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, […]

document.domain = “futureoftheinternet.org”;The makers of Scrabulous have apparently relaunched it as “Wordscraper,” a word game that can support a variety of rules, and whose tiles no longer look so much like Scrabble’s. Players can themselves set the rules to simulate a Scrabble game — but that would make the infringement that of the users rather […]

The NYT is blogging that Facebook has removed Scrabulous.  Trying to get there through Facebook shows: Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here. The app is apparently doing IP geolocation to see whom to turn away; […]

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 […]

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 […]