however, july 17th still can’t some soon enough!

so, i’m sure you’re wondering what set me off this time. many of us have heard about the outcry over facebook’s recent advertising schemes they let loose last summer/fall and then the release of their highly-acclaimed third-party applications API. if you know anything about the internet and how these applications really work behind the scenes (most people are oblivious as they are not very computer- or internet-savvy in the first place), then you will be aware of the major privacy concerns that arise out of so many people having access to your personal data. recent articles have explained how difficult it is to really delete your facebook account, and even then your data remains on their servers for an unknown period of time. even if you read facebook’s privacy policy on the matter, it remains very vague on what happens to your data and how it is used–stating that there are archived backup copies of your data when you change information or “delete” your account for a time period they fail to define.

seriously though, i don’t really care if someone reads about what’s going on in my life…it’s not all that entertaining. the thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that everything is so hidden and deceitful. if you are going to use my data, at least let me know you are rather than trying to develop conniving ways to pull it or to get me to provide more details. the third-party applications on facebook are probably the most scary facet because facebook doesn’t control how those applications use your data, and each one of them require the ability to access your data before you can install and use them. thus, i have removed all applications from my profile in favor of a more minimal interactive experience. however, that doesn’t mean i’m safe as applications my friends have installed can also access my data (um… i don’t recall to agreeing with that!). as this article points out:

“Corporations aren’t exactly sneaking into our bedrooms; we’re inviting them in. The problem is that most people who perfunctorily fill out social networking forms don’t understand the privacy risks. It’s not just the publicizing of data that endangers privacy, after all; as other analysts have articulated, it’s also the ability to search, aggregate and find uses for that data. Unlike newsfeeds and Beacon — controversial features that broadcast users’ activities to their friends — data mining by Facebook, third-party advertisers and applications is hidden. Consumers, plain and simple, are too unsophisticated to realize what can be done with their data. Besides, users may have offered up information before even Facebook realized what it could do with the data, since the company only recently developed a coherent plan for making money through advertising.”

i am a huge proponent of greater social interaction through digital technologies. but as long as the majority of us are corrupted in our desires to take advantage of that technology in order to secure our millions, then any major advancement socially will repeatedly be stifled.

the following comments are from newsvine and the source of the original (ridiculous) article and pretty much sum up how all this whining about it is completely absurd:

At the moment Apple isn’t being sued – it is more likely this is just a fanboy venting a little steam. Not to mention a lawsuit wouldn’t work anyway. Apple has no responsibility to make sure that hacks and unauthorized programs work with their updates.

Apple’s problem is this is the sort of thing expected from other companies but not Apple. Although Apple has never supported open systems, lock down their devices with DRM and has never worried about backwords compatibility they have this perception of being some enlightened, benevolent, company that can do no wrong.

Missteps like the price cut and updates that brick the phone are beginning to reveal Apple has feet of clay. Finding out your idol isn’t made of gold stings a bit.

More useless speculation. I suppose we really ought to be allowed to use toasters in the bathtub, drive cars on the grass. After all, you bought the toaster and the car – you should be able to use it wherever you want. OK – examples are not exactly the same but the argument is. If any cellphone maker makes the phone to operate in a certain way, and within certain parameters – and you change that functionality – you have every chance of bricking a device – either due to ineptness or due to the company – via updates changing settings that result in a bricked device. Witness Microsoft’s problems with Genuine Advantage, the various game system manufacturers, and so forth.

This happens with most vendors…it seems to me the fact that it is Apple has the MS waterboys frothing at the mouth. Read your Xbox EULA. Read you Windows Vista EULA.
Why was there no outrage from the tech press & MS waterboys when MS screwed their hardware partners & the people that bought a plays for sure MP3 player? What about Verizon & the LG chocolate? No one has pulled the wool over anyone eyes here. All the limitations were stated upfront. The carrier was stated upfront. You signed a contract. You made all of those decisions. Yet, Apple is supposed to support the very small percentage of people that broke the license agreement & used various hacks on the phone. How, EXACTLY do you propose that they do that? Look at the pricing structure of Vista. What a frickin’ joke. I guess you & some of your readership don’t understand what getting screwed means. Don’t like the EULA don’t buy the product. Simple. Brake the EULA you’re on your own, just like with any other product on the planet. If you don’t own the phone why would you be here whining about it? Time to grow up.

