Reclaiming Privacy with a Tether?
Random Opinion:
A friend of mine commented that her iPhone Internet is faster than her work computer’s Internet.
It’s bothered me for some time that the assumption is that companies can spy into your business as much as they want because “they provide” the equipment. Are you going to listen to my phone call to my doctor as well? Unfortunately, too often, the answer (given seriously) is “yes”.
“We have no respect for you. You are meat. Here’s your minimum + $x.” It seems odd on the surface, but obvious once introspected. The more people pay you, the more they don’t intrude on you. This has always been the case for me, and I’ve worked a wide variety of jobs.
Reclaiming Privacy with a Tether? – continue reading …
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More on Regulating Beer Distribution
Patrick Beach at the Austin-American Statesman ran an article on the current fight for an inch: Regulation, Legislation and Fun You Can’t Have with Texas Beer: the patchwork of Texas’ beer laws satisfies almost no one.
My summary of it: beer distributers are engaging in anti-Texas behavior. Texas legislators are weak and willing to bow to the political will of the distributors.
But you’re welcome to read the article yourself if you don’t like my interpretation.
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Strangers in a Crowd
A random idea for an iPhone Application: Apple announced they would provide bonjour discovery of devices in the iPhone 3.0 software. (They announced it to the world, so it’s not covered by the iPhone SDK NDA, you NDA nazis.)
My mind was w[oa]ndering and I thought of an interesting, odd, but compelling idea for an iPhone application.
Strangers. You can discover devices in the area. You invite them all to play Strangers. The push notifications show a “badge icon” (that red number) showing you have been invited to play. Any number of people join in. It becomes a game of 20 questions to discover who each is. That means YES or NO questions only.
Player A (Q3) to Player C (Q2): Are you wearing red?
Player A is asking his/her third question. This question is of Player C and is the second question asked of C.
To put a little twist on it, we could of course have one Bot running on each device and have it asking and answering questions as well. (It would not answer truthfully, it would answer randomly.)
It’s a little creepy of an idea, but i can imagine there being at least one “discover strangers” application. In some places it would be fun – MacWorld convention.
Perhaps just the anonymous, concurrent 20 questions game that people could join into and leave at will would be more feasible. You can’t ask another question if one is pending for you to answer.
Anyway, that’s a random app idea in my head. FWIW.
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McDonald’s is a Blight
There was a brief story in the Houston Press about all the broken McDonald’s signs in Houston.
There is an annoyed citizen that has taken his grip to the newest town square: Facebook. He created a Facebook Group to help people voice their shared annoyance.
I joined the group on Wednesday as the 34th member. I suspect if the group gets traction it should be over 1000 people in no time. And if other media in town mention it, it could go well above that. (Or, if it goes no further than here, it could peak at 35 some time next week.)
I think if it gets noisy enough, we could likely get the Houston City Council to do something about it. McDonald’s is a Blight – continue reading …
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Store Kit: Micro Payments
When Apple announced their iPhone 3.0 software, they announced an API‡ called StoreKit. This is a small collection of interfaces to facilitate purchases via Apple. It is, of course, still subject to the 30% cut by Apple – they are about to become even richer on the App Store. (Since they are not providing hosting of content as they are with the apps, it seems they should shrink this 30% to 20% or so!)
They suggested it might be used to buy new levels in a game (in which case you would download the content from the App developer’s server) or provide subscription based content (6 more months of the magazine, for instance).
For the 2008 season, Major League Baseball provided an application for $5. They had to provide a new app (to get the revenue) for the 2009 season. This will prevent that kind of requirement, as well as allow perhaps “buy game audio for $1 – video for $2″ allowing you to download the game of your interest.
But what if they want to charge less than $1? They can keep a running balance. 5¢ for that content? Of course, you now have 95¢ left in your balance.
I can totally see The New York Times and other newspapers trying out a micropayment system. How about 1¢ for every article you download? Keep a $5 buffer to keep the payments less frequent. Charge a $1 for the app and give them $5 of credit.
I fully expect someone to try out the micropayment scheme. I am really interested to see if anyone succeeds with it.
‡I consider an API a collection of interfaces, Apple and their “over a 1000 new APIs” seems to consider it a single method or function, which would of course be useless by itself.
Note: FlipSide5 does not have any plans to institute micropayments.
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Sausage Making: HB1062? nee, HB2094
I previously emailed Rep. Farrar about House Bill 1062. She pushed for similar legislation two years ago, and got stomped by the distributers lobby. She left a comment hinting she was going to introduce a more feasible bill, but didn’t offer the details.
I ran into Brock Wagner soon thereafter. He had just met with Rep. Farrar in Austin and gave me the details. There are particulars that the the enormous distributers lobby complain about. Those pieces needed to be minimized if the legislation is to have a chance. She was going to introduce different legislation that had a better chance of surviving.
I’ve been so busy working on a new job that I missed the introduction of the new bill, HB2094. Charles Kuffner had mention of it on his blog, but I missed that too.
It seems it was scheduled for a public hearing the day after St. Patrick’s Day. I haven’t yet heard how that went. I don’t think that newspapers pay attention to government anymore.
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