(Credit:
The New York Times Company)

Over the weekend I updated my
iPod touch to the 2.0 software, and I consider that $10 well-spent. Now I can access all the same great apps as iPhone 3G owners. Thankfully, many of them are free; I’ve rounded up five I really like. (Note that all links require iTunes.)

AOL Radio Stream radio from over 200 stations spanning 25 music genres. It can even round up local stations. Who needs an FM tuner now?
eReader As a longtime fan of reading e-books on my PDA, I’m overjoyed I can now do the same on my touch. This app lets you download books purchased at the eponymous site, and flip pages just by swiping your finger. Two public-domain books are included free so you can try it out.
NYTimes Read the latest news, business stories, editorials, and more. It’s a little slow right now, probably due to huge amounts of traffic, but talk about an incredible app: the entire New York Times in the palm of your hand!
PhoneSaber Quite arguably the best use of the
iPhone/touch tilt sensor ever, this clever bit of fluff is guaranteed to elicit a smile.
Tap Tap Revenge Think ‘Guitar Hero’ for iPhone. You can download new tracks (a few are included) and even play head-to-head in the ridiculously sweet two-player mode.What fab freebies have you discovered in the new App Store? Hit the Comments and share!

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Well, that didn’t take long. As soon as people started to get excited about open-source OpenClip, and its ability to bring copy-and-paste functionality to the
iPhone, Apple found a way to shut it down with its 2.1 firmware.

Of course, OpenClip is open source, and perhaps enterprising developers will find a way around the 2.1 firmware. Or maybe (gasp!) Apple will actually deliver the copy-and-paste functionality many have demanded.

But for now, its ClosedClip, not OpenClip. Even communities must apparently bow to Apple. Code is law, to borrow Larry Lessig’s phrase, and Apple controls the iPhone code.

At a lower price and improved specifications, Apple may well hit the ball out of the park with this release. See you in line.

By some accounts, interest in the 3G iPhone is ten times what it was the first time around. There are already lines in front of Apple’s Manhattan store. Of course, they were environmental activists, not Apple fans, but….

commentary

Such is the demand for Apple’s 3G iPhone.

I was reading through the Wall Street Journal and stumbled across this amazing piece of news: Palm still exists! As proof, the company has released a new Treo.

Remember the Treo?

It used to be the “it” device, the one you just had to have. Now? Well, now it’s the device that you get if you’ve been living in Antarctica and have been talking with penguins for far too long.

Palm’s sense of timing hasn’t changed. A day after Apple announced that it sold over one million 3G iPhones in its opening weekend (the last iPhone took 74 days to reach that milestone), Palm announced that it had introduced yet another device for the market to ignore.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the Treo is a bad device. I used to swear by mine. But the mobile market is fickle, because consumers are fickle. Gadgets have become disposable: I have two Blackberrys down in my kids’ toy chest.

But even they don’t want to use them as toys anymore. They want iPhones.

Palm is better off finding niche categories where the
iPhone and Blackberry are unlikely to go. Like, um…OK. I can’t think of any reason to use one. That’s the problem.

Abe Lincoln, "the first wired president," Beckstrom says.

(Credit:
Rod Beckstrom)

Lincoln was obsessed with reading telegrams that delivered updates from the battlefield, using them to learn about the military strategies and to offer feedback, said Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cyber Security Center in the Department of Homeland Security.

“If he were alive today we would probably call him an e-mail junkie or a cyber junkie,” he said. “He was the first wired president; (telegraph) was a fixed wire” that could be severed or tapped.

Security lessons from battle were available even earlier in American history, according to Beckstrom. In the French and Indian wars, British forces relied on traditional warfare formations and often got slaughtered by French frontiersmen and their Native American supporters, who used guerrilla tactics like roadside ambushes.

One officer fighting on the side of the British who survived such attacks–George Washington–took the lessons of flexible fighting and guerrilla warfare with him in fighting for American independence, he said.

Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cyber Security Center, gives a keynote at Black Hat on Thursday.

(Credit:
Elinor Mills)

Even that American revolutionary war was almost lost because of “one of greatest threats we face today in cyberspace”–insider threats and hackers, Beckstrom said, displaying a portrait of Benedict Arnold, a disgruntled commanding officer who was passed over for promotion and charged with corruption after facing financial difficulties.

“He saw an opportunity,” and was selling plans for West Point and other military secrets to the British, but was caught in the end, Beckstrom said.

“We have the same threats today, just on different technology and mediums,” Beckstrom said.

Today, however, nations, businesses, and individuals also confront a single point of failure in cyberspace, with the Internet protocols and technologies, like the Domain Name System, he said. (A serious DNS vulnerability was the subject of a session at Black Hat on Wednesday.)

