Continue reading WeTab tablet spotted running MeeGo at IFA

WeTab tablet spotted running MeeGo at IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If ever a trailer did not depict what a movie is actually about it’s this trailer for Universal Pictures’ “Catfish”, a movie about Facebook the subject matter of which could not be further from that other movie about Facebook. I’d like to take this sentence to say “Spoiler Alert” about fifteen times because the next couple paragraphs are going to be full of them — If you hate spoilers do yourself a favor and stop reading. That said, the following exposition shouldn’t prevent you from seeing the movie, I’ve seen it twice and enjoyed both times.

“Catfish” is a movie about Nev Shulman, a 24-year- old New York photographer and his relationship with Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old girl and her 19-year-old sister Megan whom he meets on Facebook in 2007. I’m sure all of you can see this coming, but Megan isn’t who she claims to be. Nev and Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the viewer get taken for a wild and well documented ride, especially for the last 40 minutes of the movie.

In summary Megan and a bunch of other Facebook identities are characters invented by artist Angela Wesselman’s imagination, as Wesselman is trapped in Michigan taking care of two disabled children and has no outlets for creative expression other than her paintings — which she ships to Nev Schulman under the guise of them being her (real) daughter Abby’s — and her elaborate storytelling on Facebook. “Scam is not the word,” say the filmmakers regarding Wesselman’s bait and switch.

Plot twists aside, the film uses the social network and other tropes unique to the Internet age such as Google Maps, “sexting” and Photoshop in order to give a richer view of the narrative, as Nev and Angela/Megan’s digital courtship drags on for 8 months of phone calls, MP3 exchanges and even Facebook wall “infighting” among the various imaginary members of the Pierce family. At some point Nev sends Megan an IRL post card, and remarks how odd the act of sending snail mail is.

What’s the most interesting about the film is that Wesselman is like a totally new kind of artist, creating a entire world for Nev through multiple fabricated online identities. When asked during a screening last week why he, as a self-proclaimed part of the “Google Generation” never bothered to Google search Abby Pierce or Angela Wasselman or Megan Faccio, Nev Shulman said he did and came up with nothing, not pushing it any further because wanted to believe. “There are plenty of people with no Google presence,” says Shulman. Heh

This ambiguity surrounding “Catfish” (including its bloody Catfish logo) has lead it to be the subject of many attacks most notably from Movieline in their post “Does Sundance Sensation Catfish Have A Truth Problem?” which asserts that the Schulmans and Joost knew that Megan wasn’t who she said she was right from the beginning. As counter to this filmaker Ariel Schulman revealed that the movie is not being marketed as a documentary because the “D-word” turns off younger viewers to whom he thinks the film would be most beneficial as a cautionary tale.

While some scenes from the movie tend to reinforce the “they knew the entire time” hypothesis (as does Nev’s shit-eating grin throughout) the “whether or not any of the boys suspected it” issue is complicated and best left to the individual viewer.

What should remain with you after seeing Catfish is how convincing the Facebook soap opera Wasselman pulled off could be to someone yearning for a human connection, and also as a side note, that model Aimee Gonzales’ boyfriend, whose images Wesselman used to pull off the ruse, chided her shortly after hearing about her inadvertent role in the film, “See I told you you shouldn’t have put all those pictures online.”

Catfish hits theatres September 17th, one month before the more glamorous Social Network. Both Wasselman and Schulman are still friends on Facebook.

Must include at least one number. Must be longer than six characters. Cannot have more than four sequential characters from your previous seven passwords. The rules for password creation vary wildly from site to site, an effort to protect users from those who would hack their identities.

These protective measures don’t go very far, according to the New York Times, because hackers can get ahold of passwords with software that remotely tracks keystrokes, or by tricking users into typing them in. The story touches on a range of issues around the problem, but neglects to mention the obvious: the march toward a centralized login for multiple sites.

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A universal login could solve a lot of the issues around password security, from keylogging to the problem of users having their passwords discovered after writing them down.

It would also solve the problem of password-overload. Managing logins for all the Web sites that require registration is a pain, and any frequent Web user who says differently is either lying or has a photographic memory. Browsers have taken some of the pain away by remembering passwords for us, but clear your browser’s history and suddenly you have to answer secret questions and email your username to yourself for umpteen different sites.

A handy chart to help you create secure passwords, from Microsoft.

