Apple just announced on the front page of the iPhone development site, that they have decided to discontinue the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that has prevented developers from speaking openly about programming on the iPhone.
Apple says “the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software.”
Apple will issue a new agreement to any developers who previously released software that will not contain any NDA clauses. This will help the piles of books that are waiting to get published, on the best and most proper way for aspiring developers to program applications on the iPhone. You should expect to see plenty of new and innovative applications coming out in the future now that there is open collaboration.
This is a major step for apple and one that I commend them on. Guess all that nagging actually worked guys! Wonder if it had anything to do with the gPhone having no NDA!
We have all unfortunately been the victims of political lies and manipulation. Seems like every promise made by someone running for office nowadays, ends up a lie almost the day after elected. Even during this latest USA Presidential elections, I find myself switching back and forth as to whom I should vote for. Almost every morning one of the candidates says something that is so dumb it forces me to vote for the other. Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell when the candidates or anyone for that matter are lying?
A new startup called RealScoop hopes to help the world figure out when people are lying. RealScoop uses voice analysis technology which is utilized often in different arms of law enforcement, and government agencies, as well as for Insurance Fraud. Most voice analysis programs work in real time, which helps when trying to catch lies when watching someone speak live. Their technologically advanced products analyzes over a hundred different vocal elements when someone is speaking. It performs microsecond calculations to find out if someone is telling the truth. Traditionally, Voice Analysis measures the slight inaudible fluctuations in the voice known as micro-tremors. When someone speaks into a microphone or some other form of analysis equipment, the micro-tremors will let off patterns that indicate when the person speaking delivers the words under stress.
This Tuesday September 30th, RealScoop will be covering the Vice Presidential debate and will be calculating in real time which of the candidates is lying about what they say. This will not be a good time for Biden or Palin to tell a fib.
Although this technology is currently in use, there is still very little scientific evidence to support the idea that voice-stress technologies can consistently detect lies. High levels of stress do not correlate with deception. Should be interesting on Tuesday.
Having been down for the better part of a month, Muxtape’s creator, Justin Ouellette, has announced that the service is springing back to life, albeit with an entirely new direction.
In his post, Ouellette chronicles his experience dealing with ambivalent record labels that simultaneously sought to shut him down and broker a business deal, as well as the suspension of his account by Amazon Web Services after receiving a complaint lodged by the RIAA, seemingly operating autonomously of the labels he was in talks with.
As a result of all this drama, Ouellette has elected to cut ties with the labels altogether for the moment and is poised to reposition Muxtape as a distribution platform for bands, with the altruistic goal of, “offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet.” Good luck.
Disqus, you have made me proud by launching a full public API. The details can be found here. If you read my previous post about the Automattic acquisition of IntenseDebate, you will notice I am a big fan of Disqus, and use it on several sites.
This move comes right after many started to lose hope for the commenting service. By opening their API to the public, Disqus has proved they will not just sit still while WordPress moves to have their own commenting system. Disqus has now made it possible that commenting can go mainstream into many sites that otherwise might have not found use for it by allowing developers to custom make tools that work on Disqus.
The API itself isn’t totally new, it has actually been working as a plugin with WordPress, and instead of having javascript to deliver the commenting it used an API. On their Blog, Disqus says that “The methods provided are enough to let you write your own comment import tools, export tools, or even a custom Disqus plugin for your platform.”
Personally I am psyched to see Disqus stay ahead of the curve. It is exciting to think what great tools and applications will be made using their new API. I will cover them as they happen!
Wordpress, which is easily the number 1 or 2 blog platform on the worldwide web made by Automattic, has announced today that they have acquired the third party comment service IntenseDebate. IntenseDebate competes with such services as SezWho, JS-Kit and Disqus (which we use on Rev2).
It could easily be assumed that by offering IntenseDebate on the WordPress platform, IntenseDebate will quickly become the number one used comment service on the web. During the development stage, IntenseDebate will head back into Private Beta, but their current users will still be able to use it. 
Anyone who uses WordPress has obviously noticed the lack of an interactive commenting system. Disqus is a great service and makes the commenting much more friendly. This could be a huge blow to Disqus, as most users of WordPress will most likely use a commenting service built into their blogs without having to install additional code. One thing Disqus has going for it, is the comments you currently have on your site will not transfer over, so it would seem unlikely current users will switch.
The new commenting features will most likely be released during WordPress 2.7 and will include some of IntenseDebate’s enhanced features automatically, including threaded commenting, and voting. The service will also unveil a plugin that easily integrates the rest of their other features, like aggregated commenting across multiple blogs.
To add to all our excitement today, Twitter finally redesigned parts of the site. The extremely popular microblogging site made the move, as they have numerous new features they will unveil soon and there wasn’t enough room on the site to hold them. Although they have not revealed what these new features are, I am sure they will be awesome. The new change is strictly an aesthetic one.
One of the most noticeable changes to the interface is the smaller tabs that were annoyingly placed on the top, have been moved to the right sidebar, which makes them much easier to notice.
