The hundreds of web and desktop clients built for sharing, backup or on-the-fly synchronization of digital files that have sprung up in the past ten years have made the whole concept of having the cloud at least partly remove your computer hard drive’s reason for being largely a commodity.
It’s the reason why we don’t exactly jump up and down out of sheer excitement when another such service launches and asks for a TechCrunch review.
I’ll say it right off the bat: there are tons of ways people can communicate from iPhone to iPhone, not in the least by simple SMS or, you know, calling each other.
Then there are iPhone applications like Skype, eBuddy and Nimbuzz that allow you to call and/or IM your friends over the Internet waves, sans extra carrier charges.
Psystar’s attorneys have had some truly bumbling moments in the past year or so, and the hits keep coming: now they’re disagreeing over whether or not the would-be Mac cloner is out of business. Lead law firm Camara & Sibley is now denying yesterday’s Dow Jones report, which quoted Psystar’s California counsel Eugene Action as saying the company would be shutting down “immediately,” and insists that the company is still is business selling Rebel EFI. That would be the end of the story for now… except it’s not true. Although Psystar’s site still offers the software for download, it’s listed as “out of stock,” and you can’t buy a license. What’s more, Psystar was just ordered by the California court to stop helping anyone install OS X and warned that it continued to sell Rebel EFI “at its peril,” so it’d be pretty ballsy to offer it for sale once again. Camara & Sibley also says it’s going to appeal the California decision while it presses forward with the second lawsuit in Florida, but we’ve seriously got to wonder who’s going to pay all these bills — Psystar is already on the hook for $2.67 million in fines to Apple, and appeals and a second round of litigation don’t come cheap. We’ll see what happens next, but we can’t say we’re too surprised that the end of Psystar’s story is as shady as its start
P.S.- Eugene Action might be the single best thing to come out of this whole mess — his website, located at (seriously) myharvardawyer.us, is a treasure trove of embarrassing hilarity. Choice unedited quote:
Google, which is currently on one heck of a spending spree, is closing an acquisition of San Francisco based DocVerse, a service that lets users collaborate around Microsoft Office documents, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. The purchase price is supposed to be around $25 million.
Docverse lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Appjet, another recent Google Acquisition, has a related product called EtherPad, although that team is reported to be working with Google Wave and the EtherPad source code has been released to the community.
Google has made a change to Chrome OS to move the user login from the machine to the browser. Our guess is Google is, or will eventually use, Google Friend Connect to facilitate login.
The feature was first mentioned on October 13: “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits.
When we first saw Yotaro baby simulator we thought: “we’ve seen this ugly robot before.” And no, weren’t thinking about Keiko, the robot patient currently seeing action in teaching hospitals in Japan. It just so happens that robot in question has more than a passing resemblance to Booji Boy, a character beloved to Devo fans world-wide. The robot, developed at the University of Tsukuba, is designed to teach people about childcare and parenting by portraying various facial expressions, movements, and physiological traits associated with babies, relying on a Rube Goldberg-esque array of water tanks, projectors, sensors, and sophisticated emotion control software to respond to your actions appropriately. If you think it looks strange above, wait until you see it in action! Check it out after the break.
Continue reading Baby simulator surfaces in Japan, Devo wants its mascot back (video)
We’re about to hit the big holiday travel peak, and it’s a great time to survey what we’ve seen this year for iPhone GPS apps. GPS navigation by satellite has been around a long time, but it’s never been this inexpensive or desirable. There’s an explosion of choices, with competitive features and falling prices. For many of our readers, facing long trips to see family and friends, getting the right GPS app is a priority.
A few words about this guide: I haven’t seen or tested everything on the market, and the choices are constantly changing and updating. I’ve done my best to keep up and get some time on the road with each of the apps listed here. If I haven’t talked about your favorite app, it’s not because I don’t like it, but because I can’t vouch for it.
You know those times when you’re sifting through an undercooked ROM, dumping .nbh files right and left, asking yourself: “is this even worth it?” Well, the folks at WMExperts can answer with a resounding fist pump after digging up references to T-Mobile US in an HTC HD2 prerelease ROM that was recently leaked their way. At this point we’re looking at a new 2.01 version of the HD2 software in the T-Mobile version, a big jump from the 1.61 seen in previous leaks, which maybe will smooth over some of those performance woes we experienced with the device. WMExperts also claims a March 2010 release date, which seems a while to wait, but somebody told us once about “good things” coming to “waiters” or something like that, so we’re cautiously optimistic.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
After Apple’s sweeping permanent injunction, Psystar has officially ceased operations. The company’s CEO Rudy Pedraza told the Dow Jones Newswire last night that he is “shutting things down immediately.” The company has also released its eight employees, and shuttered its website last night.
The actions came after Apple’s permanent injunction against Psystar earlier this week, which gave Psystar until December 31st to stop selling its Mac clones. The clones violated Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X, which expressly forbids use of the operating system on non-Apple hardware.
Apple yesterday posted a few new server-related updates for Xsan and Mac OS X Server.
The first, Xsan 2.2.1, improves file system reliability and cvfsck repair utility. This update is available for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. There’s also an updated version of the Xsan uninstaller.