One or more options for a universal login is inevitable and progress is well underway. More and more sites are supporting the easy-to-use Facebook Connect, which lets users register for a site with their Facebook profile instead of creating a site-specific username and password. As of last year, there were more than nine million websites using OpenID, the openly-developed standard that users can use to log in across multiple sites.

Standards like OpenID carry their own security problems (and other problems – see The Troubles With OpenID 2.0), the obvious being that a successful hacker can gain access to all the sites and services you use at once. But the convenience of a universal login is irresistible, especially for the myriad sites where there’s no danger if your password is hacked, such as news sites. Users who try it won’t want to go back – which is why it’s important to talk about the security issues around these new protocols for users and the sites that implement them.

How do you manage your logins?

Discuss

Now that the Nintendo 3DS is announced using a parallax barrier display, we bet that many of you were hoping to see a 10-inch 3D tablet or laptop with a similar glasses-less display. Hell, we were… until we actually saw Sharp’s prototype 10.2-inch parallax barrier display here at IFA in Berlin. Unfortunately, the panel at this larger size suffers from some very serious vertical shadows (check the video) unless you’re right in the sweet spot and alligned with the barrier’s precision slits at a distance of about 20 inches. Even then, it’s very hard to maintain your position, and the 3D effect isn’t all that dazzling. Fortunately, this 3D (640 x 768) panel also functions in 2D (1280 x 728) mode. Guess a 3D tablet that requires glasses isn’t so crazy after all. Wait, yes it is.

Sharp’s 10.2-inch parallax barrier display makes us love our 3D glasses (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 01:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Funded founder Adeo Ressi was arrested and briefly detained earlier this evening over an altercation with a flight attendant. The airline? Virgin America, which I’ve been holding up as virtually the only airline that doesn’t suck (See Virgin Airlines Fails To Commit Atrocities On Flight VX746 and Delta Flight 1843 From JFK To Hell).

Ressi’s description of the incident is below, and he has sent this to Virgin, he tells me. I’ve reached out to Virgin America for their position.

I can’t help but note the similarities with Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, who has now been rewarded for his behavior with a reality tv show. The worse the flight attendant, the better the chance for fame and glory, I guess.

You posted something nice about Virgin America a little over a week ago. I actually agreed until I was briefly and wrongly arrested as a result of a stressed out flight attendant today.

I am horrified by the incident on VX22 today, after flying over 70,000 miles with the company. Here are the details.

I was on flight VX22 in seat 2B, First Class, under the name Adeodato Gregory Ressi di Cervia. My company, the Founder Institute, is enrolling hundreds of entrepreneurs from eight cities into the incubator, so I was working before taking off. I shut everything down when the cabin door was shut, and started working again when the Internet was turned on at 10,000 feet, reviewing founder applications.

The first class steward, the “ITL,” served some food, but otherwise ignored passengers. There was a young stewardess in the back of the plane that brought me two ginger ails, some nuts, and Pringles. It was strange that the steward ignored passengers, focusing his attention on a baby in the font row, but I didn’t really notice much, since I was busy.

As we started to descend, the captain came on and asked everyone to shut down computers and electronic devices. The ITL walked down the isle immediately following the captain’s announcement and tapped my computer to indicate that I should shut off my computer. I looked up, nodded and indicated that I needed a second to finish an email, and he walked past me into coach.

By the time he returned, approximately 60 to 90 seconds later, I had finished the email at exactly 5:33 PM EST (according to email records), and I was closing the laptop lid. He stood above me, and the ITL said in a loud voice, “I told you to close the computer. You need to listen to me. You need to obey my orders. I am in charge. I told you to close the computer. You need to listen. I am in charge. Not you.” This went on for a while. It was awkward, uncalled for and embarrassing.

Meanwhile, I was holding the closed computer up off the tray table for everyone to see, as it was being shut down even before he walked over. He then said, “I can contact the authorities and have you arrested.” I responded, “I have done nothing wrong. Go ahead, if you like, I have done nothing wrong.”

Now, a few minutes after the original announcement by the captain, the ITL walks up to the bulkhead phone, and I presume he calls the captain. The captain then makes an announcement that everyone should have their devices off or “the authorities will be contacted and meet us upon landing.” My device was already off for a few minutes at this point, and I ask for the ITL’s name, who now completely ignores me.

As we continue to descend, I had a bag on the floor in First Class, which I know is not allowed on Virgin America First Class because I have flown over 70,000 miles on the airline. So, I ask the ITL to put the bag up, and he responds, “get up, and put it away yourself.”

