craig1709 writes "10 Downing Street has responded to the petition to open up iPlayer access for those on other operating systems. While the wording is confusing, near as I can tell, they say they will make the iPlayer available to users of those operating systems. 'The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

craig1709 writes "10 Downing Street has responded to the petition to open up iPlayer access for those on other operating systems. While the wording is confusing, near as I can tell, they say they will make the iPlayer available to users of those operating systems. 'The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because a company can only be as strong as its customers, there's no way for tech companies to be completely insulated from broader economic events. Companies with a lot of exposure on Wall St. are going to be particularly susceptible to a slowdown, as some companies, like Cisco, have already stated that they're seeing weakness in this market. The latest to sound a similar warning is Tibco, a software provider with a lot of customers in finance. The firm described the financial sector as "notably weak" blaming it for an overall earnings shortfall. It should be noted that Tibco hasn't had a particularly stellar few years, so the company was already struggling a bit. Still, what's affecting Tibco is likely to affect a host of other related companies. Right now, there's a lot of concern about the health of the financial sector, but if troubles continue to persist, then the malaise is likely to spread elsewhere, potentially leading to spending slowdowns in other sectors.

KingSkippus writes "In response to a complaint to the FCC filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) to change copyright warnings before movies and sporting events, Executive Director Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance tells us in an editorial that "fair use is not a consumer right." The Copyright Alliance is backed by such heavy-hitters as the MPAA, RIAA, Disney, Business Software Alliance, and perhaps most interestingly, Microsoft, who is also backing the CCIA's complaint."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• LuLL Flowering Lamp Concept

• Leatherman Skeletool: Lightest Full-Sized Multi-Tool

• Confirmation: No Bluetooth in iPod Touch

• Blowing Out the Dust: Afternoon Edition

• Cabinet Jack: Multi-Tool for Cabinet Makers

• Sony HES-V1000 Home Entertainment Server

• Alienware Rack-Mount Hanger 18 HD Media Server

• Wordsearch Wallpaper

• Skull Made from Melted Rawk Cassette Tapes

• WAVE Street Surfboard

• HP Back in the Smartphone Game with New iPAQs

• Bang & Olufsen Beo 5 Remote

• Holland Electro Wave: TV and Microwave in One

• Samsung Files Patent for Sentry Robot Turret

• Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• A Few Minor Updates

• Apple launch day funny, 140 characters or less: Jesse Thorn

Harold McGee writes in the NY Times about gelatin filtration:

-- a way to make sparklingly clear liquids that are intensely flavored with ... well, whatever you like: meats, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, any and all combinations of ingredients.

Why would anyone want to make such a thing? Think of such liquids as essences. They have no fibers, no pulp, no fat, no substance at all. They’re just flavor in fluid form, perhaps with a tinge of color, like a classic beef consommé. In fact chefs are calling these essences consommés, and they often use them the same way, as a soup or a sauce. And they can be delightfully surprising, because their appearance often gives no hint of the pleasure they’re about to deliver.

Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Doggie Fizzle writes "Seagate held an event for bloggers and other media in the NYC area yesterday and rolled out some of their new items for show and tell. DAVE, the battery powered portable hard drive for WiFi/Bluetooth phones was being demoed. Some of the new FDE series of laptop and desktop drives with full (hardware based) disk encryption were on hand. And Maxtor's fourth generation of OneTouch external drives were on display and available to take home."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doggie Fizzle writes "Seagate held an event for bloggers and other media in the NYC area yesterday and rolled out some of their new items for show and tell. DAVE, the battery powered portable hard drive for WiFi/Bluetooth phones was being demoed. Some of the new FDE series of laptop and desktop drives with full (hardware based) disk encryption were on hand. And Maxtor's fourth generation of OneTouch external drives were on display and available to take home."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After successfully bullying Canada into passing stricter anti-camcording laws, using bogus stats, it appears that the MPAA has moved on to a new country: the UK. TorrentFreak lets us know that MPAA chief Dan Glickman has crossed the pond to warn UK politicians about the horrible "threat" of camcorded movies. Of course, he's still making up stats and still ignoring what's actually happening in the industry. We've already seen that while Glickman gets paid big bucks to hype up the threat, these laws don't seem to stop camcording activities at all. However, more importantly, camcording doesn't appear to be much of a real threat to the industry. Remember, first of all, that the industry is bringing in record revenue, despite the increasing availability of movies online. Second, the problem isn't from camcorded movies. Most of the movies you find online are studio prints leaked by insiders. Third, even with these laws the movies are going to end up online... and all it takes is one movie getting online for it to be infinitely available. Stopping just a few of those recording the movie is absolutely meaningless if a single one gets through, and it always will. If the movie industry spent a fraction of the amount of money they're wasting lobbying for these useless laws on improving the movie-going experience or offering additional incentives to purchase, the industry would be doing even better than it already is -- and no one would even worry about some movies being available online.

