512 Pixels

Matt Gertz for Media Matters:

Media Matters has confirmed Bloomberg’s report using publicly available IRS filings. We also found no evidence of corresponding donations to the Democratic Governors Association in the current political cycle. News Corp. wants Republicans elected to office, and they’re willing to spend money to make it happen.

According to the article, News Corp. is actually the RGA’s “biggest corporate donor.” Bloomberg suggests that News Corp. has made these donations due to their opposition to “proposed federal rule changes that would weaken the position of its Fox network in negotiations with cable companies,” stating that “Governors may have a stake in the issue.”

Facepalm.

Shawn Blanc:

It seems as if every day I bump into things while reading feeds, Twitter, the Web, or email — things I want to download, buy, research, and etcetera. But often I’m unable to take action at that moment. How then can I save it for later?

When on my Mac I use AppleScripts and built-in triggers to throw these items directly into Things. But on my iPhone and iPad there is no such solution. And since even the smallest pebble will make expensive Reeboks uncomfortable to run in, this sore spot of how to handle all the tasks I bump into when on my iPhone or iPad has got me thinking…

We need a universal, cloud-based bucket to throw these items into. A bucket that talks to all our current software instead of asking us start using new tools.

Blanc’s right — iOS needs some sort of system-wide services system, like Mac OS X does.

Until Apple gives iOS these kinds of tools, we’re all stuck using various isolated tools to get the job done. Isolated tools hold isolated data, which is problematic.

For me, those tools are Remember the Milk for tasks and Simplenote for notes. I can get to them offline, which is critical.

That’s how many words it took Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky to explain the site’s new commenting system.

Engadget’s comments system needed an overhaul, but as before, I’ll simply ignore the whole thing. Comments just give me headaches. Life is simpler without them, don’t you think?

(You can always email me or ping ForkBombr on Twitter. I view that as better than comments, as it leads to actual conversations, not just yelling.)

Charming:

[ via Joshua Schnell]

Ken Gagne:

There’s no doubt that Apple’s iPad is a revolutionary computing device that’s ushering in a new era of tablet computing.

But in 1979, an earlier generation of Apple users used a different kind of Apple tablet, back when the word meant something else entirely.

The Apple Graphics Tablet was designed by Summagraphics and sold by Apple Computer Inc. for the Apple II personal microcomputer. (Summagraphics also marketed the device for other platforms as the BitPad.) To be clear, this tablet was not a stand-alone computing device like the iPad. Instead, it was an input device for creating images on the Apple II’s screen, and it predated the Apple II’s mouse by six years.

Interestingly, I’ve heard several designers wishing that the new Magic Trackpad could be used for pen-based input.

Craig Hockenberry, for A List Apart:

With such great tools available and talented developers that know how to exploit them, the iPhone should be overflowing with web applications, right? Actually, the opposite is true: there are over 100,000 titles on iTunes and only a handful of popular applications have been created with web standards.

Apple has promoted both the App Store and web browser as ways for developers to get their creations into the hands of customers. They even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store. Clearly there’s more at play here: what attracts developers to iTunes instead of the web?

He goes on to list control, ease-of-use and money as the top reasons developers go native.

Awesome:

This here is a little blog to follow what I have termed the MacBook Air project. An attempt to turn a busted Apple MacBook Air into a computer in a keyboard.

While it is still a little rough, this is pretty sweet.

[ Via CrunchGear]

The bad news? The new discs are based on the edited versions, so Greedo still shoots first.

The good news? A new opening scene to Return of the Jedi that’ was cut in post-production that’s really, really great.

Laura Drake:

What a journalism undergraduate degree will get you are amazing memories, good connections with profs who know hundreds of working journalists, marketable skills in the form of writing and communications abilities. What it will not get you, and what no one ever promises it will get you, is a job in journalism.

To be clear, in my recollection, no one at j-skool ever lied about this, either. I’m pretty sure that from literally day one, lectures included messages from profs that, if you wanted to get a job in journalism on the other side, then you were going to have to hustle outside of class.

Some of the brightest, best people I went to journalism school with aren’t working as journalists. Which is exactly the opposite of what the journalism field needs right now.

John Rust:

All the hatred and frustration with AT&T will most likely happen again with Verizon several years down the road. The resistance against dumb carrier policies is a war that will go on indefinitely. Those participating in the resistance are often criticized as whiners and dreamers, as if their efforts are entirely fruitless. There’s a big difference between simply whining and complaining and working to raise awareness on a significant and troublesome policy change.

If Big Red had gotten the iPhone first, I think there would be a lot of clamoring for Apple to put it on AT&T. No carrier was prepared for the the kind of usage the iPhone introduced in 2007. Yes, AT&T is terrible in places, but I think anyone would be with that kind of strain.

(Granted, AT&T has been slow to upgrade their network, which hasn’t made the PR any better, but that’s a different problem.)

As a Verizon customer, I’m not sure I want the iPhone on the same network as my Droid. If their network can’t handle it, it will effect me, too.

Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky, in a great editorial about a problem on the Android Market:

Earlier tonight our friend Michael Gartenberg tweeted that when he went to the Android Market to search for the word “Jewish,” a number of Nazi and Hitler themes turned up. Of course, we had to take a look for ourselves, and sure enough, the search for a fairly innocuous word related to a religion and culture turns up skins which are disgustingly, hatefully pro-Nazism and pro-Hitler. That’s a problem, no matter how you look at this.

Give people the freedom to say whatever they want to, and people inevitably say stupid things. It is great and horrible at the same time.

Say what you will about Apple, this crap would never make it into the App Store.

Awesome, but this line from C–3P0 comes to mind:

I’m standing here in pieces and you’re having delusions of grandeur!