forgetfoo.

well, it looks like even the might Apple is getting into the fun with some "Black Friday" sales -- but naturally, it's all in the details, as the operative phrase here is "up to"... which can mean anything and probably will just disappoint people going to an Apple store looking for a good deal.

personally, if they really were having a kickass black friday sale and i could walk in and get a new 27" iMac for 25% off... yeah, i'd be sorely tempted that's for damn sure.

not gonna happen, though. damnit.

p.s. Apple's Mistake

well it looks like everybody's talking and tweet'n about the first peek at google's Chrome OS, but i have to say... feeling pretty damn underwhelmed looking at it -- sure seems like it's just the Chrome browser maximized, but i guess that's the point. *yawn*

here's some tech speek from the google guys about it:

"In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications. That gives us simplicity. It's just a browser with a few modifications. And all data is Chrome OS is in the cloud."

so will google be paying for everybody to have internet access at all times?

p.s. Mozilla not interested in building a Firefox OS

AT&T 'hits' back at Verizon's Map for That campaign with an 'ad' of its own

have to admit, that's pretty awesome... *chuckle*

i don't care what they say, you simply can't have enough bacon in this world... and now they've gone and combined the two best smelling, tasty things in the world together -- bacon and popcorn, baby!

actually, i typically can't fucking stand the smell of popcorn... some of the guys nuke a bag of it everyday like clockwork, and the smell drives me knucking futz.

only time i don't seem to mind is when i step into a movie theater... go figure.

p.s. Movie popcorn = 3 burgers + 12 pats of butter

(hat tip: adam)

An Early Look At IE9 for Developers

We're just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer 9.

At the PDC today, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do today. Web site developers will see performance gains and other benefits without having to re-write their sites.

Performance Progress. Browser performance involves many different sub-systems within the browser. Different sites – and different activities within the same site – place different loads and demands on the browser.

so it looks like IE9 has officially been announced – moves rendering to the GPU for huge speed boost.

still sucks at everything else.

CNET UK's games console reliability survey: 60 per cent of Xbox 360s have broken

Sixty per cent of Xbox 360s have kicked the red-ringed bucket, compared to 16 per cent of PS3s and just 6 per cent of Wiis, according to our survey on the reliability of games consoles in the UK.

CNET UK commissioned the survey last month -- and the results don't reflect well on the Microsoft console. Some 1,128 UK-based console owners responded, of whom 562 owned Xbox 360s, 473 owned PS3s and 591 had Wiis (some owned more than one).

Of those Xbox owners who have bought their Xbox since January 2008, 34 per cent report that their Xboxes have broken -- still double the lifetime failure rate of the PS3. Microsoft introduced new components in late 2007 and early 2008, when Bill Gates boasted of the Xbox's newfound "incredible reliability". Our survey shows that while the console has improved, it's still far from reaching Gates' goal of being the "most reliable video game box out there".

Only 25 per cent of disappointed 360 owners had owned the console for more than 18 months before it broke, with 47 per cent reporting a failure inside a year. Seventy two per cent returned their Xbox to Microsoft, who extended the 360's warranty to three years after the console's problems became widely known. Fifteen per cent sought their own solution, such as repairing it themselves or giving up and throwing it under a bed. One miserable gamer reported, "I can't afford to get (the Xbox 360) fixed as it is out of warranty, so it sits in the spare room all lonely."

Many 360 owners report the console breaking more than once. Of those whose console has broken at least once, 32 per cent say it has broken twice, and 19 per cent say it has broken three times or more. One person said their 360 "was repaired six times before (being) refunded by Microsoft".

Of those who have bought a 360 in the last two years, only for it to break, 29 per cent say it has broken more than once.

holy shit, batman!

i love my 360, and even though i've been on my second one for almost a year now, i have to say that the failure rate is beyond rediculous... 60%? seriously?! i'm not sure i even know anybody that hasn't had the dreaded "red ring of death" at least once.

whenever the next version of the Xbox comes out, i think i'll hold off for awhile and keep an eye on user reviews before buying one... i'll be damned if i'm going to be a guinea pig.

A Brave New Web Will Be Here Soon, But Browsers Must Improve

The great promise of HTML5 is that it will turn the web into a full-fledged computing platform awash with video, animation and real-time interactions, yet free of the hacks and plug-ins common today.

While the language itself is almost fully baked, HTML5 won’t fully arrive for at least another two years, according to one of the men charged with its design.
"I don't expect to see full implementation of HTML5 across all the major browsers until the end of 2011 at least," says Philippe Le Hegaret, interaction domain leader for the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), who oversees the development of HTML5.

He tells Webmonkey the specification outlining the long-promised rewrite of the web's underlying language will be ready towards the end of 2010, but because of varying levels of support across different browsers, especially in the areas of video and animation, we're in for a longer wait.

