NPR’s David Folkenflik:

ABC News is facing sharp criticism over the disclosure that it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Florida woman who now stands accused of killing her own daughter.

The $200,000 payment in August 2008 to Casey Anthony was used for exclusive rights to reproduce family photographs and videotape of her then-missing 2-year-old, Caylee.

The pictures and footage were used on Sept. 5, 2008, as the heart of a story on ABC’s Good Morning America and a full-hour treatment later that night on the prime-time newsmagazine 20/20. Casey Anthony was charged with child neglect and endangerment that day. The next month, she was indicted by a grand jury on charges of murder.

This is one of the most unethical things to take place in the journalism industry in a while. Horrible.

Gruber has posted two snippets from Windows guru Paul Thurrott, regarding copy and paste on mobile devices:

Unreal, indeed.

Boom; roasted.

I just ran across a link to Jacqui Cheng’s 15-page review on Ars Techinca of the original iPhone, and it feels like that thing was released a lifetime ago

Apple PR:

“Jerry joined Apple’s Board in 1997 when most doubted the company’s future. He has been a pillar of financial and business expertise and insight on our Board for over a dozen years,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been a privilege to know and work with Jerry, and I’m going to miss him a lot.”

It’s rare that Apple ever looks back, especially to the late 1990s, when the company was in pretty bad shape. Most people — including me — hadn’t really ever heard much about York or his contributions to the company, but it would seem he was instrumental in bringing Apple back from the brink.

I didn’t know he was from Memphis. That’s pretty cool, too.

Jason Snell, in his defense of the 3G-equipped iPad:

Let’s face it: One of the things that stinks about the American cellular industry is that it’s been built around a subsidy-and-contract business model. When you buy a phone, it’s generally discounted in exchange for your agreement to pay a monthly fee for a couple of years. Non-subsidized devices generally still pay high prices for service, and it’s still a pain to cancel. The iPad’s 3G service has none of these drawbacks: It can be set to auto-cancel and requires no commitment.

[...]

My point isn’t that the iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G is for everyone. It’s that a lot of people may commit to a Wi-Fi only iPad without considering the flexibility of the iPad’s 3G system and the great deal Apple has extracted from AT&T. For an up-front commitment of $130—the cost difference between the Wi-Fi and 3G models—you give yourself the freedom to buy 3G data whenever you need it, without any of the typical cellular encumbrances. That’s pretty cool, and it’s worth considering when you’re deciding which iPad you want to buy.

When the iPad was first announced, I heard several complaints about the 3G-equipped models being more expensive. Several of these complaints included this argument:

No way the 3G chip costs Apple $130.

That’s true, but Snell nails the real reason for the extra cost. The $130 is painful up-front, but the flexibility is very, very cool and quite innovative. And it wouldn’t be possible in today’s cellular market without it.

Amazon just released an application that gives Kindle users the ability read their content on the Mac. This adds the Mac to a long list of otehr devices taht can be used to access Amazon’s Kindle services.

More importantly, it is another step in what they company has slowly been doing over the last year — turning the Kindle from a device into a service. It’s gone from a device-only service to something that doesn’t Kindle to use it. The Mac, Windows and mobile applications can be used directly with each other, without any Kindle hardware in the middle.

Apple is where Amazon was a year ago with their eBook strategy. The iBookstore is merely a feature of the iPad, and the iPad alone. Even there, it’s not the primary function of the device, as it’s not even installed by default. And as it stands right now, there’s no other way to use this service — no iPhone, Mac or web browser can get to the store or view downloaded content.

I see this panning out in one of two ways: a free-standing iBooks app for the Mac (and eventually other platforms) that syncs with the iPad in a very similar way Amazon uses Whispersync, or an “iBooks” enviroment that would function within iTunes. I hope it’s the former — iTunes already is a great poster child for software bloat.

Either way, while Amazon’s device isn’t as sexy as the iPad, their service is far superior to what Apple is offering. Apple’s iBook service will do well with iPad owners, but if Apple really wants to go after the Kindle, they have quite a bit of ground to cover.

Mary Thompson:

I remember how much I used the iPhone when I had it (ALL THE TIME). It was convenient and I never had to think. If someone asked me a question I could Google the answer in a few seconds. Instead of forcing myself to remember things I could just store them on the phone. There was no reason to use my brain because the iPhone was available to me at all times. There was also the constant urge to be online reading/updating/playing/learning things.

Since getting rid of my iPhone I’ve been a lot better about ignoring my phone. I don’t have constant internet access so I’m not constantly checking my email or updating Twitter of my Facebook status. I’m not obsessed with what’s going on online when I should be focused on what I’m doing in the real world. I feel like I’m free from the need to check everything. I feel like I’m much better at being in the room and with people. I’ve rid myself of the extremely bad habit of playing with my iPhone when I’m with people and I think I’m better for it.

David Smith:

The world in which open source software was born is very different from the world we’re heading to. Less than a decade ago, a major concern of the computing world was that much of the capability and innovation was locked up in closed software held by major corporations, like Microsoft. Open-source software addressed that. But look where innovation lies today: companies like Google (and few others) –built on the backs of open-source technology, mind you — can now perform tasks that not long ago were the realm of science fiction. Today, you can speak a question into a tiny handheld gadget, and find out where to get good pizza. But think for a moment how Google can do this reliably and quickly: it’s their data. They’ve amassed a massive, proprietary database of search queries, written text, and voice samples that allow the Google Voice Search app on the iPhone (and algorithms in Google’s cloud servers) to distinguish “pizza” (said in on a noisy street in a Jersey accent) from “piece of” or the city “Pisa”. Tim was careful to point out: it’s not the closed algorithms that make this work. Peter Norvig from Google has said it himself: Google doesn’t have better algorithms than everyone else. They just have more data.

Tim Oreily’s thoughts on the subject are worth a read. This is the fundamental topic the computer industry has to face in the next few years.

Harry Haydon of The Sun:

Star Wars fan Chris Jarvis, 31, was told he would have to leave if he did not take it down.

Chris is a member of the International Church of Jediism – based on the sci-fi films – whose doctrine states that followers should be allowed to wear hoods.

But when he protested, security escorted him from his local branch in Southend, Essex.

He filled out a complaint form – and received a formal letter from the JobCentre Plus branch’s boss just three days later.

Ars Techinca’s Chris Foresman:

In recent years the US has begun to lag in education for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and a number of efforts are underway to address this issue. We know that giving kids hands-on experience is one of the best ways to spark and keep their interest in STEM-related fields, and to this end, high schoolers all over the country are getting an opportunity to learn and apply STEM knowledge by participating in the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

I love seeing science being applied in schools in engaging ways. I also love this.