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Richard Branson vs Rupert Murdoch in iPad Magazine Wars Soon
In Search of Solder and a Sense of Achievement
MacBook Pro refresh with SSD, Light Peak & no DVD in April 2011?
The Daily Slash: November 26 2010

Richard Branson vs Rupert Murdoch in iPad Magazine Wars Soon

Posted: 27 Nov 2010 11:37 AM PST

As you may be already aware, Richard Branson will soon (maybe as soon as next week) be launching an iPad-centric magazine by the name of “Project.” Richard Branson is affiliated with Virgin, while News Corporation “tycoon” Rupert Murdoch, at the same time, is hot on the path to making a daily newspaper with the same subject matter by the name of “The Daily.” This iPad newspaper is set to be “unveiled” next month and officially launched at the beginning of 2011. This newspaper will cost about $30 million USD to start, it employing a staff of about 100 journalists.

Murdoch might have a distinct advantage over Branson due to the fact that The Daily is being released in close collaboration with Steve Jobs himself, the publication being possibly “automatically” (pre-loaded?) dispatched to iPad or similar devices. This publication will have no print or online edition, it being sent out through devices including iPad exclusively. The Daily will cost 99 cents a week.

On the other hand, the Project publication being started up by Richard Branson will be headed by Branson’s 29-year-old daughter Holly and will be less about current affairs and more about entertainment, design, business, travel, and international culture. This magazine will have Anthony Noguera, former editor of Zoo, FHM, and Arena, acting as head editor.

Magazine vs Newspaper. I’d like to say I couldn’t imagine either one succeeding when there’s blogs around to bring this info much faster than a daily publication, but if either of these come pre-loaded onto the iPad or similar devices, there’s a very big possibility that either one could be massively successful.

[Via Guardian UK]

In Search of Solder and a Sense of Achievement

Posted: 27 Nov 2010 11:00 AM PST

Should all geeks have soldering iron burns on their hands if they want the title? Probably not; after all, another hallmark of the ideal geek is an affinity with code, making software do amazing things. They come in all shapes and sizes, then, but there’s a special, envious place in my heart for those to whom resister colors are meaningful rather than decorative. I look at the sometimes-useful, sometimes-bizarre, invariably brilliant projects documented on MAKE; I look at modders and DIY tinkerers like jkkmobile, slotting HSPA modems where manufacturers never intended them to sit, and I wish I could be trusted with a soldering iron and screwdriver set to do the same.

[Image credit: Windell H. Oskay www.evilmadscientist.com]

It’s about longevity, I think, the desire to create something less ephemeral than words on a screen. Perhaps it’s the odd sense of pride that leads parents to stick the awful pictures their children have drawn up on the refrigerator, even though the people they crayon look like bloated sausages with sticks protruding, and the colors are all wrong. My battery-powered gizmos would likely be wretched, and pointless, and poorly put together, but they’d be my own little track record of (mediocre) achievement. I certainly don’t expect the amateur electronics I might come up with to be snapped up by the Science Museum, any more than I could hope the British Library might decide it’s their moral obligation to future generations that my writing should be preserved in a mink-lined, magnetically shielded hard-drive caddy.

Space, though, is my problem, and time, or at least the agreeable use of them. Decide to spend your days writing – or blogging – and all you need is a patch of land for your laptop, a tiny footprint indeed. I’ve a suspicion any physical projects I took on would expand to a far greater degree, monopolising the dining table, a couple of cupboards (I’m a hoarder already, so imagine factoring in hundreds of lengths of “might come in handy” wire, “too useful to throw away” LEDs and “blimey, nice action on that one” switches, not to mention potential project boxes, lengths of breadboard and those brilliant multi-hand “solderer’s friends”) and plenty of time I already don’t spend with family and friends because I’m too busy wading through Twitter, Techmeme and NetNewsWire.

I’m also over-ambitious. I don’t want to make a simple radio, or an array of Knight Rider style blinking lights; I’m not interested in a DIY plant moistness monitor. I look at the open-source robotics we gleefully write about on SlashGear, and the sprawling, beguiling synths and odd instruments, and I want to immediately wade into waters I’ve nowhere near the skills for. That ridiculous ambition also stops me actually buying anything: do I spend a few hundred on a robot kit I’m probably going to botch, break or simply give up on, because I don’t know which end of an Arduino is which? No, so I make more mental shopping lists instead.

Blogging is cost-effective, and it’s relatively straightforward too. Problem is, along the way it’s too easy to spend all your time writing about, rather than doing, the things that interest you. Given the public holiday just gone, it seems topical to be thankful for the audience we – I – have here, for the times they agree with us and the times they disagree, for the tips they send in, for sharing the things they find exciting and the ways in which they make us think. This time next year, though, I hope I’m also thankful for the new soldering iron burns on my fingers, the shoeboxes filled with nameless components, and the line-up of pointless gizmos on the windowsill, blinking their LEDs at me gleefully.

MacBook Pro refresh with SSD, Light Peak & no DVD in April 2011?

Posted: 27 Nov 2010 04:54 AM PST

With most of the excitement happening in Apple’s iPad tablet, MacBook Air ultraportable and iPhone 4 smartphone segments, the poor MacBook Pro has been somewhat relegated. The latest rumors, however, suggest that’s all likely to change in April 2011, with Three Guys and a Podcast tipping a significant refresh that will see the new MacBook Pro gain not only up to 512GB of SSD storage in a wholesale shift to solid-state memory, but the adoption of Intel’s Light Peak technology.

“The new MacBook Pros will move to solid state storage, up to 512GB, remove the optical drive, and we believe light-peak is being pushed to make it's first-ever entrance into the market, another Apple exclusive.” Three Guys and a Podcast

Light Peak is a new, super-high-speed data transfer technology promising – in its first iteration, at least – up to 10 Gbps of bidirectional throughput. Billed as the replacement to USB 3.0, Intel has previously said that the first Light Peak enabled machines should arrive by early 2011; they’ve also worked with Apple on the system, and TGAAP reckon the technology will be a Cupertino exclusive, at least at first.

Finally, the new MacBook Pro will also apparently lose its optical drive, and gain a new version of Final Cut Pro that will also debut in April 2011. Apple is expected to keep a “legacy” 15-inch MBP for those unwilling to drop the DVD burner, priced at around $1,799, but the new machines should kick off at $1,999. It’s unclear exactly what the podcast’s sources are, but they do have a reasonable track history of predicting Apple events.

[via Slashdot]

The Daily Slash: November 26 2010

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 05:07 PM PST

Hello all you shoppers and non-shoppers. Today, like all days surrounding a major US holiday, was a day of mixed news. Not mixed in the way of good and bad, but mixed in the way of one thing being basically nothing like the next! As I said this morning, the tablet wave is really gaining speed, quite a few of the posts today ending up being tablet or tablet related. We’ve got reviews of both the TV top box Logitech Revue and the Nokia C6-01 smartphone – all this and MORE on The Daily Slash!

SlashSECURITY
Homeland Security Investigations unit ICE has been busy this week, launching a major crackdown on what appears to be two categories of webpages: copyrighted music download sites (such as torrent listing sites) and sites selling knockoffs of trademarked goods (such as designer handbags). The owner of one of these sites, Torrent-Finder, had the following to say to the site that’s reporting on the situation, TorrentFreak: "My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court! … I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.” Be on your guard, but we’re not sure what that could entail, as no details on how to appeal HSI’s seizings seem to be available.