512 Pixels

Apple:

iPhone Developer Program members can submit nominations for iPhone and iPad apps that deserve to be recognized at the Apple Design Awards during WWDC.

No Mac awards is a great way to show Mac developers Apple is focused on the desktop platform.

Cute:

[ via @MacFusionGirl]

Benj Edwards has a great piece over at Macworld about the importance of the LaserWriter. It really did a lot to shape Apple into the company it is today.

I’ve become a huge fan of Simplenote over the last 6 months. It pained me that they didn’t have an iPad app available at launch.

Well, today they’ve announced Simplenote for iPad, and I am happy to say the app was worth the wait.

It works just like Apple’s Notes app, but the UI is far, far cleaner. I’m not sure there is anything else the designers could have taken out. In landscape mode, a list of notes is shown down the side, and in portrait mode, the entire screen becomes a note. It is perfect in its simplicity.

Simplenote is free to use, but I suggest taking a look at their premium features — at $9 a year, it was a no-brainer for me.

Holy crap, this is amazing.

A Brief Journalism Lesson

In place since 1972’s Branzburg v. Hayes Supreme Court case, shield laws are in place to keep journalists from being legally obligated to expose their sources in court. This is from the court’s finding in the case:

The First Amendment does not relieve a newspaper reporter of the obligation that all citizens have to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation, and therefore the Amendment does not afford him a constitutional testimonial privilege for an agreement he makes to conceal facts relevant to a grand jury’s investigation of a crime or to conceal the criminal conduct of his source or evidence thereof

Note that there is no federal shield law — even though Congress attempted to put one in place as recently as 2008 — because the Supreme Court doesn’t believe the First Amendment guarantee a news reporter’s privilege.

Is Stolen Property Covered by Shield Laws?

Avram Piltch of Laptop Magazine:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet’s leading digital rights advocacy group, has also taken a public position on the search, telling us that California’s search warrant is illegal and should never have been issued. In a phone interview this afternoon, EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick told us: “There are both federal and state laws here in California that protect reporters and journalists from search and seizure for their news gathering activities. The federal law is the Privacy Protection Act and the state law is a provision of the penal code and evidence code. It appears that both of those laws may be being violated by this search and seizure.”

Granick said that, even if Jason Chen is under investigation for receipt of stolen property, the government has no right to issue a search warrant, because California law includes exceptions for journalists who are in receipt of information from sources.

Section 1070 of the Evidence Code in California states:

A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed, cannot be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose, in any proceeding as defined in Section 901, the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.

The biggest debate here is if a prototype device that is clearly the property of a corporation is considered information — as Granick says — or property.

The search of Jason Chen’s home may be more about the source of the device, not the device itself — and my bet is that the police will charge that individual with theft and Gizmodo with purchasing stolen property. As such, the information about who the phone was purchased from may not be protected by shield laws.

If Gizmodo had paid $5,000 for photos and documentation of the device, I believe that the shield laws would protect them. But they didn’t buy photos and documentation. They bought a physical device.

Are Bloggers Journalists?

This is perhaps the biggest question facing the journalism community today. Ask any group of journalism professors and you will get a wide variety of answers.

While some people are hoping this whole Gizmodo thing answers this question. I’m not sure it will. This is more about what Gizmodo paid for. The only way the blogger/journalist debate will be answered through this is if California decides that what Jason Chen had in his possession was information. I don’t think they will see it that way.

My personal thought is that there is no correct blanket statement that is correct. Some bloggers are journalists. Others are not. From what Gizmodo has done over the last week, I’d put them in the 2nd camp. It will be interesting to see what the courts say when this inevitably ends up there.

Gawker CEO Nick Denton has chimed in on Twitter about the police raid on Jason Chen’s house:

Do bloggers count as journalists? I guess we’ll find out.

The bigger question is “Did Gawker break the law?” If the answer is yes, then it doesn’t matter if bloggers have the same rights as butchers, really. Stolen property is stolen property, no matter whose hands end up on it. Denton’s question is a straw man, nothing more.

Neven Mrgan:

The purpose of a chart is to illuminate; if it’s harder to read than a raw-data table or a paragraph of text saying the same, then don’t use a chart. And if your goal is simply to create a pretty graphic, then don’t try beefing up your science cred with this “information” stuff.

Arranging data in an aesthetically pleasing way with no regard for how the arrangement affects the viewer’s understanding is simply dishonest.

Bingo.

Gizmodo:

Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.

I would go with the judge’s interpretation of the law over that of the COO of Gawker’s.

Chairmen Gruber weighs in:

So, Gray Powell’s personal details get plastered all over Gizmodo. Jason Chen’s get pixelated.

This is the most recent in his series that started with his iPhone 3GS unboxing.

Wired’s Charlie Sorrel:

Fully 12 years after the original G3 iMac dropped support for the 3.5-inch floppy disk, Sony has finally decided to stop making them. The reason is a lack of demand. The surprise is that it took so long.

If you still rely on the massive 1.44MB of space to move files quickly around between far-flung computers, don’t worry: Sony will keep the production lines running until March 2011, giving you a year to stockpile the things. You won’t be alone. Apparently, “lack of demand” is somewhat relative, and Sony sold a jaw-dropping 12 million floppies in Japan during 2009.

Kottke:

In 2001, a PowerBook G4 would have set you back $3500. Suppose instead that you had purchased $3500 in Apple stock instead of the computer…that stock would now be worth about $110,000. Even an original iPod’s worth in AAPL ($399) would be worth almost $12,000 today.