I get up, and then the ITL starts yelling at me again for standing up when the plane is below 10,000 feet. I toss the bag into the overhead, leaving it open, sit down quickly and he calls the captain again using the bulkhead phone. He then comes over to shut the overhead compartment. At this point, we did not speak again during the flight.

We land at 5:49 PM, 16 minutes after I closed my computer down. We taxi to the gate, and there was a 15 minute delay while the authorities were called. Two NYC police men escorted me off the plane. Passengers are delayed even further as the police interrogated me in front of the exit door. Once I start moving up the platform, escorted by two police men, and the passengers are finally let out. Three First Class and Main Cabin Select passengers agree to be witnesses on my behalf to the police, taking more of their valuable time to say that I did nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, I was detained for an hour at the gate by police, who eventually let me go, jokingly referring to this as an “argument over a cell phone” to the TSA. Meanwhile, the Virgin America captain lectured me twice on the importance of turning your computer off, without even listening to my side of the story. The ITL told the police a story that I had been disruptive at other points in the flight, and the police said that the Virgin America flight team were now defending each other. The police also clearly indicated that they thought the ITL was not telling the truth. The police and the TSA had no charges.

You can get the police report for the names of two supportive First Class customers.

I am extremely disturbed by this incident in First Class on Virgin America. I request that Virgin America (1) terminate the ITL in question and (2) refund my money for the whole trip, allowing me to purchase alternative travel home. I do not want to wind up with this ITL on my flight again, as I have recognized him from my 70,000+ hours of flight with the airline.

I a law abiding citizen that has never gotten more than a mild speeding ticket, and I fly over 250,000 miles per year. I never raised my voice. I never cursed. I followed the captain’s instructions. Yet, I was removed from a Virgin America by police for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Thank you.

Adeo Ressi

Java gets a bad rap. It’s considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True – but these are not bad times for Java at all.

James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well.

Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll.

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The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It’s all about the enterprise. VMware’s Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform.

Governor makes some points that are worth noting:

NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise.

MapReduce? It’s what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology.

And then there’s this from Governor:

Of course we’re also seeing innovation from the new hotness – thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example – which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.

Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point.

And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation.

Discuss

In what amounts to yet another co-branding marketing kerfuffle, Philips and O’Neill have teamed up on a foursome of so-called durable headphones. The Stretch headphones (pictured) are the toughest of the bunch, constructed from an ultra-durable, temperature-resistant, and awesome-sounding material called TR 55LX that boasts a surface hardness six times greater than the polycarbonate stuff found in most headphones. The Snug series boasts “bold graphics” and can fold flat, while the in-ear Covert buds brings an iPhone controller. Last, and apparently least, is the “stylish” Specked with tangle free cord. Amazing. All are said to have been tested by the “toughest O’Neill team riders.” As proof, O’Neill is trotting out Jeremy Jones, Mark Mathews, and Ane Enderud to promote its new gear, presumably because they want to and not because they are contractually obligated under the terms of their respective high-paying sponsorships. Needless to say, these headphones aren’t for you if you don’t know who these people are or you lack the fragile hipster ego required to wear them. No prices were announced, but you can expect them to match the “premium” description when these arrive for retail in Europe and the US sometime this month.

We did give Stretch a go for a quickie ears-on, and honestly, while the cloth cord was a nice touch and they do seem to be super rugged, we’d prefer that the team paid a bit more attention to the sound quality than the finish.

Continue reading Philips and O’Neill launch durable headphones — shaka bra!

Philips and O’Neill launch durable headphones — shaka bra! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly.

Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it.

Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share.

What Twitter has done is create an amazing user experience for reading information. This is thanks to an intuitive user interface that layers on top of itself. So, for example, if I click on a link in my tweet stream, I’ll have a new layer that rolls over to show that webpage in a customized browser window. If you’ve used Flipboard, it’s somewhat similar, but better because it’s much easier to go back to where ever you previously were before you clicked the link. You simply swipe something to the side to move it temporarily or swipe it again to get it off the screen (in portrait mode anyway, where there’s less space).

Something else that’s awesome: when you highlight a tweet by clicking on it, it’s now pinned to the top or bottom of the screen as you scroll through your stream. This is great if it’s something you want to reference. A lot of thought has been put into these type of saving state actions within this app. It’s simple to save a draft and go back to it, for example (much easier than with Twitter for iPhone). Or to reference one of these pinned tweets in your own tweet.

