Open webOS Beta Is Here!

Open webOS August Edition

Today’s release provides— not one— but two build environments.

Our desktop build provides the ideal development environment for enhancing the webOS user experience with new features and integrating state of the art open source technologies. Developers can now use all their desktop tools on powerful development machines.

Our OpenEmbedded build provides the ideal development environment for porting webOS to new and exciting devices.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

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Turn TV Shows Into eBooks!

You don’t know what it was like to be a geek in the 1970s.

There was no VCR and what we liked wasn’t taken seriously by those who produced things. It was rare to come across professionally-published things outside of a few cheap magazines (Famous Monsters of Filmland).

Some fanzines managed to get good quality still photos, like Cinefantastique. But on the whole, photos were rare and scripts were even rarer.

Then Richard J. Anobile came along and made every geek go WOW!

Twitter Sockpuppets Attack Writer Jeremy Duns As Spam

.@jeremyduns has been suspended again, confirmed on his FB. He has no authorised apps or obvious spam messages from his account.

— Steve Mosby (@stevemosby) August 27, 2012

Writer Jeremy Duns just had his Twitter account reinstated a few hours ago and now it’s been suspended again.

I know exactly what’s going here.

You know all those fake Followers you can buy?

You can also buy a Twitter Army to mark someone as Spam.

Samsung’s Very Odd Galaxy Player 5.8

Samsung unveils Galaxy Player 5.8, pockets everywhere brace for impact

I was initially excited to see this but the more I thought about it, the odder a duck this device is.

So How Exactly Does This Happen?

6:57 PM – 22 Aug 12 (12 Followers):
https://twitter.com/Sauhochi/status/238409654634414080

8:51 AM – 23 Aug 12 (30 Followers):
https://twitter.com/Rozellavljzv/status/238619476919218178

12:04 PM – 24 Aug 12 (49 Followers):
https://twitter.com/Christian_723/status/239030471080677376

1:36 PM – 24 Aug 12 (9 Followers):
https://twitter.com/Pingrzuxh/status/239053575563649024

Fraud All The Way Down In eBooks

New York Times: The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy

In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.

There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.

A polite fellow with a rakish goatee and an entrepreneurial bent, Mr. Rutherford has been on the edges of publishing for most of his career. Before working for the self-publishing house, he owned a distributor of inspirational books. Before that, he was sales manager for a religious publishing house. Nothing ever quite worked out as well as he hoped. With the reviews business, though, “it was like I hit the mother lode.”

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

I wonder if it turns out that there’s more money in selling reviews than in self-publishing.

— Baldur Bjarnason (@fakebaldur) August 26, 2012

The Longest Six Seconds Of Their Lives

People on Twitter are criticizing the hell out of the NYPD for the Friday shootout in front of the Empire State Building that left nine people wounded by police bullets or ricocheting fragments.

I have criticized the hell out of the NYPD for the way it has treated the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Today I’m put in the weird position of defending the NYPD.

Did any of you see the fifteen-second surveillance footage that was released?

Let me show you some screensnaps from it.

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong, Astronaut

Life magazine, August 8, 1969 at Google Books.

Will Apple-Samsung Affect Open webOS?

How Drudge screamed the verdict.

Coverage is all over, so I won’t link to anything specific.

My one question is: How will this affect Open webOS?

A Harrowing Pre-DMCA Story From Wayne Green

Wayne Green was one of the early pioneers of microcomputing (before it was even called desktop computing) and one of the several magazines he published was called Byte.

Wayne has moved on to other interests but he has a blog too.

In his entry for 7/2/12, titled Shack (there is no direct link so search for that word), he relates a tale of Copyright terrorism well before the days of the DMCA.