From Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder:
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company’s undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
Here’s a link to Chapter 3 as a PDF or a text or a Word file. (Here’s chapter 1 and an introduction to the book, and here’s chapter 2)
To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.
Boing Boing continues its serial of the reissue of The Deal with the next installment, Chapter 2.
“My friend Joe Hutsko contacted me a few weeks back with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company’s undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
Here’s a link to Chapter 2 as a PDF or a text file. (Here’s chapter 1 and an introduction to the book.)
To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.”
Special thanks to Mark Frauenfelder!
Nearly a year after its release, the iPhone is finally getting a feature every mobile phone already has - the ability to search contacts. The no-brainer missing feature was the number one item in my iPhone wish list story for MSNBC (iWish: iPhone updates we’d like to see - Our top 25 suggestions for making the super-slick device even better.)
From the iPhone webpage, in Apple’s own words:
If you have a lot of contacts, use the search feature to quickly find specific names.
No-duh.
At this rate, does that mean we won’t see the second wish list item (a feature found on every other smartphone): Copy and paste?
I’m overjoyed by my friend (and one-time WIRED editor) Mark Frauenfelder’s decision to serialize my first novel, The Deal, on his web site, Boing Boing. Thank you, my friend!
Pre-order the new trade paperback edition of The Deal and I’ll sign and inscribe with words of your choosing.
From Mark’s post:
“My friend Joe Hutsko contacted me a few weeks back with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance.
I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company’s undertaking to create an iPhone-like device. It seems fitting to offer the first chapter of The Deal on the weekend before iPhone 2.0 is to be released.
We’ll post a new chapter of The Deal every Friday.”
UPDATE: Project complete.
I’m new to writing wikis, and my first effort is the Admin Guide for Inveneo.org. The first rough draft is currently in “beta” as I and Inveneo-tech-goddess and co-author Jaime Bruner refine the text, tighten things up, and otherwise move the work to 1.0 status.
Downloading: That Other Way to Get a Video Game
By Joe Hutsko
Game downloading services have been around for years and are only just beginning to make a dent in sales of packaged game software.
The New York Times:
Personal Tech | Circuits | Basics
A New Cable for Your Maze
By JOE HUTSKO
The real estate on the back of an HDTV is crowded with ports for connectors of the past. Out of that mess comes yet another cable, but it is supposed to make everything simple: the HDMI.
Last summer I wrote a story for MSNBC.com the iPhone (Can the iPhone do double-duty as a laptop replacement?), and a companion story (iWish: iPhone updates we’d like to see).
With Apple’s release today of the iPhone 1.1.3 update for iPhone, a number of new features have been added. Weirdly, a number of the top wish-list items - like the ability to cut and paste, or lookup a contact by typing in a few characters of a person’s name or contact info, the way you can on every other mobile phone in the world - are still absent.
Although only one of the 25 wish list items was addressed in today’s 1.1.3 iPhone software update, it is a big one: The ability to “Manually manages music and videos.”
To many the value of this feature (which has always been an option on iPods) isn’t obvious. The short explanation: With this feature turned on, you never have to worry about whether songs on your various playlists duplicate one another, hogging precious storage space. Thank you, Apple.
As Apple chairman Steve Jobs stated today, there are still 50 weeks left in 2008 to release more iPhone improvements, so at a rate one every other week they just might get to those remaining 24 wish list items by the time we’ve got a new president in the White House.
Let’s hope.
My One Laptop Per Child OLPC XO laptop arrived this morning. As the previous entry reports, I was one of the unlucky Day 1 Donors (D1Der, in OLPC lingo) who didn’t receive my OLPC XO on the promised first-come, first-serve basis, while other donors who joined the Give One Get One (G1G1) days or weeks later received their laptops before some of us D1Ders.
I’d been checking the FedEx tracking page day after day (sometimes hour after hour), and finally on the 28th the system recognized my reference number. Many donors reportedly received their laptops via FedEx Overnight before the 24th, but I guess OLPC stopped providing overnight delivery after that date, because my OLPC XO wasn’t slated to arrive until today, January 2, five days after it shipped.
