This hatchet job might be the handiwork of Bono‘s Elevation Partners, which recently took a stake in Palm, and more specifically Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple executive who ran its iPod division before joining Palm as Executive Chairman as a part of that private equity investment.

The press release insists that there will be a FOLEO II while giving no specific timeline.  This is really just code for a little bit of face-saving for Hawkins, who is practically beatified in Silicon Valley along with iPod creator Tony Fadell.

While pulling a product so soon after launch may look like a bit of a black eye, the other option (ceding reality to their competitors while pushing a product that no one can see a use for) was probably far worse.  At any rate, it’s a reminder of the fact that Silicon Valley culture can be far too inward-looking.  Spend any amount of time there and you start to assume that the regular world is just like it, and the cold reality for Palm is that the Wal-Mart nation has much different, less complicated needs, and that product designers need to engage themselves as much as possible with the general public.  As I tried to point out on FoRK, if you only build products for people like you, then you should only expect to sell them to people like you.  Empathy is a key character trait of good product designers, and if your lifestyle, wealth, society, and work separate you substantially from the real people who live in the mass market, then it becomes extremely difficult for you to remain empathetic to their daily problems, needs, dreams, and challenges.

Apparently there just aren’t too many people like Jeff Hawkins anymore.

WASHINGTON – Regulators adopted rules Wednesday to make cable television and new television sets more compatible, with the goal of promoting the rollout of digital and high-definition televisions.

The Federal Communications Commission ( news -web sites ) voted 5-0 to approve the new technical and labeling standards, which seek to allow digital cable signals to flow seamlessly into TV sets without the need for a set-top box. Companies want high-definition sets with this “plug-and-play” technology available next year.

To watch cable on a plug-and-play TV, consumers would insert into the set a security card provided by their cable service.

“This is a great result for consumers,” FCC ( news -web sites ) Chairman Michael Powell said at the commission’s monthly meeting. “Consumers who want digital television sets will have an easier time connecting them to their cable service and having them work with high-definition and other digital programming.”

The cable and electronics industries agreed in December to make their equipment work together. The plan needed federal approval.

“The FCC action could be an important tipping point in the U.S. transition to digital television,” the Consumer Electronics Association said in a statement.

Unlike traditional analog television, digital TV signals use the on-and-off language of computers, which allows for sharper pictures and potential features, including Internet access, video games and multiple programs on one channel. Digital signals can be sent with satellites, by cable or as over-the-air broadcasts.

High-definition television, or HDTV, is another feature made possible by digital TV. Sets designed for HDTV signals offer more lifelike pictures and sound. HDTV sets cost from about $800 to many thousands of dollars, but prices are dropping.

Cable providers now offer high-definition service to 60 million U.S. households, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said.

Uncertainty over whether various digital devices would be compatible has made it confusing for consumers considering buying an HDTV set.

Under the rules approved Wednesday, consumers would still need set-top boxes to use two-way services such as video on demand, some pay-per-view programming and customized electronic programming guides. Cable and electronics companies are working on an agreement to simplify two-way services.

Digital tuners, either inside a TV or a set-top box, will be needed to receive broadcasts over the airwaves after the nation switches from analog to digital signals. Congress has set a goal of December 2006 for the switch over.

Separately, the FCC began reviews of policies governing wireless ( news -web sites ) services in rural areas and pricing rules involving the leasing of telephone networks.

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Online Music Broadcasters Sue RIAA 36 minutes ago

Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By RON HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO – An alliance of online music broadcasters sued the recording industry in federal court Wednesday, alleging major record labels have unlawfully inflated webcasting royalty rates to keep independent operators out of the market.

Webcaster Alliance, an organization claiming some 400 members, filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming the major labels and the Recording Industry Association of America ( news -web sites ) have maintained a monopoly over their music.

The suit alleges the negotiations for arriving at royalty rates to broadcast songs over the Internet violated federal antitrust laws and seeks an injunction that would prevent the major labels from enforcing their intellectual property rights and collecting royalty payments.

The current royalty rate for broadcasting music over the Internet is 7 cents per performance for each listener accounted for, a rate that has kept small webcasters from entering the market, said Ann Gabriel, president of Webcaster Alliance.

Gabriel’s organization would like to see the per performance royalties eliminated. Instead, a flat percentage of commercial webcaster revenues, somewhere between 3 and 5 percent, would be a fair fee to pay, she said.

The RIAA called the suit a “publicity stunt that has no merit.”

“Record companies and artists have worked earnestly and diligently to negotiate a variety of agreements with a host of new types of radio services, including commercial and noncommercial webcasters,” the RIAA said in a statement.

The major labels have struck a variety of agreements for webcasting that go beyond the behemoths of the industry, such as AOL, and deal with smaller commercial and noncommercial operations.

SoundExchange, the organization that collects payments on behalf of the music industry and artists, recently struck licensing agreements with satellite radio stations, college Internet radio stations and background music services that send tunes to retail stores.

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-Ian.

—— http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidR8&ncidR8&e=2&u=/ap/ 20030819/ap_on_hi_te/blackout_ham_radio Ham Radios Came to Rescue in Blackout Tue Aug 19, 1:14 PM ET By STEPHEN SINGER, Associated Press Writer

HARTFORD, Conn. – When technology failed on a massive scale last week, some old-fashioned broadcasting stepped into the breach as ham radio operators took to the airwaves to reach emergency workers.

For millions of people in the Northeast and Midwest, the Aug. 14 outage took access to e-mail and the Internet with it. Landline and cellular telephones were jammed by a crush of calls.

But the ham radio, which came into being in the World War I era, connected firefighters and police departments, Red Cross workers and other emergency personnel during the most extensive blackout in the Northeast since 1977.

Ham operators are not dependent on a server or cell tower, and with battery backups can operate when grids can’t.