Really this issue is absurd. Apple is right and there is no claim for a lawsuit. All cell phones are linked to a certain carrier! And all iphones were bought knowing they only worked on AT&T, you cannot complain that it only works on AT&T when you knew before you bought it “hey, this only works on AT&T.” It was Apple’s choice to make deals with other companies, in this case AT&T to help them develop and carry the product. That is what they did, without that relationship the iPhone would not exist. When you buy a product that is linked to a service you use that product for that service, it is like a cable box or any other cell phone. And also when you make modifications to any product whether it be a car or a cell phone it will void your warranty, and rightfully so. Why should apple be responsible for a phone that was loaded with a program that was created by some 15 year old kid to hack it, when that program may possibly destroy the OS of the iphone, apple’s only responsibility to warranty is to their product the way they manufactured it, once you take the risk of killing it thats pn you. You are all stupid, selfish and clueless. You want apple to cater to your needs. I want an iPhone, but since I don’t have AT&T or want to switch right now, I didn’t buy an iPhone, hey that’s common sense. In a year or two hopefully apple will expand it’s carriers and then I will buy one. You bought something with full knowledge of what it does and what service carries it, you messed with it’s software and now want apple to cover warranty issues. Apple is a corporation, their goal is to make money, as a shareholder I like that goal, they recieved help making the iPhone from cingular / At&T and in return gave them exclusive rights to it for now, it’s business. This kind of thing happens all the time so stop attacking apple. It’s like buying a bumper for a mustang and then suing ford cause you can’t use it on your civic. The product was made for one use, they never misled you any other way. Use it for that use.

they also announced a major price cut for the iphone, from $600 down to $400, and doing away with the 4gb iphone. of course the price cut of one-third has pissed off some early adopters of the iphone who paid the $600 for it when it was first released. according to a nytimes article from this morning, some people have threatened to end their relationship with apple because of it. as a result of the childish outcries from those early adopters, steve jobs released an open letter stating that such customers will receive a $100 in-store credit as a result. awesome and very smart PR from his part… the $100 will most likely lead the customer to buy something more expensive in the apple store which will ultimately put apple above where they were prior to the credit offer.

my problem is with those now bitching about the drastic price drop. true it’s a price drop of one-third after the iphone has been out for only two and a half months, but face it…that’s how the technology industry is. these people seriously need to stop whining and crying over it and just deal with it. that’s the risk you take for adopting any technology when it is first released. if you were willing to pay $600 for the iphone when it was first released, then apparently money was not an issue for you at the time, so why is it now? the nytimes article points out that:

Motorola, for instance, introduced the ultrathin Razr phone for $499 with a two-year service contract in early 2005. Six months later, Motorola realized it had a hit on its hands and dropped the price to $199 in an effort to aim at more mainstream buyers. By the end of 2005, the price was $99.

so did motorola offer any sort of refund or credit after the price dropped by more than half only after 6 months? of course not…many companies wouldn’t which is why the credit offer from apple is a smart move. just suck it up and deal with your loss already, and if you want to end your relationship with apple over something as stupid as this then please do so as we don’t want you to be associated with the apple community!

all of those people who claimed weeks and months prior to the release that the iphone was going to miserably fail, i bet they are eating their words and looking like idiots now (well, they probably did before). now they are the same people trying to find the stupidest, most miniscule issue they have with it, such as the people that had issues with activation. they failed to mentioned that a mere 2-3% of people were unable to activate their iphones immediately. but hell, when you have over half a million people hitting your servers across two days with credit checks and activations, there are going to be server issues!