As I mentioned in the below entry, I’ll be writing about “A week in a life with the OLPC XO” laptop in the next week or so, however I will share one first impression now: Many OLPC XO recipients report the device is much smaller than expected once they have it in their hands. With so many reports of Lilliputian-dimensions, I was actually surprised by how much larger the OLPC XO is than I expected. At the same time, the keyboard is going to be a challenge for speed typing - it’s definitely not designed for big-kid hands, though it will suit little hands (or paws) just fine.
Stay tuned.
When nice turns naughty
Donors give laptops to needy children, kick and scream when they don’t get theirs in return
By Joe Hutsko
Their intentions were good: Pay $400 to donate one of the so-called “$100” laptop computers to a needy child in a developing country, and in return receive one for your own child (or the child in you, if you’re an adult). The window of opportunity to “Give 1, Get 1,” (G1G1) was limited to one month, and the information on the One Laptop Per Child website (laptopgiving.org) stated orders would be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis.
But when laptops began arriving on the doorsteps of donors who participated days after the program began on November 12 but not to “D1Ders” (Day One Donors) who were first in line, tempers flared, turning what started as a nice gesture of giving into an at times nasty online “conversation” by disappointed givers who hadn’t received their half of the bargain by Christmas Eve day, as promised.
“…considering people who ordered as late as the third day are already getting theirs before those of us who woke up before the butt crack of dawn to order them because we were told they were going to be shipped first come, first served who haven’t gotten even shipping notices is a little frustrating in my opinion.”
- OLPCnews.com forum user
Located on the site OLPCnews.com, thousands of forum readers have viewed hundreds of topics ranging from what day they donated and then received their O.L.P.C. XO, to trying to crack and track the elusive ten-digit confirmation code some donors received in an order follow-up email, while others did not. Continue reading ‘When nice turns naughty: No OLPC XO laptop under some first-day donors’ Christmas trees’
Cool holiday tech: MP3 and media players
Give the gift of tapping in and tuning out with these music and video devices
By Joe Hutsko
Smart phones that top the holiday list
These phones will let you send text messages, email and listen to tunes
By Joe Hutsko
On MSNBC.com:
Cool holiday tech: Headphones
Ditch your junkie freebie headphones for one of these sweet-sounding sets
By Joe Hutsko
I downloaded and installed the iPod Nano 1.0.3 update on my third-gen Nano and low and behold, it fixed the annoying distance reporting problem I was experiencing with the 1.0.2 firmware.
So yes, fellow Nike + iPod runners, the problem is history, and the distance you see on the screen will now match the actual distance you’re covering on foot. Happy trails.
The satirical and frequently hysterical blog “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” - a.k.a. Fake Steve - commented on my “iRegret” story for MSNBC.
My favorite part is Fake Steve’s note at the end of the post:
UPDATE: This article apparently was written before we announced our SDK. So to be fair to the hater and to us, that point is something we’ve addressed.
‘Nuff said.
iRegret: Apple’s smartphone isn’t so smart
No measurable improvements to this remarkably inventive device
By Joe Hutsko
Also: Five cool iPhone apps you can’t use
Easygoing Halo 3 types, take note: Those who plan to choose the Easy difficulty level when you jump in on Tuesday may want to reconsider, because many of the achievements unlock only when the game is played on the difficulty levels above Easy (i.e. Normal, Heroic, or Legendary). At the same time, let’s rectify incorrect information previously posted on some sites, which reported that playing on Easy difficulty prevents any achievements from unlocking. On my first run into the advance copy I received today I started on Easy, completed the first level, an sure enough, didn’t receive an achievement for doing so. However, I did receive the Used Car Salesman achievement, because, granted when after you’ve “Destroyed a vehicle that has three enemies in it in a ranked playlist or in campaign.” So while those who plan to take it Easy won’t go totally unrewarded, playing on at least Normal will unlock the level completes otherwise unattainable on Easy difficulty.
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