By Yvette Wohn
Opening the refrigerator to get some eggs for breakfast, I was surprised to find a strange apparatus built into one of the shelves.
“What the…”
“It’s a power juicer,” the refrigerator said, “I know you like fruit, so I decided to install this last night.”
“Wow, that’s very considerate of you, but I already have a [...]

A few weeks ago, Google and T-Mobile rolled out the G1, the first mobile phone to run the open-source Android operating system. As the Android platform and Android Marketplace develop, it will be interesting to see how they compare to the iPhone platform and the App Store. Will the openness provide the benefits [...]

By Yvette Wohn
After much anticipation and fanfare, the Android made a wobbly debut. A security flaw was discovered just days after it was released and users discovered some fine print that gives Google more power than originally anticipated. Despite these problems, critics are still optimistic about the Android because it encourages generativity.
Android is an open sourced [...]

By Yvette Wohn
The Wii game console is a perfect example of what the book describes as tethered technology. In designing the architecture of the Wii, Nintendo did not want users to use the Wii for purposes other than playing Wii games. It took a step even further, creating different regional and country codes and segmenting [...]

The iPhone has come some way since the days when Steve Jobs pledged that Apple would “define everything that is on the phone.”  Yet even with a software development kit allowing for outside coding, Apple reserves the right to … define everything that is on the phone.  Application makers submit their apps for Apple’s approval, [...]

One of the more contestable claims of the FOI book is that tethered information appliances like the iPhone, that either block outside apps or subject them to much more gatekeeping by the platform vendor, will not only complement the more open PC, but overtake it — that PCs themselves will become appliancized.
Already there’s talk of [...]

In 2006, two guys from India came up with Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game that took off only after it was transformed from a standalone Web site into a Facebook app.  Hasbro, holder of the Scrabble trademark in North America, noticed, as did Mattel, holder of rights elsewhere, and asked them to take it down.  They [...]

Macworld is reporting that some iPhone application developers are having a difficult time adjusting to having to distribute their software only through Apple.  They’re apparently too afraid to go on the record (!), but:
As developers update their applications — including bug fixes — it can take up to a week for a new version to [...]

Techcrunch is reporting that Facebook has poached Elliot Schrage from Google as its new VP of Communications and Public Policy, and that one of Elliot’s jobs will be to manage the Facebook development platform, where outsiders can write code to run on Facebook — from the bitten-by-a-vampire app to Scrabulous.
Techcrunch speculates that this reflects a [...]

The Silicon Alley insider is reporting that would-be iPhone application developers — at least those who aren’t well connected — can be waiting up to six months to be accepted into the Apple iPhone developers’ program.