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I stand by what I have stated here and those that know me know I would not make up anything printed here.

… Apple TVs update and HD movie rentals was the big news.

With recent posts from former Apple employees whom speak of the ‘Fear of Steve’ from leaking any information, even after leaving the company, I’m not even going to reveal my source.

But, shhh. Sven’s about to tell us how many Bothans died to bring us this information.

“Apple’s aware of the Exchange need.”

… however, other sites have been sued and shutdown by Apple with little more than I’ve revealed.

Uh, didn’t you just say nothing groundbreaking happened other than…

Sven, we believe it, we just don’t care.

Make love to it! Become one with it! Belong to it in a way that it owns your very soul! Let it keep you up at night! Waste vast reams of paper writing your cut-and-paste manifesto! Let your beard grow out!

“Even after leaving the company”? Is Sven suggesting Steve has had people whacked?

Tell us about the people Steve Jobs had whacked, crazy cut-and-paste guy!

The answer Sven got for Exchange integration was equally exacting in it’s detail:

Well, I hunted someone down at Macworld to give me the answers and after a long search and pass off after pass off from Apple employee to Apple employee, I finally got an answer.

While there is a slew of other unanswered features many have called for since day one, such as voice dialing, these two were my main concern and I was glad to at least get some kind of answer.

And that answer was “Please go away crazy cut-and-paste man.”

I can’t understand why there isn’t more of an uproar about this must-have option in such a versatile device.

But what bugged me more than anything was the lack of something and that something was the missing feature of Cut-n-Paste in the
iPhone.

Behold my mighty pet peeve! Bow down before it! Worship it as your one true god as I do!

No matter how obvious and non-committal it was.

He’s a regular Carl Bernstein, isn’t he?

That’s an interesting perspective on it. As in, oh, isn’t that guy in the leotard shouting about the “gubbermint” on the street corner interesting?

It gets even funnier in the comments where Sven ominously notes:

You know what? Never mind. Just continue.

Right. Well, except for that last bit.

You know what? It would be cool if the iPhone had cut-and-paste. But it’s not exactly the debilitating flaw Sven makes it out to be.

The deal is, Apple is aware of the desire for this option and it is working on it in the labs as we speak. The trouble it is having is implementation.

Yes, I can understand the difficulty in believing all of this…

Sven Rafferty provides us the Skinny on Why the iPhone Update Lacked Cut-n-Paste and Exchange Support… if you dare to read it!

Hey, wait a minute! That’s the same thing the cold fusion guys said!

Macworld was a great time last week even if nothing ground breaking happened other than a very thin and a very expensive laptop was released.

Is your book by any chance this book?

In my book…

There is also a demonstration of wireless device discovery and setup. This demonstration shows how to detect and connect to nearby wireless displays, using the familiar FnF7 (Function F7 key combination).

The chip buzzwords are: Tukwila, a new quad-core chip with 2 billion transistors, a whopping 30MB of cache, and a new interconnect technology called QuickPath; Dunnington, a six-core chip for multiprocessor computers that can support four or more processors (in this case, each with six cores); Nehalem, a follow-on to the current “Penryn” processors, it is a new 45-nanometer chip microarchitecture due in the fourth quarter that scales up to eight cores; and Larrabee, a visual-computing architecture that uses many cores (”many” usually means many more than a typical quad-core computer).

“Petaflops” refers to high-performance computing–what used to be called supercomputing. (”Peta” is quadrillion, or a thousand trillion; “flop” is floating-point operation.) Intel is targeting petaflop supercomputers that would compete with the fastest supercomputer in the world: IBM’s Blue Gene/P machines.

While the marquee processor theme at IDF Shanghai is “milliwatts to petaflops,” Intel is also set to offer a vision of universal connectivity.

(See: Intel rolls out five new Atom processors.)

The main theme for the event, which starts Wednesday, Beijing time, refers to “very, very big to very, very small and low power,” according to Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel’s digital enterprise group, speaking in a video.

Though more technology and product details will certainly emerge in the next two days in Shanghai, the main chip themes are already out there. Gelsinger spelled them out at briefing earlier this month.

“Milliwatts” refers to chips such as Atom, a tiny low-power, low-cost processor destined for ultramobile devices and low-cost desktops typically running either Linux or Windows XP. The first Atom chips will launch in June.

