David Lidsky's Blog, page 4550

Jailbreaking Your iPhone No Longer Illegal, at Last

The whole notion of DRM took a tiny bashing today as users' rights won out over those of copyright holders. First up: Jailbreaking iPhones is now legal.

Jailbreaking your iPhone (hacking it to "free" it from the shackles of Apple's strict app management policy) has been controversial for a while, with Apple and the user community playing a game of cat and dog with new versions of the iPhone's OS, and new jailbreak exploits popping up. At certain points, it's even been threatened that the act...

iFive: BP Posts $17 Billion Loss, Wikileaks Fallout, Top CEO Remuneration, Tooth-Growing Gel, Lionfish Disturbs Atlantic Waters

While you were sleeping, innovation was rubbing gel on its teeth and marvelling at its new saber-toothed look. Fierce!

1. So, Tony Hayward, who has released a resignation statement, is to step down from the top job "by mutual consent." The firm has set aside $32.2 billion to cover the oil spill--and all of this the day it posted its Q2 2010 results, putting the loss at $17 billion. Shares stayed steady on the news, while Greenpeace pulled a bit of a pathetic stunt, flipping the safety...

Ask.com to Relaunch as Expert Q&A Service

Ask.com was a major success back in the late '90s, with its excellent (for the time) retrieval of answers and its cute butler logo, Jeeves. But times changed, and in 1998, those Californian nerds at Google began the keyword revolution. No longer were search queries executed in complete sentences, and Ask.com fell by the wayside. It attempted to follow in Google's footsteps but never quite took off in the same way.

The company is launching a major new campaign and a total redesign aimed at...

Why the Film Industry Is Afraid of the Hollywood Stock Exchange

New York Magazine has a really great piece up about the Hollywood Stock Exchange, also known as HSX. HSX was originally a game, using virtual money, that involved betting on the earnings potential of movies. Individual movies are given a price per share based on the amount of speculation from other players, which can rise or fall at any time.

If a movie checks in at $155 per share, as the upcoming The Hobbit: Part One does, that means HSX expects that movie to make $155 million in its first...

Twitter to Integrate Photos and Videos Into the Stream

Mashable discovered a new setting in Twitter today, available to only a few Twitter users. The setting, called "Tweet Media," comes with this description:

"By default, you'll only see images and videos shared by people you're following, and reveal those by people you're not. Check this box to see media from everyone on Twitter."

The literal meaning of that is pretty clear: This feature enables the embedding of multimedia into the stream. But that's a very new approach for Twitter, one that's...

Former Combat Soldier-Activist Paul Rieckhoff on Wikileaks and Founder Julian Assange

After a "pretty heated discussion" with the man who revealed almost 100,000 classified military documents, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says he's concerned about Assange's agenda.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when former J.P. Morgan employee-turned-post-9-11 Iraq War combat vet Paul Rieckhoff came face to face with the waifish, prematurely gray Julian Assange of Wikileaks at a recent TED Global conference in London on July 16.

"He had just finished his talk with...

Jailbreaking Your iPhone No Longer Illegal, At Last

The whole notion of DRM took a tiny bashing today as users' rights won out over those of copyright holders. First up: Jailbreaking iPhones is now legal. 

Jailbreaking your iPhone (hacking it to "free" it from the shackles of Apple's strict app management policy) has been controversial for a while, with Apple and the user community playing a game of cat and dog with new versions of the iPhone's OS, and new jailbreak exploits popping up. At certain points, it's even been threatened that the act...

UNESCO Selects World Heritage Sites

The UN agency will pay close attention to conservation and sites in danger.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) kicks off its first full day of meetings in Brasilia today, with the purpose of selecting the next UNESCO World Heritage Sites. On the list of candidates are the Tabriz Historic Bazaar Complex in Iran, Mount Vernon in the United States, and the Matheran Light Railway in India, among others.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites dot the planet...

UPS Releases Sustainability Report, Plans to Increase Auto Fuel Efficiency by 20%

UPS has a problem: Gas prices show no signs of decreasing, but the company can't cut down on its driving--there are packages to be had, after all. That's probably part of the reason behind UPS's commitment to improve the MPG performance of its U.S. package delivery fleet by
20% between 2000 and 2020. The commitment, announced in UPS's just-released 2009 Sustainability
Report, is one of many environmental programs highlighted by the company.

Other programs discussed in the report include...

Greylock Partners on Why You Shouldn't Start a Company in... Boston

"It will take time to change, but Boston must have its Google," said Henry McCance in an interview with Xconomy. McCance is chairman emeritus of Greylock Partners, one of the world's leading venture capital firms, with investments that include Facebook, LinkedIn, Red Hat, and Zipcar, to name just a few. Last May, the firm moved its headquarters from Boston to Silicon Valley; today, McCance finally explained why.

"There is no compelling reason (like proximity to semiconductor companies...