512 Pixels

Macworld:

In a statement sent via e-mail Thursday, Microsoft confirmed it removed the ad—one in a series to promote IE8—based on viewer feedback, and meant no harm in it.

“We make a point of listening to our customers,” according to Microsoft. “We created the OMGIGP video as a tongue-in-cheek look at the InPrivate Browsing feature of Internet Explorer 8, using the same irreverent humor that our customers told us they liked about other components of the Internet Explorer 8 marketing campaign. While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.”

Sadly, this includes the copy I linked to yesterday.

I’ve revamped the CSS here on ForkBombr. If you read my content via RSS and never visit, come drop by and take a look.

Gone is the dark background, the type is all a little smaller and the logo now lives in the sidebar. A few other loose ends have been tied up.

If you’re using Internet Explorer 6—and I know 16% of you are—you may have some issues with the new layout. But really, it’s time to move on. Find Windows Update in your Start menu and run it. There are lots of updates just waiting for you and your computer.

Thanks.

Safari’s had it forever, but Ars Technica’s Ryan Paul does a nice job of describing the feature:

With a stroke at the keyboard, users can erect stiff privacy barriers that will prevent their Web surfing habits from penetrating the browser history and defiling the sensitive auto-completion system with incriminating data where it might arouse the suspicions of subsequent users.

Perfect.

The Walkman made music mobile. For the first time, you could take your favorite tunes - albeit in cassette form - anywhere. It is this freedom that Apple capitalized one with the first iPod in 2001.

The first Walkman, the TPS-L2, had all sorts of cool features like dual headphone ports (so you and your girl could slow dance together behind the school gym), independent volume control for the left and right audio channels and a talk-over feature (so  you could talk to your girl over the music), all tucked inside a sturdy blue and grey metal case.

Read all about the TPS-L2 and the subsequent Walkman devices over at Wikipedia.

File this under “Shit you couldn’t make up if you tried.”

Microsoft is offering a “special edition” of Internet Explorer 8. What’s so special? You get a Nickelback MP3 and access to “Nickelback webisodes and online content.”  And a browser that doesn’t respect open standards.

If you want a sub-standard browser and a sub-standard band’s new single, click here. Be warned, the Nickelback song starts playing automatically, of course.

AutoblogGreen:

Why waste a perfectly good used shopping cart when it can be recycled into something fun? Seeking to definitively answer that question is a twenty-year-old MIT student named Charles Guan who normally spends his free time building competition-spec battle robots. Our favorite of Guan’s projects would have to be the LOLrioKart, obviously a play on the classic Mario Kart series of games from Nintendo.

First assembled using an old NiCad battery pack that was quickly nearing the end of its life, the LOLrioKart is well into its second generation using some leftover lithium nanophosphate cells from A123 that the company had donated to the University. This latest 33 Ah battery pack sends its 48 volts to a Briggs and Stratton ETEK DC pancake electric motor, which operates through a DIY rear differential and to the tiny little tires out back.

Hit the link for videos while I go look for a shopping cart to steal.

Ars Technica has a great look back at this excellent format.

@mynameispj (my co-editor from back in the high school newspaper days) sent me this on Twitter after reading my take on the Internet Explorer/Nickelback thing:

Seriously. I’m reposting this because it’s beyond absurd. Really, Microsoft? Really?

He was talking about this link, on CNET. The headline reads: “Microsoft resorts to vomit to market IE 8.”

I wish it didn’t but it does. The article contains this ad:

Yes, you did just see what you think you saw.

The ad is actually for the “Browser for the Better” campaign, which is a partnership between Microsoft and Feeding America in which they will give 8 meals away for every copy of IE 8 that is download.

Microsoft, I’ll download your browser for my PC—not use it, mind you—just to help someone out. But that ad is just about the weirdest thing you could have done.

Lifehacker:

Joining Gmail, Yahoo, and other mail services, Windows Live Hotmail launches incoming POP3 access for the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, meaning Hotmail users can aggregate all their other email accounts into one inbox.

As we’ve previously reported, Microsoft recently allowed outgoing POP3 access. While Hotmail users in the U.K., France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany have had access to the incoming POP3 feature for some time, today the Western hemisphere gets their more open-ended accounts as well.

Welcome to 2003, Hotmail users.

Birdfeed - a new twitter application by Buzz Anderson (of PodWorks and more) and designed by Neven  Mrgan - is now in the App Store for $4.99.

Five bucks is high for a Twitter client, but Birdfeed is simply gorgeous. It fits nicely between Tweetie’s simple layout and Twitterrific’s design-heavy approach.

As a 1.0 release, Birdfeed doesn’t have all the features that other (and older) Twitter clients offer, but the app does offer some features that others don’t, such as a local cache (for offline reading), timestamps in the feed to show you when you left off, and the ability to load more tweets once you hit the bottom of the screen. The developers are saying more features are on the way, but they adhere to the “Real Artists Ship” theory crafted by Steve Jobs when working on the original Macintosh.

Scrolling is smooth, the icons are beautiful, and the typefaces are perfect. My favorite little touch is the badges that show up next to “Mentions” and “Direct Messages,” showing how many unread items are in each category. This is repeated in the menu bar, so you don’t even have to move from the timeline to see the unread count. Searches and trends are gorgeous.

There’s really not a nook or cranny of the app that isn’t polished nicely. It’s well done, all the way around.

Wired:

Just a week after the release of Apple’s new iPhone, a few owners have complained about the handset’s high temperatures, which in some cases are high enough to start browning the white plastic on the back of the phone.

Only a small number of iPhone 3GS customers have reported their handsets are reaching very high temperatures. But because more than a million iPhone 3GSes were sold in the first weekend, the issue could put tens of thousands of new iPhones at risk, a component specialist told Wired.com.

Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, which performs teardowns of iPhones and iPods, said overheating is likely an issue due to faulty battery cells, and said he expected it could spur a recall of up to hundreds of thousands of iPhone 3GS units.

As someone with a white 3GS on order, I hope this isn’t a widespread issue.

CNN:

“Steve Jobs is back to work. He is at Apple a few days a week and working from home the other days,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “We’re glad to have him back.”