead of him (though slightly with just over 870,000 followers).

So, Tweeter user base goes something like this:

1 - News and politics junkies
2 - People of questionable music tastes
3 - Teenagers with no taste or imagination whatsoever
4 - Whatever the groups above feed upon

Blah blah blah blah.

"Facebook seems to be stitched together as a set of "solution de jour" technologies without any real architecture behind it."

What's "de jour" about PHP or LAMP? Christ man they have been around for over a decade.

So if this was written in Cobol would that make you happy?

Have you developed anything with the reach, user count, view count of Facebook?

FB doesn't seem to be buckling under the pressure. More photos are uploaded to FB than any other site man:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/22/facebook-photos-pulls-away-from-the-pack/

What's so hodge-podge about that implementation?! Because it's not JSP serving?

As I recall, some of their code was made open source in 2007, although not deliberately.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/10/teslas-elon-musk-grows-a-pair-good-for-him/

Awesome.

Everybody complains about how ISPs aren't being upfront about their usage caps. So now they're being upfront.

People aren't complaining about the tiered plan idea, they are complaining about the absurdly low bandwidth caps on the tiers. In a real competitive market I would laugh at TW and switch to a different competitor, and they would in time be forced to adjust their tiers to a more reasonable level. However they don't operate in a competitive market, in many parts of the country they operate as part of a duopoly, in which their DSL competitors are doing the exact same thing (uhh antitrust anyone?).

Bear in mind these are the same type of people who charge 10-20cents per SMS message (both ways send and receive, which by the way works out to $1310 per MB) when it costs absolutely nothing to transmit them.

All of this is a complete scam however. The problem that TW and others have with bandwidth isn't infrastructure costs or other BS, it has to do with content control. On an unlimited bandwidth connection I can drop TW cable and get all my TV through the net. However if I do that it completely cuts TW out of the picture, so now they can't sell their advertising, PPV, or other crap. Remember all the network neutrality controversy, whereby ISPs wanted to charge for content? Now they have found a way to indirectly "tax" whatever content flows across their connections by setting the caps ridiculously low and charging overage fees.

Common misconception. If you read into it, Stage6 was actually close to making a profit, thanks to Yahoo toolbar downloads with the DivX web player. Ultimately, it was killed by board politics. If you want a good read, read here.

This "proprietary" argument is getting old.

Silverlight is an open-standard. While Microsoft doesn't actively develop a Linux client, they have collaborated with Novel to bring the Moonlight project to the Linux and other Unix/X11 platforms.

Your post is misinformation.

The Moonlight implementation of Silverlight comes with open source codecs that can't actually play much of Silverlight video.

One is required to download a binary blob codec from Microsoft if one wants to actually see almost anything with Moonlight.

Quintessentially proprietary.

Meanwhile, the specification for flash is open, and other parties are encouraged to write codecs for their platforms.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/adobes-open-screen-project-write-once-flash-everywhere/
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

You cannot get more open than that.

Flash is no less proprietary.

I beg to differ.

http://www.openscreenproject.org/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/adobes-open-screen-project-write-once-flash-everywhere/

I get it - it's April 1st. Can we move on to real articles now? FYI, here is a head's up on some other tech-related April Fools Jokes we will see on the /. front page.

Low iphone sales in Japan is FUD to which the blogosphere and the WSJ caught on. In fact, Japan ranks second in iphone sales. Of course the U.S. is where the majority of sales are, but the idea that iphones aren't selling in Japan is the result of somebody trying to manipulate Apple's stock price. It's all exposed here.

You're right. It is definitely possible that they have been able to move a lot of iPhone inventory since they started giving the phone away for free.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10172786-37.html [cnet.com]

copy pasted from the thread above this one.

Low iphone sales in Japan is FUD to which the blogosphere and the WSJ caught on. In fact, Japan ranks second in iphone sales. Of course the U.S. is where the majority of sales are, but the idea that iphones aren't selling in Japan is the result of somebody trying to manipulate Apple's stock price. It's all exposed here.

TFA says 1.5 billion downloads happened last year. That sounds a bit fishy since Apple alone sold 2 billion songs last year (see e.g. techcrunch article).

Tablet - not yet for sale but hopefully will be some day. Cheap and portable device is their goal, but will not fit in you pocket.
http://search.techcrunch.com/query.php?s=TechCrunch+tablet

Tablet - not yet for sale but hopefully will be some day. Cheap and portable device is their goal, but will not fit in you pocket.
http://search.techcrunch.com/query.php?s=TechCrunch+tablet

Actually, the original source, TechCrunch, not the dumbed down linked article, discusses in much better detail what Alpha is about.

Does TPB make millions from advertising? Is there any point advertising to pirates?

http://rixstep.com/1/20060708,00.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9814504-7.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/the-pirate-bay-makes-4-million-a-year-on-illegal-p2p-file-sharing-says-prosecutor/

Yes, they do, and yes, there is. Apparently.

In all fairness to the description of the story.
"And Apple appears headed for a slimmed-down OS X that will enable future iPhones or tablet devices to run the same OS as the Mac."

Am I missing something?

