Top Items:
Fraser Speirs:
App Store: I'm out. — I will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted*. — Writing software is a serious investment of time and energy. It also carries the opportunity cost of the other things you could have built. We live in a capitalist economy.
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Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Why iPhone is an ureliable platform — It's pretty simple, Apple could decide not to approve the app, and if they don't approve it you can't sell it. You can't even give it away. You don't find out if you've been approved until the last step, after you've fully invested, which you could lose, totally, if Apple says no.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The App Store's Exclusionary Policies — Fraser Speirs, developer of Exposure, the excellent Flickr client for the iPhone, has written an insightful piece regarding today's news that Apple rejected the iPhone podcast client Podcaster on the grounds that “since Podcaster assists in the distribution …
Discussion:
Connecting the Dots, O'Reilly Digital Media Blog, Big in Japan, Slashdot and Geek News Central
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Apple to iPhone Developers: Don't Compete With Us? — If Apple really won't allow apps that resemble its own onto the iPhone, it's terrible news for everybody. Including Apple.
Joe Nocera / New York Times:
Stuck in Google's Doghouse — A few days ago, Dan Savage had his lawyer send a nine-page, 4,000-word letter to the antitrust division of the Justice Department. Mr. Savage, 59, runs Sourcetool.com, a business-to-business Web site that acts as a directory, listing — and ranking …
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Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
Google: Monopoly or marketplace? — Joe Nocera tells a cautionary tale in today's NY Times about Google's power in advertising. The man who runs Sourcetool.com complained to the Justice Department after Google found that his site didn't live up to its standards and raised the rates on him …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Spore: Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM — Spore was without doubt the most anticipated game of the year. The game itself has blown away the people who have played it, but the DRM encouraged thousands to get their copy illegally. Already Spore has been downloaded more than 500,000 times …
RELATED:
Forbes:Spore's Piracy Problem
Discussion:
Mashable!, Kotaku, Lockergnome, Slashdot, Silicon Alley Insider, Maximum PC all and Digg
Jeff Wang / Sproutly:
HOW MUCH MONEY DOES IT TAKE TO BE A TECHCRUNCH50 FINALIST? — The answer is the zero, of course! Any company with a compelling enough idea can be chosen to present. However, financing plays factor into how well a company performs. Over the previous decade, the amount of money it takes …
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Search engine Cuil is valued at absurdly high level of $200M, despite flop — Investors valued the new search engine company Cuil at a stratospheric level of $200 million post-money in December, during the company's second round of funding before the search engine launched.
Joe Sharkey / New York Times:
Internet in the Sky: Surf but Don't Call — “THE nice thing about a long-haul flight is you've got time to do a lot of different things,” said Jack Blumenstein, the chief executive of Aircell. — True. You can read. You can watch the movie or, on a few airlines, enjoy live satellite television.
Discussion:
VoIP Watch
Justin Berka / Infinite Loop:
Apple re-releases iTunes 8 to fix Vista crash — Almost as soon as iTunes 8 was released, Windows Vista users began reporting that the software was causing a “blue screen of death” whenever an iPod or iPhone was connected. As you might expect, folks weren't happy with the new software crashing …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Should Apple join new video ecosystem? — The digital films and TV shows available to consumers now are shackled by numerous DRM schemes. A new consortium of entertainment, software, and retail companies wants to enable consumers to download any digital media from any Web store and enjoy it on any player.
