As Phones Do More, They Become Targets of Hacking. The NY Times observes that as computing — and especially commerce — moves onto mobile devices, security threats are growing. “It feels a lot like it did in 1999 in desktop security … People are using the mobile Web and downloading applications more than ever before, […]

Apple’s Game-Changer, Downloading Now. Long NY Times article on Apple’s App Store and how it’s changed the model of what a smartphone should be. The good parts of the article: interesting data (100K apps for the iPhone, 14K for Android, 500 (!) for PalmOS; $1B a year in iPhone app sales), some valuable musings on […]

Here’s a roundup of some interesting stories published recently on generativity, tethered devices, and as always, the iPhone. Generative Irrelevancy. Tim Sturgill considers Google’s video touting Chrome OS. He worries that it may be the “final nail…in the generative coffin,” but he also sees the virtue of moving beyond traditional OSes. See also JZ’s take […]

Three great articles with themes and variations on FOI ideas: Joe Hewitt, Facebook’s iPhone app developer, has quit developing for the iPhone because he is “philosophically opposed” to Apple’s review policies and their tight control over their platform. But instead of hitching his wagon to Android or some other mobile platform, he’s decided to focus […]

“The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous ‘Great Firewall of China’ is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.” That’s it.  Its presence on a poster advertising the OpenNet Initiative’s academic book Access Controlled was enough to deem it prohibited by UN security forces […]