In addition to Atom, the processor spotlight will likely fall on Nehalem and Larrabee. Nehalem is a relatively known quantity; Larrabee, a relatively unknown quantity. So interest should focus on the latter.

The specs for Intel’s Dunnington processor

(Credit:
Intel)

On another front, Intel is evangelizing universal connectivity, always a problematic proposition, simply because it invariably promises more (sometimes much more) than it can deliver. Intel puts it this way: “Imagine a day when a single device small enough to fit in your pocket…knows your tendencies and preferences and can adapt and optimize its interfaces to match what you are doing at any point any time…Imagine a day when this device…can dynamically become a hybrid combination of other computing and multimedia devices in close proximity.” You get the picture. Intel calls this “Carry Small, Live Large.”

Click here for more stories on IDF Shanghai.

Nehalem boasts increased parallelism, better branch prediction (to move instructions more quickly through the instruction pipeline), and an on-chip memory controller for increased memory performance–what Intel calls “memory latency reduction.” Something, by the way, Advanced Micro Devices already has in its chips.

On a slightly more practical level, the Cliffside technology is being demonstrated from the Mobile Products Group; it enables a single Wi-Fi adapter to function like two independent Wi-Fi adapters. The hope is that this technology could sync your MP3 and video files without a USB cable, directly and wirelessly connecting your notebook to your TV to view HD movies. More here.

Larrabee is a graphics processor scheduled for the 2009-2010 time frame. It will include a new vector instruction set to improve the performance of graphics and video applications. Larrabee will be compatible with Intel’s popular x86 instruction set, theoretically making life easier for software developers.

The device can also charge or power the target mobile device during the transferring if the device is USB bus-powered, such as the iPod Nano or pocket-size external hard drives.

For this reason, I am impressed with the Video Transfer from Pinnacle.

The Pinnacle Video Transfer provides high-quality MPEG-4 encoding in H.264 at up to 720×480/576 (NTSC/PAL) resolution and supports multiple inputs including S-Video, composite video, and stereo audio. You can choose to set the quality of the digitized footage to be good, better, or best. The lower the quality, the less storage space the video requires. The device uses high-speed USB 2.0 connection to offer digital video transfer speed up to 480Mbps.

About the size and weight of a cigarette pack, this little device is capable of converting analog videos from any source into MPEG-4-quality video files and saving them to any USB 2.0 storage device, including thumb drives, without the need for a PC. You can also choose to convert video footage directly into mobile devices such as an
iPod, PSP, or any other MPEG-4 video player with built-in storage.

Unfortunately, the Pinnacle Video Transfer can only convert/transfer from an analog source (like the VCR, analog TV turner). With digital footage (like recorded TV shows from a DVR) you will still need to play it with a device with an analog output before you can take advantage of this device. This also means the time it requires to transfer is as long as the video itself. However, it does significantly simplify the task down to pressing only one button.

You can get it now for $99, which is a very reasonable price if you have a lot of tapes and want to transfer them into digital clips without the hassle of using a computer or fiddling with conversion software.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Pinnacle Video Transfer is compact enough for you to easily carry on the go.

One of the most daunting tasks in video archiving is getting the footage digitized and transferred to an easily accessible storage device. This is especially tiresome and tedious if the original is in tape format.

OK, we know you’re probably
iPhone-apped out by now, but a seemingly promising program called DataCase is worth a mention. It turns your iPhone (or
iPod Touch) into a handheld wireless drive, meaning you should be able to peek at your PowerPoint document, reread your Word Document, review a PDF, or check your Excel spreadsheet when and where you want, with no upload program or server configuration necessary.

(Credit:
Veiosoft)

Watch a demo of DataCase below.

The program works directly with Finder and Bonjour to let you save all manner of files by dragging and dropping. PCs and Linux are also supported.

The application is currently in public beta, with the development team at Veiosoft delaying the final release so they can iron out any major problems. “We expect the beta period to be very short, and sincerely hope you’ll understand our desire to release quality software over pushing out something that does not meet your expectations,” the Web site says. Hmmm, we like the sound of that. The $7 price tag doesn’t sound too bad, either.

While the company has not disclosed the nature of the issue that prevented it from operating, it has announced its program to make up for its lapse of service. Netflix customers who were affected by the delay will get a 15 percent credit on the amount of their next monthly bill. New customers still in the free trial will get an additional week before their subscription becomes paid.

Netflix has fixed or patched whatever problem it had that shut down its 55 distribution centers this week, and has begun shipping DVDs again.