After 17 million iPhones and I don't know how many millions of iPod Touches sold this is more than being headed in a direction.

When Apple launched the iPhone it was announced as an OS X device.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/09/apple-announces-iphone-stock-soars/

So apparently Apple is clearly in the space of running a mini version of a monolithic OS.

Anyway, interesting as heck topic.

FTA:

music that has not passed its âoerenew dateâ still works... music that has expired will no longer work because the DRM licensing server has apparently shut down.

Quick, listen to your music before it expires!

Also, the article suggests that Total Music (which recently acquired Ruckus, and was a joint venture between Sony and UM) still has some life in it, but this article (on the same site!) says otherwise and quotes the blog of a VP there. I guess these record labels are having a hard time with this stuff...

While many people paint Apple as a friendly company, (who wouldn't sue a school), the fact is that COO Tim Cook said recently (at a quarterly earnings conference call):

We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don't rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.

and

I don't want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.

...it looks like an older generation MacBook Pro with a sticker over its logo.

Yes, it is a MacBook. Techcrunch had a Story on this last week.

It's inconceivable to me out they could let something like that slip thru.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

...it looks like an older generation MacBook Pro with a sticker over its logo.

Yes, it is a MacBook. Techcrunch had a Story on this last week.

It's inconceivable to me out they could let something like that slip thru.

• Citi Card Virtual Account Numbers
• AmEx disposable credit cards
• PayPal Virtual Credit Card Payment

So has any website sprung up to replace fuckedcompany? TechCrunch has their Layoff Tracker as does Forbes. But nothing quite like the original.

It's getting depressing out there.

Michael Arrington already speculated that Apple will be releasing a large iPod touch this year. I guess he's expecting it to be much more expensive (but multi-touch would be cool!).

I think the first thing everyone will want for this will be an external keyboard (seeing as the on-screen one obscures half the screen), and as soon as you do that, you could argue that you might as well be using a laptop or EEE notebook.

On-screen keyboard means either putting it down while typing ("ouch, my back!") or typing with one hand (hmmm... maybe that has some merits). I'd worry about the cost of the device creeping up as the final finish comes around - nice case, bluetooth (?), power supply etc. If it tips over $300 then it's into the same arena as notebooks.

Though if they manage to solve the keyboard problem, and keep the price down then maybe they can succeed where tablet PCs have failed.

the article says

(we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic)

But let me tell you something: the difference between $199 and $299 is worlds. There is no LAPTOP near $199. but $299? You are now competing with full laptops. It is now a luxury item, since it would be like asking someone to buy two laptops - one that does almost nothing except surf the web. DONT MAKE PEOPLE MAKE THAT CHOICE.

This is what I think you should do:

• let go of 1gb ram / 4gb flash drive: you don't need that much.
• Let go of the camera if you have to.
• Let go of the accelerometer if you have to.
• Go with wussier batteries.

Batteries dont matter as much as you think, because it's okay to leave the thing plugged in, like digital picture frames. In fact, that's how I read in bed: with an old LCD monitor connected to the desktop next to me, in my hands, with the power and VGA cables going off to the side. (I scroll with the mouse, in my other hand). I am your real target market. If you need to have a $199 version that has a 1-hour battery do it. If you can't, do it without a battery, so it only works while plugged in (like a digital picture frame). Do whatever it takes. You need to get this thing down to $199, no matter what.

I can spend that much for it just to read my bookz (scanned books from the net) - it's the price of 10 hardcover books. But $299 and I can't justify it.

And you don't need RAM. You need video RAM. I know, because I use a 500 mhz desktop with 128 MB of RAM all day - with a video card that has more RAM than it does. Flawless web use - flawless youtube etc. I'm waiting to upgrade until I drop about $2000, which I'm not doing in this economy. Meanwhile I get flawless web use out of this old POS.

Lower your standards until you can squeeze this thing out for $200. Have a $199 version with a sucky battetry (or none at all if you must), no camera, or accelerometer. And then a $299 version with all that, if you want to.

Do you want to know what will happen if you price this thing at $299? All your customers will settle on something smaller for $229.

Just my 2 cents.

some more interesting reading today Why Google Employees Quit

The "private" mode is expected to arrive with Firefox 3.1 :-)

QR codes have been doing exactly the same thing for a while now.

And to be honest, I really can't see either catching on... The general public are constantly getting more familiar with the web, and getting more comfortable with finding their own favourite 'trusted' sources of information. Even if Microsoft does somehow convince enough manufacturers to start adding codes to their packaging, are people really going to jump at the chance to instantly look up a load of information on that particular television/cosmetic/breakfast cereal on some arbitrary MS website? Because that's all this really amounts to... a link. More info here.

And don't forget; either Steve Jobs died or 4chan hijacked the livestream...

Okay - now add Picasa to the list of things I was just talking about. One of the most popular photo management softwares used by the 'common man', especially for new internet users who never had the opportunity to use stuff that was out before.

Personally, I don't like it and use Photoshop and my own scripts to upload to flickr using the flickr API and a few thousand lines of code to transform my proprietary tagging system (that I invented before the word "tag" existed on the internet, in 2000ish) to the types of tags a common person would use ("thing-animal-cat" just doesn't look right when normal people would simply say "cat").