“Invest in protocols because it may be the cheapest security dollars we can invest,” Beckstrom said. The Department of Homeland Security is funding research related to DNS security, among other initiatives, he added. “We’ve got to move forward because we’ve got to change the odds of this game.”

The IP dependencies in the telecommunications sector put emergency communications, like mobile phone texting, at risk, Beckstrom said, noting that he was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, and in Pakistan when the 2005 earthquake hit and saw firsthand how crucial texting is. A cell phone tower can handle 200 or more calls simultaneously and about 5,000 text messages a second, according to Beckstrom.

And don’t forget the plain old telephone system, which will still be operational if the IP system goes down, he said.

Without elaboration, Beckstrom said: “Why can’t we quarantine computers that are disrupting the Internet?”

He touched on issues of punishment, “cyber justice,” and cyber diplomacy, and ended the talk asking more questions than he answered.

“What are the new cyber rules?” he asked. “How do we develop an international framework and move toward cooperation?”

Click here for full coverage of Black Hat 2008.

Google Map Maker lets people add details to maps in some countries.

(Credit:
Google)

With the tool, people can using tracing tools to build maps in Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, and Vietnam, according to the Google LatLong blog. Also open for cartographic contributions are several Caribbean nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s great that this kind of activity can be crowd-sourced (please excuse the jargon) so the community (please excuse the jargon again) can contribute to a project that reduces the amount of digitally uncharted terrain. Google has given us a way to help make a difference that, while small, could collectively become quite large.

But on the other hand, I can think of worthy causes in greater need of charity or free labor than Google. If we’re all going to be augmenting Google Maps with user-generated content, wouldn’t it be nice if we could do it through a more neutral mechanism that lets others benefit from the work, too? Geotagged entries in Wikipedia show on Google Maps, but not Google Maps alone, at least theoretically.

Overall, I think my first reaction will carry the day for me.

That’s because, fundamentally, Google Maps is a service not just consumed by many but also repackaged by many through the availability of the Google Maps API (application programming interface). So until the day Google flips its Don’t Be Evil switch to the “off” position, Google Maps is in effect a public utility, and many can benefit from contributions to the service.

Google Map Maker looks slick, but it would be slicker with better satellite imagery. Parts of Iceland, one of my favorite places on Earth, are too coarse for any tracing.

Shares were trading at $55.80 by midday, down from Wednesday’s close of $65.30.

Looking ahead, the company said it expects revenue in the third quarter to be between $273 million and $274 million, slightly below analysts’ expectations.

Thursday, Piper Jaffray downgraded the stock from “buy” to “neutral.”

The stock slip came despite a strong second quarter. Salesforce announced revenue of $263.1 million for the second quarter ended July 31, up 49 percent year-over-year, and 6 percent from the most recent quarter. Revenue from subscriptions hit $239.7 million, up from $160 million in the year-ago quarter, while services revenue rose to $23.4 million from $16.6 million in the year-ago quarter.

Net income for the quarter was $10 million, or 8 cents per share, up from $3.7 million, or 3 cents per share, in the previous year.

On Wednesday, Salesforce announced it was acquiring InStranet, a Chicago-based maker of call-center software, for around $31.5 million. Salesforce plans to use InStranet’s technology both internally, and as a new software-as-a-service offering expected to launch within 18 months.

Also, hide the pets, because we might just turn Fluffy into a new
iPod case.

In the aftermath of a software patch from Apple to fix lingering glitches in the latest version of the
iPhone, CNET puts the product through its paces, and CNET Reviews’ Kent German offers up the verdict.

Also discussed: Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker says the open-source developer made a “giant error” in putting the wrong content into the end-user license agreement of a
Firefox beta test version.

Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

Today’s stories:

One big thing Zune did right

Critics: Homeland Security unprepared for cyberthreats

Windows 7 said to hit milestone

Mozilla: Firefox license in Ubuntu was ‘giant error’

Apple gaining North American notebook share

Has the iPhone 2.1 software update delivered?

One reason Mike cites for the Vista assimilation is that “Dell launched a Vista migration program to nudge big companies toward the OS. The PC maker’s ‘client migration solution’ will cut migration costs…” I see this as evidence of Vista resistance. If there was value to Vista, the cost of migrating would not be an issue.

Mike also writes that “Microsoft is greasing the skids for Vista acceptance by offering free telephone support for Vista Service Pack 1 through March 2009″.*   Microsoft never did this with XP service packs, so why are they doing it for Vista? They are trying to get people to go where they don’t want to go.

Let’s not forget the price cuts to
shrink-wrapped versions of Vista which were to take effect at the same time Service Pack 1 was released. As Don Reisinger wrote (see Vista price cuts show how much trouble Microsoft is in), those price cuts were really a publicity stunt.

I don’t think Don’s article went far enough though. To me, the price cuts were intended to break out of computer industry news vehicles (like CNET and ComputerWorld) and be reported to the general public. No techie is going to decide to go with Vista because its a few dollars cheaper today than yesterday. No, the audience for the price cut announcement was non-techies.

