Miscellaneous

McCain "Twitterview" not a journalistic high point

ABC's George Stephanopoulos is an excellent reporter and Senator John McCain has given some great interviews. But while yesterday's " twitterview" may have been a watershed moment for Twitter, it was far from a high point for either journalism or politics.

After reading a transcript of the interview, I have to question whether the 140 character format makes any sense as an interview technique, especially when dealing with life and death questions such as "What worries you more: Pakistan or Iran?" to which Senator McCain responded, "Both. The challenges are different but both significant.&… Read more

Open-source mobile software to save lives

It won't grab headlines like the newest version of the iPhone operating system, but a Palo Alto, Calif., nonprofit today announced a suite of open-source applications that aids in communications and collaboration for humanitarian workers dealing with diseases and disasters.

InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) has released three applications to empower aid workers to use inexpensive, off-the-shelf mobile phones to better detect and respond to disasters, diseases, and economic catastrophes.

The organization currently runs projects in Southeast Asia, including the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance project and the Phnom Penh Innovation Lab.

One of the new programs, … Read more

PBwiki goes mobile on iPhone, BlackBerry

PBwiki on Tuesday announced the mobile optimization of its hosted wiki service for its Professional and Professional Plus Edition subscription clients.

PBwiki, which hosts, among other wiki services, Twitter's API docs, FedEx's marketing extranet, and the BarCamp wiki, has now made its wiki interface more readable, when surfed to from the browser of an Apple iPhone or Research In Motion BlackBerry.

PBwiki's Mobile Edition lets visitors to PBwiki's Web site participate most of ways from the field as they can from the desktop, with the exception of editing an existing page. It's a shame that … Read more

Systems go for Sunday Shuttle Discovery launch

Update at 4:44 PDT: Space Shuttle Discovery has successfully lifted off as scheduled.

If the weather cooperates--and forecasters predict that it will--Space Shuttle Discovery will take off for the International Space Station on Sunday evening. A hydrogen gas leak delayed a planned launch last week.

NASA said blastoff is scheduled for 7:43 p.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Commander Lee Archambault is set to lead a crew of seven on the STS-119 mission, which is aimed at installing the fourth and final set of power-generating solar arrays to the ISS. The arrays will provide electricity … Read more

USB prosthetic finger gives new meaning to thumbdrives

This is a story about Jerry Jalava, a Finnish software developer who lost part of his finger in a motorcycle accident last July. According to his friend, Henri Bergius, when the surgeon assigned to work on Jalava's prosthetic finger discovered his hacking history, he made a clever suggestion: incorporate a USB key into the new digit.

The prosthetic finger contains a 2GB USB key, and Jalava also loaded it with Billix distribution, CouchDBX, and Ajatus to run off the drive, throwing even more geek cred into the mix.

When Jalava needs the drive, he simply pulls it off his … Read more

Mobile OS wars: Symbian leads globally; Mac OS X surges

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Gartner has tallied the global smartphone sales by operating system, and the results put Symbian as the top dog with market share of 47.1 percent with RIM's BlackBerry OS a distant second at 19.5 percent.

Here's a look at the figures for the fourth quarter:

And 2008:

The statistics are a very relevant followup to my post on Wednesday trying to sort out what platforms developers will ultimately pick. After all, each of these platforms will have marketplaces and there are only so many developers. And … Read more

Podcast: Chat with the voice behind Google Voice

In 2007, Google acquired GrandCentral and just re-launched it as Google Voice. The service, which gives users an incoming number that can be forwarded to as many as six phones, allows you to screen calls and record them, and transcribes your voice mail into e-mail and text messages. I spoke with GrandCentral co-founder and now Google executive Craig Walker about the service's features as well privacy issues and whether Google will ever make any money from it.

Internet not to blame for terrorism

A new report from the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence is yet another indication that the Internet is not the main culprit for society's woes. The report, "Countering Online Radicalization: A Strategy for Action," debunks the myth that the Internet is a major recruiting and training tool for extremists and would-be terrorists. The report focuses primarily on the United Kingdom but has implications for the United States and elsewhere.

The authors found "little evidence to support the contention that the Internet plays a dominant role in the process of radicalization.&… Read more

Microsoft details app store plans

Microsoft on Wednesday is offering up more details on its would-be rival to the iPhone's app store.

The software maker said it will charge developers $99 a year, plus $99 for each application they submit to get an app into the Windows Marketplace store. Through the end of this year, though, developers who register will be able to submit five applications at no additional charge.

The software maker defended the charge: "Microsoft will run a rigorous certification process to ensure that the end user's experience is optimal, and that the device and network resources aren't used … Read more