Most web pages are currently written in HTML version HTML 4.01, which has been around since the late 1990s. The web was mostly made up of static pages when HTML was born, and it has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Now, we favor complex web applications written in JavaScript like Gmail and Facebook, we stream videos in high-definition, we consume news in real-time feeds and generally push our browsers as far as they'll go. These developments have left HTML drastically outdated, and web authors have resorted to using a variety of hacks and plug-ins to make everything work properly.

HTML5 — which is actually a combination of languages, APIs and other technologies to make scripted applications more powerful — promises to solve many of the problems of its predecessor, and do so without the hacks and plug-ins.

We're already close. All the major browsers are providing some level of support for HTML5.

i haven't really gotten too much into HTML5, since there's almost no practical support for it among browsers......... yet....... but i'm sure over the next year or two we'll get some big(er) updates from IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari and then we'll be able to start safely playing around with it... should be fun.

Joanna Krupa and Derek Hough eliminated from 'Dancing with the Stars'

i readily admit to watching some Dancing with the Stars this season, mostly because i'm a fan of Joanna Krupa (hottest polish ass in the world)... and man, i'm kind of bummed out that she was eliminated lastnight... *sigh*

on the flipside, for the first time in ages i'm actually stoked and looking forward to an issue of Playboy, since she'll be gracing it's cover in this december's issue. oh. yeah.

hey man, APIs can be sexy too, right? APIs in the late afternoon...

We talked about what is a real api, and I seconded our friend Joshua Schachter's assertion that a read-only api is not an api. I believe apis should allow full read/write access and the ideal api in my mind totally replicates the web app's functionality.

That led us to Twitter naturally and I stated that the thing I want most from the Twitter api is sign up via the api. I realize that there are reasons why that hasn't happened yet, but I feel that Twitter has led the web world in providing full access to its application and sign up is a key feature that third party developers could do great things with.

Quentin seized the opportunity to pounce on the monetization question and I stated my belief that the best way to monetize apis is to "send money with the api". I talked everyone through my Business Model Jujutsu post and ended with this line from Paul Forster, CEO of Indeed:

We tried charging for our API without much success. Then we paid developers to use it and it took off.

We also talked about "api failures". I said that there are two kinds of api failures that I've noticed. The first is when the web app itself is not very popular and therefore developers aren't compelled to build to its api. That is not an issue with the api itself. The second is when the web app itself is very popular but the api is not so much. Usually the issue in this situation is the api is too restrictive and doesn't allow developers to do enough with it. I mentioned the Etsy api, which is read only, as an example of this situation. Fortunately, Chad Dickerson of Etsy, had preceded me at the event by a few hours and talked about how Etsy is taking their api to the next level by offering both read and write.

i just thought it was an interesting read, being that you don't often see people writting or blogging about APIs.

"Twilf" Enters the Twitter Vernacular [VIDEO]

Current TV is coming under some fire for using the term "Twilf" to describe former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in an episode of the cartoon Super News called "The Stupid Virus."

The episode features Palin writing tweets on her computer under the Twitterhandle "Gun-Ho," and Brian Williams of NBC reporting the story with the "Twilf" graphic (and also joking about how tweets are now news). Palin recently suggested on Facebook that she plans to return to Twitter to coincide with the launch of her new book.

please feel free to kill the person that came up with this...

p.s. what the hell is a "soft shoulder"?

Obama: I'm Too Clumsy for Twitter

Speaking to a group of Chinese students in Shanghai, US President Barack Obama said he'd never used Twitter because he's too clumsy to type on the phone.

The question he was asked, however, was far more important than his typing skills. In China, many of the services we use everyday – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace – are either heavily censored or completely blocked. One of the Shanghai students asked Obama “Should we be able to use Twitter freely?”

“Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone,” Obama replied. Fair enough, although as an avid BlackBerry user, he should be able to use Twitter without problems; we reckon lack of time is to blame rather than typing problems.

He continued, however, with a short lesson on the importance of freedom of speech:

"I should be honest, as president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. But because in the United States, information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear."

Speaking to an auditorium of hand-picked students, in a country that also happens to be one of the world's biggest markets and US trading partners, Obama was probably careful to criticize the Chinese government too vehemently. But even this cautious answer was clear enough: Twitter is an important communication channel, and censoring or blocking it is wrong. We wonder when the Chinese government will realize the same.

so you mean to tell me that Obama hasn't actually been the one twittering for the last 2-3 years? omg.

well, at least we know that he's a rockstar when it comes to reading the teleprompter ;)

here are some pretty sweet illustrations of spider-man, who's one of those super heroes that's just hard not to like... i mean seriously, do you know anybody that doesn't like spidey?