The i’s Have It: The BBC’s iPlayer on the iPhone

The $199 iPhone? Something’s Missing From the Picture

A cheaper iphone? the next generation iphone is coming out this summer and it seems like there might be a subsidy. Also a big part in this article was that apple is thinking about losing the old business model of getting monthly fees from AT&T and just selling phones. Unlocked phones would mean that people would be free to use them on any phone service.

Now in Play: AOL, Facebook and Many Others

Facebook is still the free radical online company but who else will get auctioned off to the "internet giants" in years to come ?

Google Ends Microsoft’s Yahoo Search

In analysis Google of course wins out from the whole situation. But they certainly played a role in the aborted merger

If You Use Outlook E-Mail, Meet Xobni

Could Mobile TV Work?

Does YouTube on your iPhone not cut it anymore to the point where watching mobile TV channels is necessary? People around the world have already started to suscribe to mobil TV broadcasts and channels. In Italy, people pay almost $30 to watch around a dozen TV channels. How far will this spread and will you give in?

Swapping Your TV for Your Computer?

Is your life so entertaining and full of enlightenment that your TV just simply isn't necessary? Is watching TV on your computer just as good? Is the internet too random? Too amateur?

How Does Campaign Merchandise Label Candidates?

The campaign retail stores of the recent candidates offer numerous amounts of merchandise. From the typical buttons and bumper stickers to the more unique polo shirts and clocks, McCain, Clinton, and Obama demonstrate their ways of including everyone. While the merchandise may not unveil any hidden value or purpose of a candidate, it shows how campaign strategy focuses around culture conformity. A candidate wants to reach out to various groups of people who are from all walks of life. The typical saying of "quality over quantity" still resonates around these merchandising techniques. Design critics are able to describe Obama and Clinton as focused on the working class and that McCain broadens his inventory by offering "lesiure-class items" such as sailing jackets. The critics of this article feel that the accessory department of the candidate's inventory reveals the most. With such everyday tools like rulers and ice scraper, it seems that Obama's 'hope bracelet' offers the most sentimental value. These three candidates demonstrate various levels of merchandising technique and while some feel that it really does not give one an edge over the other, a strategy is a strategy. Each candidate tries to target people who are going to show undying support as well as trying to swing confused voters. At the end of the day, a McCain sailing jacket over a Clinton "I'm your girl" button is not going to be the end all be all decision of a voter, but it certainly grasps people's attention.

Cookie monster

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Technology?

Nanontechnology + Phones = Morph

watch this video on the nokia morph. Its not something we will see for a while but its still a crazy way to think about how phones could be in a 5-10 years. To see it in action use this url to watch the video.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7260000/newsid_7267300/7267398.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1

The Next Sweet Phone

Spam reaches 30-year anniversary

Cuba allows for home computers

Since fidel has left office a new set of reforms has been implemented one of which being the allowing of personal; computers at home. Unfortunately the computers cost quite a bit more than the average salary in cuba. Also the internet is not able to be accessed for a couple reasons. The first is that Cuba cannot connect to the underwater fiber optics wires from the US because of the long standing US trade embargo. The second option which would be satellite is too expensive and there is not a lot of bandwidth to go around. Venezuela is apparently laying down wires as well for internet and maybe Cuba can connect to them but it is still one more example of how the US is losing out on a market that is so close to their shores. The question also remains if the people of cuba will be allowed to access the net once the opportunity to do so arises. Currently only work places and schools are allowed access.

BBC exposes Facebook flaw

Microsoft and Yahoo The End?

Microsoft says that it is finally giving up its bid for yahoo. Ever since they first put in a bid Yahoo has said that microsoft undervalued their company. Now microsoft is saying that it wouldnt make sense for them to acquire Yahoo anymore because of things that the CEO would do to the company before they could take it over. Instead microsoft will go it alone on web advertising and try to compete with the giant of google. What is interesting is that apparently yahoo started talking to google and other firms about possible mergers but it found out that there would be a lot of problems if it attempted to merge with google since that would be 90% of the ad market under one name.

Is Lawrence Lessig the next Reverend Wright (and a Communist, and a qualsi-socialist, and...)

Will Lawrence Lessig and the Free Culture movement become a political liability?

Ever since Lawrence Lessig emerged into the public sphere, there have been whispers among fringe critics that his ideology is just info-communism, but it looks like the innovators over at Red State have managed to create a new charge against Lessig: anti-christian.

It all started with a Keynote. As part of Lawrence Lessig's iconic Free Culture talks, there's a montage of clips showing off some of the funniest moments of remix culture, including video from the left, the right, and the absurd. Several months ago, as he wound down his focus on Free Culture, and prepared to shift his focus to the corruption of political culture, he began to add several more videos to this series, including a short film by "guerilla filmmaker" Javier Brato featuring Jesus in a diaper lipsyncing Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and well...

This video has been in many of his most recent talks, including his talk in the Authors @ Google series, the footage of which (of course) was put up on YouTube.

Enter Barack Obama. Obama used to teach Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School along with Lawrence Lessig, who began teaching at UChicago after clerking for the legendary jurist (and fellow Chicago faculty member) Richard Posner. In addition to advocating for Free Culture, network neutrality, and a host of other tech-centric policies, Lessig has recently become one of the most vocal supporters of Barack Obama, releasing a series of videos on his support of Barack Obama (which lay out some of the most interesting intellectual arguments in support of any candidate I've ever seen).

Lessig has become a pretty high profile public intellectual, particularly in the technology, and his support of Obama only has elevated Lessig further.

On April 21st, RedState, a conservative blog network, made a high profile post about Lessig, his support for Google and Obama, and his "anti-christian stance", which also immediately urged readers to call the Senate Commerce Committee and ask them to stop Lessig from testifying on network neutrality the next day (this tactic, which I frankly consider to be brilliant, deserves a post in its own right).

Could this be the start of a new trend - quite possibly. The following week, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a right-leaning technology policy think tank released a report entitled Tragedy and Farce: An Analysis of the Book Free Culture (and a fantastically titled accompanying press release: "Free Culture" Akin to "Quasi-Socialist Utopianism"), charging that Lessig advocates that the United States should move to a Soviet Union style system for information policy, and promising that this is merely the opening salvo in their criticism of Lessig's works.

Could this be the intellectual run-up to halt Lessig's Change Congress project? Perhaps, though it's more likely that it's a growing movement designed to curb Lessig's influence on shaping tech industry policy as a whole, not to tie him to the Obama campaign and try to use him to sink the ship.

Additional coverage:

Ars Technica - Lessig, Google, Obama, and Jesus: a net neutrality mash-up

Ars Technica - Is Lessig's Free Culture Just a Modern Das Kopyright?

Netroots miffed by candidates appearing on Fox

A Lessig Throwback

Italy posts income details on web