In an attempt to speep up the site, they blended in AJAX calls to the database, this will help reduce the number of manual refreshes that are needed when members are trying to reload information. A feature I really like it is the profile editor. You are now able to close from a number of color choices and make your background and other designs blend in.
A new startup called BillShrink that is quite similar to LowerMyBills, has announced that they will now help their users cut costs on their Credit Cards, using their automated advisor. Prior to helping with Credit Cards, billshrink mostly helped users save money on phone bills. Their free advisor engine would analyze a cell phone bill and plan, and then monitor the usage and make suggestions for lowering costs.
Using billshrink’s new feature, users can find the best match in a credit card. It is almost like a matchmaking service for finding love in a credit card. Afer deciding which kind of card is right, a user enters in the amount that they usually spend in a month. Once Billshrink has gathered a good amount of data about your usage, they provide a list of the best credit card matches, and shows with is the most compatible for your spending habits. Billshrink monitors the card and if a more cost effective card comes out, or perhaps a fee is changed, they will notify their users. They do not stop there, Billshrink also keeps abreast on promotions, rewards programs and other features credit cards offer, making new recommendations along the way to help the consumer save money.
BillShrink is run by Peter Pham, who once worked at Photobucket.
Dopplr, the social network based upon traveling just announced they have raised new funds with a group of names that could make anyone jealous. This is their second round of financing. Although the details of this new round have yet to be disclosed, it appears the latest infusion of capital will be used to grow their service outside of just their dominant presence in the Euorpean
Market. Dopplr currently has users from 190 different countries, of which most made more then 10 trips in the last year.
The new investors include Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé, Thomas Glocer, Yat Siu, Aditya dev Sood, Lars Hinrichs, Joshua Schachter, Brian Behlendorf, Ami Hasan, Daniel Sachs, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Kim Weckström, and Azeem Azhar. Saul Klein, who invested in this round, also invested in the previous round together with Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman and Joichi Ito.
Dopplr has been an excellent site if you like going to the top travel destinations around the world. If you are someone like me who likes to take impromptu trips to lesser traveled destinations, Dopplr doesn’t seem to cover them. Hopefully they will add numerous destinations and make this the goto site for travels anywhere in the world.
It has been almost a week since I started messing around with the new Chrome Browser from Google at home. Would love to use it from work, but I have a Mac. One of the most relevant questions I had to ask myself was, could this be the end of URL’s?
Google refers to the new URL area on Chrome as an Omnibox, which is nothing more then a search field. This search field basically takes over as the address bar. The more and more I kept using Chrome, I realized that it had been days since I had to manually enter a URL into the address bar area. Most of the sites I needed, and recently visited, were already on the main page. When I actually did have to enter in a URL, Google almost completed every word I was looking for.
Will people necessarily care about the domain names they are purchasing anymore, or will any name suffice as Chrome will complete it anyways. If my living was based upon buying and selling premium domain names, I might want to consider having a back up plan.
Many publications have recently started to place bar codes in their ads which enable readers with certain software (iPhone has apps like scanlife for example) to take a photo of the bar code and be directed to the website. Once again, this diminishes the need for a premium name, since most visitors will not even notice the name of the site they have landed on.
It is not my belief that URL’s will disappear and be totally irrelevant. As newer technologies are introduced, I feel they will not play such a dominant role in the marketing of a company. Soon we will see the days of paying millions for premium domain names in the same light as paying $300 a share for CMGI back in the day.
To give an analogy: Remember a time, you actually had to memorize a phone number to dial a friend? Then a thing called a phonebook on your mobile phone suddenly appeared, and now you just click their name and you are connected. URL’s might meet a similar fate.
For those of you who do not find enough Alien Sightings on Digg, Reddit, or Mixx, your wishes have come true. Alien UFO Believers is a social-blog site that allows its users to vote up stories about UFOs that they believe are real. This is a conspiracy theorists dream of a site.
Users can see UFO photos, videos, actual encounter stories, and other forms of speculation. The other users will decide whether the stories are real or fake, in the same manner that they vote up or down a Digg story. Although most of us would laugh at an idea like this, and wonder…do we really need another social site just for aliens? The answer might seem like no, but aliens and UFO sightings have been on the top of news 
reports for over a century. Believers and skeptics alike will look for these type of stories to claim they are real and fake. As many people believe in them, are as many people who would like to prove the sightings are fake. Now they have a destination on the web to do so.
There is no better a format then a voting one, to show if the public believes or disbelieves a sighting. You cover up theorists will find others just like you here. This is not to say the site will make it or break it, since the idea of a site just for UFOs is a vague one at best, but stranger sites have worked.
So here’s my problem: I have a bad memory. A really bad one. If you asked me what happened five hours ago, I couldn’t tell you to save my wallet, let alone day, week, month, year. I forget fast, and the pictures I take on occasional trips and my daily tweets are not enough for me to catalog my life. I can feel the ten-year-later Sid hating himself for not preserving the events, moments, and actions which surrounded his life in 2008.