the iphone is amazing, but this is probably the only thing that sucks about it:

it has absolutely brought out the worst in people, which is pretty pathetic and disgusting. many of those people who stood in line last friday bought two iphones and then quickly jumped on ebay to sell them for outrageous prices (recall the same thing happened with recent gaming consoles). ebay has suddenly become modern day’s “get rich quick” scheme. it’s funny though because it appears apple planned for something like this and the huge demand for the iphone that most stores were overstocked so they wouldn’t run out. these ebayers’ auctions are thankfully failing since the stock and availability is so high.

anyway, if anyone is willing to pay that much for a damn device, then they deserver to get ripped off. disturbing nevertheless.

this topic follows much of the research i have been doing for a couple of years now, so i’m definitely excited to see it become more mainstream. here are some videos demonstrating how awesome this type of interaction truly is:

perceptive pixel (some of the developers behind the technology)
ted talks: jeff han
jeff han again
popular mechanics: microsoft surface

this notion is referred to as ubiquitous, or pervasive, computing–the idea that digital technologies and computers embed themselves into our physical environments for us to interact with them on a more natural level beyond a mouse and a keyboard though gestures and speech-recognition. also, tagging becomes important which is similar to the idea of tagging on the internet today. for example, flickr is a prime example in which you can tag a photo with relative words that allows for easier, more efficient searching and findability. you can even tag a photo with its exact GPS location (latitude and longitude) in order to plot that location on a map. soon, RFID tagging will perform much of the same functionality… allowing all of our everyday objects to be searched for and located more efficiently and much more quickly.

the beginning of this is taking place already, especially in eastern asia where the technology is more advanced than here in the states. an article in the nytimes this morning, ‘new barcodes can talk with your cellphone‘, described a new type of barcode that can be read by software on your cellphone simply by taking a photo of it:

In much the same way that Web publishing took off because of the ability to link to other people’s sites, cellphone technologies linking everyday objects with the Web would reveal the digitally encoded attributes of tangible things on grocery shelves or newsstands…
The most promising way to link cellphones with physical objects is a new generation of bar codes: square-shaped mosaics of black and white boxes that can hold much more information than traditional bar codes. The cameras on cellphones scan the codes, and then the codes are translated into videos, music or text on the phone screens.

such barcodes will essentially become ‘physical hyperlinks’ that function similarly to hyperlinks on web pages… linking you to additional information related to a word or phrase. the primary challenge, of course, is developing the technology in order to be useful and functional so that people will have a need for it and thus adopt it. additionally, it should not interfere with how we normally perform on a daily basis nor should it be more of a burden to use.

most of the details have already bee revealed about adobe’s huge upgrade of its cs3 line of content creation software, except for the pricing. a day before adobe’s official rollout on march 27, now amazon has spilled the beans on the adobe creative suite cs3 and all of its iterations, offering pre-order pages for the dizzying array of combinations in which you can buy adobe’s full lineup.

on amazon, pricing in full details of each version of the software is listed as follows: adobe creative suite cs3 web premium will be $1599, adobe creative suite cs3 master collection is $2499, adobe creative suite cs3 production premium goes for $1199 and adobe creative suite cs3 design premium will be $1599. take a look at a table showing which bundle contains which applications, along with their gorgeous new boxes and amazon’s quoted ship dates, after the jump.

view the packages chart to see what’s included in them. also be sure to check out the awesome new packaging for each application!

of course, adobe is trying to get you to buy all of its software together in huge boxes, but you’ll still be able to pick up stand-alone versions of your favorites in cs3 trim such as photoshop, premiere pro (to be available for intel mac), illustrator, after effects, and more.

wandering around the amazon leakage, you can see that most of these software bundles will be available april 20, but it looks like if you want the full boat master collection, or premiere pro, soundbooth, or encore, you’ll have to wait until july 1.

adobe says this is the largest software upgrade in its history, and the company even goes so far as to say it’s the largest software rollout in the history of all software. good gawd. looking at the master collection, there are 21 software applications!

for myself… i know it will definitely be at least the cs3 design premium bundle, though the master collection does look extremely nice as well as i begin to work more with video and audio editing!

(AppleInsider.com)