There are also some great new gestures that Twitter came up with for this app. For example, if you pinch-outward on a tweet, it will unfold to show you more information about the Twitter user. Better may be the way you can swipe down with two fingers on any tweet to see a full conversation in context. It’s the little things like this that make the app great — Apple-like, even.

Overall, the app looks and feels quite a bit different from Twitter for iPhone (which Twitter built from Tweetie — developer Loren Brichter’s client that they acquired earlier this year). But Twitter’s Leland Rechis assures me it’s using all the same stuff on the backend. In fact, Twitter is now a universal app — meaning it’s one app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad, it will just look different depending on which device you’re using it on.

Rechis also says Twitter started experimenting with some newer things on the iPad version that haven’t yet been brought to the iPhone version, but undoubtedly will. A great example here is that when you click through to a user’s profile page, you’ll see at the bottom a list of users similar to that user that you may like to follow.

Rechis also notes the importance of the logged-out view — something Twitter worked on before the iPhone version launch. Twitter wants to make the service as useful as possible to people even if they don’t have an account. The idea, of course, is that they’ll hopefully sign up for one — and this app may give them the most reason to yet. When logged out, you’ll be able to see tweet streams based on hot topics.

“Tweets in general are not just what I’m doing, they have an incredible amount of metadata,” Rechis says speaking to why they created this layering idea for the app. Almost 25 percent of all tweets now have a link in them, he says. This app is perfect for those tweets, and content consumption and exploration in general.

Rechis notes that one of his favorite things about tablets is how they eliminate window management. At the same time, you need some way to manage all this information. He notes that Brichter’s original concept was stacks of sheets of paper that you quickly shuffle through. Other members of Twitter including Rechis refined that idea and the end result is Twitter for iPad.

That’s roughly 750 words about the app — but you really just need to see it, and use it. It will definitely be my go-to way to browse Twitter from now on. It’s that good.

Look for it in the App Store shortly. It will be a free download.

Update: I should note that for some of these more advanced gestures, there is a slight learning curve. That said, you can do everything without using those gestures, so it’s not a big deal — it’s just icing on the cake. And yes, Twitter is trying to come up with the best way to teach users about these new gestures.

Microsoft’s new mobile OS has shipped to handset makers and will be appearing on phones in time for the holiday season, the company announced today.

The stage is set for Microsoft to either rock the mobile world with a mainstream alternative to the iPhone and Android platforms, rebounding after a string of failures a la Bing, or flop in its attempt to catch up after “missing a cycle.”

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The long-awaited update to Windows Mobile is expected to show up on devices from Dell, HTC, Samsung and LG, so there is the possibility that an exciting handset like the Dell Lightning could rekindle interest in Microsoft’s mobile offerings.

Windows Phone 7 is designed around tasks with programs pushing information to the home screen. This “hubs” design may lessen the need for third-party apps. But Microsoft is still hoping apps can be evangelists for Phone 7, offering developers tools and an emulator last month for free. Microsoft says the tools have been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

The OS has gotten mixed reviews, including a scathing critique from InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman, who called it “a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone” and claimed it was “a platform no carrier, device maker, developer or user should bother with.” Other reviewers praised the OS for its zoomy user interface, integration with Microsoft Office, voice search and other features.

Microsoft has been agonizing over the development of the Phone 7 OS, throwing money at the launch, carefully studying how people use their phones and engineering down to the most minute details. For example, Windows Phone 7 will feature eight keypad tones, so that a user will hear slightly different clicks when typing instead of the same tone repeatedly as is the case with the iPhone.

A Windows Phone 7 preview by InfoWeek in July.

Whether the attention to detail pays off will be decided in a few months by consumers in the general public – who largely pay little attention to the OS pedigree of a phone, and can therefore be trusted to evaluate Windows Phone 7 without being biased by Microsoft’s track record.

Discuss

The company that kicked Mark Hurd to the curb for financial impropriety has today reported it’ll pay $55 million in a settlement with the US Department of Justice relating to some fiscal delinquency of its own. HP was accused of greasing up the wheels of business, as it were, by throwing cash around to companies who would recommend its services to state procurement agencies. This particular set of allegations related to a federal contract obtained by HP in 2002, and the settlement also extinguishes investigation into whether or not the computer vendor had provided incomplete information to the US government. That’s all well and good, but we have to question the size of these levies. Today’s also the day that HP’s announced a new $800 million supply contract with the US Air Force — would a fine that’s less than a tenth of the contract’s value really deter HP’s entrepreneurial spirit?

HP agrees to pay $55 million to settle investigation into illegal kickbacks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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