Michael Buckbee, proprietor of a "Fabjectory" (Bruce Sterling's neologism "fabject" + "factory" = Fabjectory) has created a Second Life version of the print-and-fold minicomic of Printcrime, created by talented comics artist Martin Cendreda (the story appears in my collection Overclocked. He sez, "We use rapid prototyping machines to create real life objects from the avatars and sculptures that people make in SecondLife and I've been vainly trying to explain to people that this isn't so much about creating expensive immobile dolls for people as it is breaking ground for a new way to interact with the world, something Print Crime does so well." Screenshot Link 1, Screenshot Link 2

I've started a new gig as an essayist/columnist for Search Engine, a new show on CBC Radio. They've got me reading adaptations of my Guardian columns, starting with my piece on Digital Lysenkoism. They've done a great job with the editing -- it's nice having other people around to help me sound smart! Link, Search Engine podcast feed, MP3 Link

Bruce Sterling calls Joel Garreau's Washington Post interview with William Gibson, "One of the best William Gibson interviews ever." Garreau interview Gibson about Spook Country, his new novel that is so futuristic, it could only have been set in the recent past, and digs into the meaning and purpose of sf and literature in general, and how it ties into a world of technological change and splintering subculture. Garreau pinged Bruce for good, meaty Gibson questions, something I did for my 1999 interview with him for the Globe and Mail (Bruce said, "Ask him about the shoes"). It's good advice -- the Sterling questions evoke some of the most interesting material in this piece.

"Every hair is being numbered -- eBay has every grain of sand. EBay is serving this very, very powerful function which nobody ever intended for it. EBay in the hands of humanity is sorting every last Dick Tracy wrist radio cereal premium sticker that ever existed. It's like some sort of vast unconscious curatorial movement.

"Every toy I had as a child that haunted me, I've been able to see on eBay. The soft squeezy rubber frog with red shorts that made 'eek eek' noise until that part fell out. I found Froggy after some effort on eBay, and I found out that Froggy was made in 1948 and where he was made and what he was made of. I saw his box, which I'd long forgotten. I didn't have to buy Froggy, but I saved the jpegs. So I've got Froggy in my computer.

"This is new. People in really small towns can become world-class connoisseurs of something via eBay and Google. This didn't used to be possible. If you are sufficiently obsessive and diligent, you can be a little kid in some town in the backwoods of Tennessee and the world's premier info-monster about some tiny obscure area of stuff. That used to require a city. It no longer does."

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

(Photo credit: cropped, downsized thumbnail ganked from a larger image credited to Pouya Dianat -- The Washington Post.)

See also:
BoingBoingBoing #15: William Gibson
William Gibson's Spook Country
Original proposal for William Gibson's Spook Country
William Gibson explains why science fiction is about the present
William Gibson on writing in the age of Google

Joel "Boing Boing Gadgets" Johnson has just posted this Leatherman Skeletool, a full-featured Leatherman tool whose every non-essential surface has been swiss-cheesed with holes to lighten its weight to a mere five ounces. It costs $72 -- or you can go lighter with a carbon-fiber model for $96. I miss my multitool days -- after losing half a dozen to the TSA, I had to give up a years-long habit of always carrying one. Since there, there must have been one billion moments where I wished I had my pliers, knife, and hoof-pick still attached to my hip. Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

Olia Lialina's illustrated essay "Vernacular Web 2" builds on her earlier work, which is to "collect, classify and describe the most important elements of the early Web - visual as well as acoustic - and the habits of first Web users, their ideas of harmony and order." The earliest days of the web were unkind to traditional designers, many of whom took some time to come to grips with floating window sizes, user-selectable fonts, and the limited palette of design elements in early HTML. The result was a folk-aesthetic, where untrained eyes and sensibilities dominated the look of the net. Much of that original look is gone now, but Lialina's work brings it back and starts to delve into what it all means -- and how its progeny still can be found online today.

And today, in the end of June 2007, when we hear of amateur culture more often than ever before, the cultural influence of "Welcome to My Home Page" web pages looks especially interesting. People who created them and their ideas of what the Web is, how it can be used and how the pages should look, these people's likes and mistakes gave the today's Web its current shape.

To me, what defines the history of Web is not just the launch dates of new browsers or services, not just the dot-com bubbles appearing or bursting, but also the appearance of a blinking yellow button that said "New!" or the sudden mass extinction of starry wallpapers.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel has spotted this plastic skull made from melted down classic heavy metal cassettes from the heyday of the boombox and the walkman. The artist, Brian Dettmer, has also made an entire skeleton the same way. Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Thomas Crampton cornered me in China this week with a video camera and asked me how to blog -- here's a video of my answer. In a nutshell: pretend you're a wire-service stringer and you'll end up writing better headlines. Link

thornomad writes "I was saddened (though not surprised) to read that the Justice Department opposes net neutrality saying that it could "hamper development of the internet." While it may seem counter-intuitive to me, they argue that allowing ISPs to provide different levels of service/speed for different content will benefit consumers. They did promise to "continue to monitor and enforce any anticompetitive conduct to ensure a competitive broadband marketplace" — not that anyone was worried about that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Already facing possible shutdown and huge fines from Verizon over some VoIP patents, Vonage is apparently facing a similar threat from Sprint as well. The case was filed nearly two years ago, but it finally is underway, with Sprint making the ridiculous claim that without Sprint's patents, Vonage wouldn't exist. We've already gone through this with Verizon, but there's a ton of prior art on VoIP offerings -- and almost all of these patents seem overly broad and quite speculative. Lots of different folks all figured out how VoIP could work at about the same time (suggesting that the concept was the natural progression of the technology, which isn't something that's supposed to receive patent protection). Vonage's real innovation was in figuring out how to package and market the service -- something that neither Sprint nor Verizon did. Both companies are now simply trying to shut down a rival who out-innovated them in the market. That's not what the patent system is designed to do, and it's a blatant abuse of the patent system by both telcos to claim that Vonage somehow "stole" anything from them.