...more recent posts
The Wall St. Journal hosted their annual conference yesterday, D: all things digital. I guess due to Mossberg's status this has become a big thing in the computer / gadget industry. This year Jeff Hawkins from Palm had a big announcement that turned out to just be the introduction of the Palm Foleo, a subnotebook device that basically just piggy-backs on your Treo (and soon other smartphones) giving you a big screen and full sized keyboard when using those devices. I guess that's interesting, but for $500 (not counting several hundred for the Treo) I'm not sure why you just wouldn't carry an actual subnotebook, rather than this strange quasi thin client arrangement. Color me unimpressed once again with Palm. Can't they just concentrate on making the Treo better?
Steve Jobs had a sit down with Mossberg that didn't reveal much new info. Probably the biggest thing was this quote about 3rd party apps on the iPhone: "...we'll find a way to let 3rd parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can't compromise the security of the phone." That seems to pretty clearly state that 3rd party apps will be possible in the future, although there are still a bunch of questions around this. I'm happy to at least hear this much though.
Later, Jobs and Gates, somewhat historically, took the stage together. I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but supposedly it was a cordial affair.
Earlier Microsoft debuted Surface, their new multi-touch table top Minority Report-ish computer. Sort of like a giant iPhone in terms of it's multi-touch input technology, although Surface goes even further in some ways. Really impressive. Not sure how much market penetration this will have at its' 10K price point, but as a proof of concept it looks amazing. Well done. Here are some more pics.
Updated: And here's a nice Popular Mechanics video of Surface.
Slashdot discussion on the Yahoo news that
Robert Soloway, a prolific Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King" [...] was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. Soloway is accused of using botnets to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses for his mass mailings. If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars.I'd love to see an end to spam, and I don't have any particular feelings of regret over the possibility that this guy might go to jail, but I just have a hard time imagining the laws we would need to convict spammers but *not* impinge on reasonable fair uses of the internet. It's clear this guy is bad and I'm happy to see him off the internet, but to codify why he's bad, and someone sending some political action emails - or using an open WiFi they don't own - are not bad seems dicey to say the least. Hopefully they can just get him on the identity theft, money laundering, and wire fraud charges.