Fifteen percent is a token refund, but it seems to be mollifying most Netflix users. For some customers, though, a dashed stay-at-home date night or other event planned around movies by mail can’t be fixed by a credit that will top out at $3.75. These users are making their frustrations known on the Neflix blog, in response to a post about the resumption of service, which says, “Millions of our members will receive DVDs on Saturday, in time (we hope) for some weekend movie enjoyment.”

See also: Worst Web glitches of 2008, so far.

(Credit:
BSA)

During the first half of this year BSA asked auction site providers to shut down more than 18,000 auctions in which 45,000 products, worth $22 million, were being sold, the report says.

The trade group served more than 48,000 “takedown” notices related to BitTorrent files in the first half of this year and says BSA members lost an estimated $525 million in sales as a result of peer-to-peer piracy, according to a new BSA report called “Online Software Scams: A Threat to Your Security.”

The BSA warns consumers that buying pirated software can lead to software incompatibility and viruses, increased maintenance costs with no technical support, as well as identity fraud and privacy breaches.

One in five U.S. consumers who bought software online in 2006 reported problems, in a survey conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of the BSA. More than half received software that was not what they ordered; 36 percent said the software didn’t work; 14 percent realized immediately that the product was pirated; and 12 percent never received what they ordered, according to the survey.

The Business Software Alliance continues to battle distribution of pirated software on peer-to-peer and auction sites.

The piracy problem on auction sites is so bad that the Software and Information Industry Association has said it was considering suing eBay.

“Although consumers may think they are getting a great deal when they buy software from unfamiliar sources online, it is more likely they will receive a substandard product with hidden cybersecurity threats that may expose them to identity theft and the loss of thousands of dollars,” the report says.

Apple apparently ordered 25 million 8Gb chips in June to get the ball rolling, and is now planning for the ramp of the iPhone 3G. The company has steadfastly maintained that it expects to sell 10 million iPhones this year, and it needs to sell about 7.7 million units in the second half of the year to make that goal.

(Credit:
Apple)

Digitimes reported Wednesday that Apple recently placed an order of 50 million 8Gb flash chips that it plans to use for that iPhone thing you might have heard about, and therefore the rest of Samsung’s customers will have to wait for their chips. Samsung is one of the companies that Apple contracted with to secure supply of flash memory back in 2005.

The order would translate into 50 million GBs worth of flash (8Gb, or gigabits, equals 1GB, or gigabyte). So, since Apple’s planning on having 16GB and 8GB versions of the
iPhone 3G, that’s enough memory for 3 million 16GB versions, or 6 million 8GB versions, or (most likely) a more even distribution between the two capacities.

Apple's moving to secure enough flash memory chips for the launch of the iPhone 3G.

Samsung is warning its customers that NAND flash memory might be hard to come by for some time after Apple placed a large order, according to a report out of Taiwan.

I’ll say, however, that I personally don’t buy into this theory. Mainly because when I go looking for online reviews by the masses, I never find them. Instead, I find postings on Yelp or other places where three people have left reviews, all of which have divergent opinions. That’s not very helpful.

Of course, if there are 100 reviews of something, I will get behind the groupthink. The same is true on eBay, for example. If someone has a feedback rating of 8, I’ll stay away, as will almost all buyers or sellers.

More surprising, perhaps, is that 60 percent of the respondents said they trust online reviews left by complete strangers on retailers’ sites.

This is why it’s harder to sell something on eBay when you don’t have a high feedback rating. And this is certainly a function of the wisdom of the crowds, for better or worse.

The authors of Groundswell have determined that people most trust recommendations from friends, but they also put a lot of faith in reviews from anonymous commenters online.

And why do people take the word of those they’ve never met?

It should come as no surprise that a vast majority of us trust our friends’ recommendations about products or services, but according to a study, a strong majority also trust the product reviews of anonymous online commenters.

According to their study, 83 percent of respondents believe in friends’ recommendations, a number higher than those who put stock in newspaper, magazine, or TV reviews (75 percent).

(Credit:
Forrester Research)

These are some of the findings of a study from the book Groundswell, by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, highlighted in a post on the book’s blog this week.

“They don’t–not as individuals,” Bernoff wrote. “But they do in groups. Strangers are assumed not to have an ax to grind. If 100 people on eBags say a laptop bag is great, then it is great. If they say it’s inferior, then it is inferior.”