And the message wasn’t the price cuts (hardly anyone buys Vista in a box on the shelf of a retailer). The real message was that Service Pack 1 was about to be released, news that normally stays within the IT industry. The subliminal point being that while Vista may have been bad initially, now it’s OK. An unusually well done bit of PR.

As for Mike’s point that “XP may work, but it’s not pretty”, that’s damning the OS with faint praise. The four regulars on the Personal Computer Show agree on only two things: making backups and avoiding Vista. After Hank Kee kicked the tires on Vista he was challenged to provide reasons to migrate from XP. All he could come up with was a comment from his wife, “it’s pretty”.

Back in November, I wrote about a dog and pony show where Microsoft tried to scare
people about how insecure Windows XP was. That they have to use FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to sell Vista says a lot. Think of a politician trashing their opponent rather than touting themselves.

I wrote a trio of postings here on why I think XP is the better choice for Windows users (just comparing XP and Vista, not considering Macs and Linux)
– I pity the fool (Windows XP good, Vista bad)
— When to convert from Windows XP to Vista, Part 2
— Putting Windows Vista on trial

In short, until Vista is at Service Pack 2 or has been around for at least another year and a half,
it shouldn’t be on your radar screen.

In large part, Mike’s argument comes down to this: “I’ve been running Vista on three machines for well over a year. Compatibility issues are beginning to disappear, my wireless network connection no longer mysteriously vanishes, and other random glitches appear to have been fixed.”

In other words, Vista works for me, so it’s ready for the world. Many of the reader comments here at CNET make the same point. Vista, no doubt, runs fine for many people. That doesn’t make it the right choice for you.

My perspective is defensive computing. To that end, I want mature software, and Windows XP, with 7 years of bug fixes applied to it, is the more mature option. I also want the one with the best chance of working with assorted peripheral devices. Score another for XP.

Cheap Laptops Running Linux

The personal computer field is maturing to the point that people will soon be cognizant of two hardware categories: full-blown personal computers, typified by Windows and Macs, and stripped down ones for
children, senior citizens or traveling. Linux is perfect for people with simple computing needs (see Is Linux right for your mother?).

Ina thinks Windows XP will continue to be sold on what are now cheap laptops running Linux. Quoting: “The biggest area where XP is likely to stick around is in the nascent but growing market of low-cost, flash memory-based notebook computers, such as the Asus Eee PC”.

I don’t know that Microsoft is smart enough to see the threat from these machines. Way back, it was IBM that didn’t take PCs seriously. Now, perhaps, it will be Microsoft that doesn’t take simple, cheap machines seriously. Every new version of Windows is bigger and more complex. I doubt they can do simple. Large companies usually can’t.

Linux does simple.**   It can be stripped down as needed. In 2004 I reviewed a product called NASLite that converted an old computer into a Linux-based file server. It was a useful product, but amazing for its size – it fit on a floppy disk. A single floppy contained the operating system, networking software, an internal website used for reporting and a telnet based administrative utility.

On top of this, the Linux GUI is flexible, extremely so. No doubt this will result in some horrible user interfaces, the XO from OLPC comes to mind. But, it will also result in some that are more appropriate for children or senior citizens than a full-blown copy of Windows or a
Mac. And people comfortable with Windows XP can find versions of Linux that mimic XP. One of the cheap laptops running Linux ships with a simple interface but it can be reset to the normal user interface of the underlying Xandros Linux.

Linux benefits out of the box from being immune to the vast majority of malicious software being spread online. Thus, children, senior citizens and anyone else craving simplicity doesn’t have to deal with anti-virus and anti-spyware software.

The Cloudbook has a normal hard disk, but that won’t last. The future for ultra-cheap laptops is flash (a.k.a. SSDs or solid state devices) and flash ram is expensive. All laptops benefit from flash ram because it’s rugged, consumes less power (no moving parts) and creates less heat. Cheap small Linux machines especially need the faster read time offered by flash ram, it helps offset their relatively slow processors.

But, to keep the machines cheap, flash ram needs to be minimized. Linux is a perfect fit because it needs relatively little hard disk space. The $300 version of the Asus Eee PC has a 2 gigabyte “hard drive” that fits the operating system, applications and still leaves room for some of your data files. Try that with Vista or XP.

Microsoft may be able to brow-beat the world into using Vista on fully functional PCs, but if they walk away from XP on simple, cheap computers and cede the market to Linux, they are a dead man walking.

*How many of us believe that the free tech support from Microsoft will be useful? For example, see this item from Leo Notenboom about how Microsoft was unable to help him install a legal copy of Windows XP. They didn’t know what their own error message meant. Incompetent being the applicable word.

**See my Linux vs. Windows page