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After some time in the making I’ve launched “Volery” a twitter application. It essentially allows you to tweets to an account on Twitter. It also has some basic functions of twitter (like character countdown)

written by tom

I recently upgraded my cell phone to the Motorola V750. For the price (free after contract) it is a pretty decent phone. With a still camera, video camera, bluetooth, and micro SD card it packed a lot of punch.
The one thing that really baffelled me was how to get ringtones to the phone without paying for them. My cell carrier (Verizon) was more than happy to sell me ringtones on the phone with their “My Music” feature on the phone. That option would cost me money.
Here’s the solution:
Grab the mp3 you want.
You need to make sure that the mp3 is less than 30 seconds long. If you have an audio editing program you can cut down the mp3 that you want. If you don’t have one, I suggest you grab the open-source Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) and trim the file so it’s less than 30 seconds.
Save the mp3 locally to your computer.
E-mail your phone with the amp3 attached. If you don’t know your phone’s e-mail address try sending a text message to your e-mail address. You’ll see your phone’s e-mail address in the “To:” field.
When you get the message on your phone you will click on “options” and “save attachment as ring tone”.
Then head to your sounds settings and you’ll see the ringtone on your list.
Enjoy!

written by tom

For the past few years I have been anxiously awaiting the support of AACplus streaming in iTunes. The AACplus stream format handles compression much better than other popular streaming formats, like mp3. AACplus also doesn’t have the stigma with IT folks like mp3s do.

written by tom

Changes Would Pose Serious Threat To Americans’ Personal Information, Says ACLU

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union submitted comments today to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) opposing its recent proposal to reverse current federal policy and allow the use of web tracking technologies, like cookies, on federal government websites. Cookies can be used to track an Internet user’s every click and are often linked across multiple websites; they frequently identify particular people.

Since 2000, it has been the policy of the federal government not to use such technology. But the OMB is now seeking to change that policy and is considering the use of cookies for tracking web visitors across multiple sessions and storing their unique preferences and surfing habits. Though this is a major shift in policy, the announcement of this program consists of only a single page from the federal register that contains almost no detail.

“This is a sea change in government privacy policy,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Without explaining this reversal of policy, the OMB is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website. Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections.”

The use of cookies allows a website to differentiate between users and build a database of each user’s viewing habits and the information they share with the site. Since web surfers frequently share information like their name or email address (if they’ve signed up for a service) or search request terms, the use of cookies frequently allows a user’s identity and web surfing habits to be linked. In addition, websites can allow third parties, such as advertisers, to also place cookies on a user’s computer.

“Americans rely on the information from the federal government to research politics, medical issues and legal requirements. The OMB is now asking to retain the personal and identifiable information we leave behind,” said Christopher Calabrese, Counsel for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project. “No American should have to sacrifice privacy or risk surveillance in order to access free government information. No policy change should be adopted without wide ranging debate including information on the restrictions and uses of cookies as well as impact on privacy.”

written by tom

San Francisco – Apple has retracted its legal threats against public wiki hosting site Bluwiki, and, in response, EFF is dismissing its lawsuit against Apple over those threats. The skirmish involved a set of anonymously authored wiki pages in which hobbyists were discussing how to “sync” media to iPods and iPhones using music library playback software other than Apple’s own iTunes.

In November 2008, Apple sent a series of legal threats to the operator of Bluwiki, alleging that these hobbyist discussions about interoperability violated copyright law and constituted a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), even though the author(s) of the pages had not yet figured out how to accomplish their goal. In response to Apple’s legal threats, Bluwiki took down the wiki pages in question. In April 2009, EFF and the San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest sued Apple on behalf of OdioWorks, which runs Bluwiki, asking a court to reject Apple’s claims and allow Bluwiki to restore the discussions.

On July 8, 2009, Apple sent letter withdrawing its cease-and-desist demands and stating that “Apple no longer has, nor will it have in the future, any objection to the publication of the iTunesDB Pages.” As a result, EFF has moved to dismiss its complaint against Apple.

“While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after 7 months of censorship and a lawsuit,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “Because Apple continues to use technical measures to lock iPod Touch and iPhone owners into — and Palm Pre owners out of — using Apple’s iTunes software, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more discussions among frustrated customers about reverse engineering Apple products. We hope Apple has learned its lesson here and will give those online discussions a wide berth in the future.”

For more details:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/apple-backs-down-blu

For more information about OdioWorks v. Apple:

http://www.eff.org/cases/odioworks-v-apple

written by tom