Anyway... These stories keep coming out. I wish I saved them as a collection, haha.

Okay - now add Picasa to the list of things I was just talking about. One of the most popular photo management softwares used by the 'common man', especially for new internet users who never had the opportunity to use stuff that was out before.

Personally, I don't like it and use Photoshop and my own scripts to upload to flickr using the flickr API and a few thousand lines of code to transform my proprietary tagging system (that I invented before the word "tag" existed on the internet, in 2000ish) to the types of tags a common person would use ("thing-animal-cat" just doesn't look right when normal people would simply say "cat").

Anyway... These stories keep coming out. I wish I saved them as a collection, haha.

This is why governments are not completely in sync with the Humanness of the People that compose them. In the end, though, humanness prevails, and governments fall. Never bet against Nature. She will always win. Always has.

The more a government steers from the natural inclinations of its citizens, the less stable it becomes.

The USA is steering away, and Obama getting elected was the people saying that the government was going in the wrong direction.

As far as FB is concerned, they can do whatever is legally allowed. They can also lose members.

Actually, since it seems their bandwidth bills are churning through their cash and in this economy it's hard for them to raise more, the worst thing that can happen to them now is to sign up too many users. See: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/31/facebooks-growing-problem/ for more on that.

An interesting tidbit from the link above: only on in four facebook members comes from the US.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

Yes, TechCrunch were making their own tablet. What happened to that, I wonder.

I love these sort of stories. Unsubstantiated rumours, speculation, hype and hope all mixed up into a story that is only a shade more believable than your average fairy tale.

The success of pundits with long-range Apple forecasts is not so much bad as utterly atrocious. I'll file this story in the "believe it only after it's announced by Apple" pile (aka garbage bin).

Never been a fan of convertible touchscreen laptops. Too heavy (and bulky) to be used as a tablet. Hell, even the few true tablet, non-convertibles PCs out there are too clunky.
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_le17.asp

What I'd really like to see is the MacBook Air in tablet only form. Something like an iPod Touch with a 10-13" screen, but just as thin (as the MacBook Air / iPod Touch). Apple, are you listening?!?

Failing this, how about something a little more down to earth:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

hey, i agree that it's not good to be serious all the time, but there are a lot of different ways to unwind. just as there are books/music/tv programs of different quality, so too are there news sources of different caliber, and Valleywag just happens to be the bottom of the barrel. and i wouldn't put comic books, gaming, and role-playing on the same level as Britney Spears or celebrity gossip. surely in the age of information geeks can find better ways of passing their time than slandering people they've never met and encroaching on the privacy of others (especially non-public-figures).

i know that celebrity worship exists in some form in every culture or subculture, but in general geeks seem less infected by this morbid curiosity to gawk at the human wreckage of other people's lives. the kind of attitude exemplified by Valleywag's persistent rumormongering goes beyond voyeurism; it's downright schadenfreude. even if you're just looking for some mindless diversion, that doesn't mean you can't have some standards.

and i honestly don't think real geeks are interested in reading some gossipy blogger prattle on about the latest celebrity scandal. but i guess there are grown men who act like teenage girls even outside of IRC.

hey, i agree that it's not good to be serious all the time, but there are a lot of different ways to unwind. just as there are books/music/tv programs of different quality, so too are there news sources of different caliber, and Valleywag just happens to be the bottom of the barrel. and i wouldn't put comic books, gaming, and role-playing on the same level as Britney Spears or celebrity gossip. surely in the age of information geeks can find better ways of passing their time than slandering people they've never met and encroaching on the privacy of others (especially non-public-figures).

i know that celebrity worship exists in some form in every culture or subculture, but in general geeks seem less infected by this morbid curiosity to gawk at the human wreckage of other people's lives. the kind of attitude exemplified by Valleywag's persistent rumormongering goes beyond voyeurism; it's downright schadenfreude. even if you're just looking for some mindless diversion, that doesn't mean you can't have some standards.

and i honestly don't think real geeks are interested in reading some gossipy blogger prattle on about the latest celebrity scandal. but i guess there are grown men who act like teenage girls even outside of IRC.

Nope. Facebook has more unique visitors per month, MySpace had approximately 106 millions users as of 8th September 2008, and FTFS, facebook has 140 million (Wikipedia says 120 million.)

That one I can answer.

Folders are only so useful at organizing things and we are rapidly approaching the point in our digital lives where we can accumulate far more than we'll ever realisticly be able to handle using the "folder" method.

The unfortunate part, as others have pointed out, is that without some sort of significant AI involvement, semantic anything is unlikely to ever reach critical mass.

If you have 25 gigs of family videos and pictures, it's highly unlikely that if you don't have the time to seperate and sort it into the individual folders most suited to each file, you definately don't have the time to intelligently analysis and tag each file with approrpiate values.

On the other hand, despite the horrible ad campaigns concerning racism and underage threesomes, or the outcry concering privacy, it sounds as if we are getting to the point where AI actually can make a useful contribution to the system.