Perhaps.

To help foster both interests Stuart founded CSI in 2007. I asked him how things have progressed since CSI’s founding:

Cohen: I’m really proud to say that our original concept has been validated in multiple verticals with very different projects. Based on my early conversations with customers during my time as CEO of Open Source Development Labs, I saw an untapped opportunity to build communities in vertical markets to develop software at a fraction of the cost of traditional software models.

You can think of us as a combination of the best of commercial software, open-source software, and custom software for the benefit of like-minded companies.

Asay: In what other vertical markets is Collaborative Software Initiative seeing demand for its development model?

Cohen: We’re really excited about TriSano and our decision to go with AGPLv3 was one to which we gave a lot of thought. TriSano is a public health application focused on infectious disease surveillance, outbreak management and bioterrorism attacks, and it’s a community where epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, health officials and software developers work together to create critically needed public health applications. AGPLv3 best supports the confluence of software-as-a-service and open-source development models. The reaction to TriSano has been quite positive.

Stuart Cohen

Asay: Tell me more about TriSano and your choice to license it under AGPLv3.

I was fortunate to catch up Thursday with Stuart Cohen, CEO and founder of the Collaborative Software Initiative. Stuart used to run OSDL where he got to talk with people at large enterprises that have adopted open source, and learned quite a bit about enterprise interest in not only consuming open source, but also creating open source.

Cohen: Go beyond the code. Extend your business model to address the needs of business users and subject matter experts. The best software is developed with collaboration among all constituents - the developers, users and partners. The principles that made open source disruptive to the software industry can be applied to a new level of applications that broaden the opportunities for any software company. This brings greater value to the customers and communities served.

Asay: A year ago I said that Collaborative Software Initiative was changing the rules of the enterprise. Do you think this still true?

Cohen: It’s amazing how many people I’ve talked to over the last two years about how the Collaborative Software Initiative model can work for them. When customers see our model, they quickly identify opportunities to collaborate with their peers. People from a range of industries have expressed interest and we see organic growth from our first few projects in health care, government and financial services. We’re also talking to folks in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and energy industries.

The unique value Collaborative Software Initiative brings to the market is our recipe for collaboration that enables developing and deploying software in a variety of ways: software as a service (SaaS), on-site, and as an appliance. In short, our mission is to work with companies that have identified common needs in their vertical, reduce their upfront cost of development and deployment, and create a community around the code to improve the technology past the point of delivery, leveraging dollars for competitive differentiation.

Asay: Open source really is about collaboration, as you indicate in the name of your company. Given your experiences over the last five years, what’s your advice for the open-source industry today?

commentary

Cohen: Yes, very much. Enterprise organizations have gained a significant amount of value from infrastructure applications that have been community built - from Linux to MySQL to JBoss, the results are undeniable.

Asay: Collaborative Software Initiative is going on 18 months now. How has the company evolved since you founded it in April 2007?

Excellent insight, confirming to me that CSI continues to push the envelope on what open source can do for the enterprise.

(Credit:
Collaborative Software Initiative)

We believe, and again this has been validated over the last year, that communities lower cost, provide a “network effect” for companies adopting these applications and build sustainability for future growth of an application.

That said, software developers are best when solving problems they are passionate about, which generally does not include compliance software or industry-specific applications, which is why subject matter experts are so important to our collaborative model. Gartner likes to call us the first vendor to represent community sourcing, which it says is when users decide to band together to create their own solutions. Our collaborative model enables that phenomenon.

JS-Kit’s specialty isn’t gimmicky widgets, but rather low-cost add-ons for Web sites, like comments and ratings, that could otherwise be built in-house for a higher tab.

JS-Kit, a start-up that has created an array of social-networking apps for sites to install, has raised $3.6 million in venture funding in a Series B round led by Altos Ventures. Existing investor TEF3 also contributed.

“Each of these areas provides key value to all our publisher partners who can rest assured that we have the development team necessary to continue to support the products, the leadership to execute on an exciting road map, and a sustainable business model to ensure the company’s success now and into the future,” CEO Khris Loux wrote in an e-mail announcement.

With the funding, JS-Kit plans to make more hires beyond its team of 12 engineers as well as broaden its management team–DataPortability Workgroup organizer Chris Saad has joined the company as an advisor. The company also plans to hone its business-development strategy so that it can reach the magic “profitable” milestone sooner rather than later.