“When everything else fails, the ham radio is still there,” said Allen Pitts, a ham operator in New Britain. “You can’t knock out that system.”

The radios are operated by a network of volunteers organized by the Newington-based American Radio Relay League.

Ham radio’s importance won renewed recognition after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ARRL won a federal Homeland Security grant of nearly $182,000 to train amateur radio operators in emergency operations to help during terrorist attacks.

“It’s incredible the differences you’re seeing, the large cadre of people who know what they’re doing,” Pitts said. “It’s making a major difference.”

Tom Carrubba, a coordinator for ARRL in New York City’s five boroughs and two counties on Long Island, said volunteers went to work immediately after power went down Thursday afternoon.

“In five minutes guys were on the air with the Red Cross and Office of Emergency Management,” he said.

During other disasters, such as severe weather, ARRL volunteers and coordinators activate telephone trees, Carrubba said. On Thursday, they instead hit their assigned frequency or staffed an emergency operations center.

In the New York-Long Island region, with a population of nearly 10 million, about 100 ham radio operators handled the situation, Carrubba said. Some volunteers headed to a Red Cross headquarters or shelter, fire department, or hospital, he said. One hospital was temporarily out of power and ARRL volunteers provided communications to ambulances until electricity was restored.

Carrubba estimated that operators handled 800 to 1,000 communications from Thursday afternoon until early Friday.

___

On the Net:

http://www.arrl.org

-Ian.

———- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030507/ap_on_hi_te/ internet_toilet

Microsoft Plans Toilets With Web Access Wed May 7, 1:03 PM ET Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By The Associated Press

SEATTLE – Now on the way: “Surfing on the loo” with Internet access at portable toilets.

The iLoo being developed by the MSN division of Microsoft Corp. in Britain is a standard portable toilet — a loo to the English — with a wireless (news – web sites) keyboard and extending, height-adjustable plasma screen in front of the seat.

There would also be a “Hotmail station” with waterproof keyboard and plasma screen on the outside for those waiting in line.

MSN officials say they’re negotiating for the manufacture of toilet paper imprinted with Web addresses that users may not have tried.

“The Internet’s so much a part of everyday life now that surfing on the loo was the next natural step,” MSN marketing manager Tracy Blacher said. “People used to reach for a book or mag(azine) when they were on the loo, but now they’ll be logging on.”

The device is expected to be in use at festivals this summer in Britain, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Tuesday. There’s no word on if, or when, the iLoo will make its way across the pond.

Instead, they’re hedgehogs, rolling up into a spiky ball every time anyone “threatens” the crutches they use to sustain their faltering businesses. Only by systematically removing these artificial retention tools can we force these carriers to become creative, innovative marketers who bring us services we actually need.

In the meantime, fuck ’em. Let’s force them to jump through expensive hoops and remove all of their spikes. They’ve been milking captive markets for too long.

-Ian.

—- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030416/ap_on_hi_te/ cell_phone_numbers

Wireless Cos. Fight Rule on Phone Numbers Wed Apr 16, 9:15 AM ET Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By DAVID HO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Despite static, dropped calls and dead zones, Jeff Danielson sticks with his cell phone service, not out of loyalty but because he can’t stand the thought of asking clients to call a new phone number.

“I’ve been unhappy with the service, but I’ve given up doing anything about it because I really don’t want to lose the number,” said Danielson, 27, a Washington technology consultant. “I’m afraid I would lose clients that way.”

Federal regulators are sympathetic with Danielson’s plight and have ordered cell phone companies to let people take their numbers with them when they switch to a competitor. The wireless providers asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to block the regulation, arguing that keeping the same phone number is a convenience, not a necessity.

The cell phone companies told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the Federal Communications Commission (news – web sites)’s “number portability” rules will raise costs while doing little to increase competition.

“It’s very speculative to say this even offers consumer benefits,” said Andrew McBride, an attorney representing Verizon Wireless and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

McBride asserted the FCC (news – web sites) overstepped its authority and made legal errors in its order. Retaining the same phone number is not an essential service like making wireless providers supply enhanced 911 systems to help authorities locate cell phone users during emergencies, he argued.

The judges are not expected to rule for several months. Without court intervention, the regulations are to take effect Nov. 24.

Congress decided in 1996 that people can keep their traditional local phone numbers when they change phone companies. The FCC decided soon after that wireless carriers should offer that same ability to people in the largest 100 U.S. cities by June 1999.

The FCC extended that deadline three times, most recently granting a yearlong extension last summer after Verizon Wireless asked the commission to eliminate the requirement.

“Wireless companies will have stronger incentives to provide better service and lower prices if consumers can take their numbers,” said Chris Murray, an attorney for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He said small businesses and self-employed people are particularly harmed when switching carriers because they lose numbers known by customers.

Most wireless companies argue that their industry is competitive enough and doesn’t need a regulatory boost. They say about 145 million people subscribe to U.S. cell phone systems, and about a third of them change carriers each year.

“The wireless industry is the most competitive telecommunications market on the planet,” McBride said after the hearing. He said the expense of providing the number switching service will take money away from better cell phone coverage and cheaper phones.

The wireless industry estimates the requirement will cost more than $1 billion in the first year and $500 million each year after that.

The industry also says the FCC’s number portability rules are unclear regarding traditional landline phone companies and give them an unfair advantage. The wireless companies want the FCC to declare that traditional landline phone companies must allow their customers to keep numbers when switching to cell phones.

Many cell phone users outside the United States, in Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and other places, already have the option of keeping their numbers when they switch carriers.

NBC said on Monday: “It was wrong for Mr Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war.

“And it was wrong for him to discuss personal observations and opinions in that interview.”

Arnett, one of the few US correspondents left in Baghdad, became a household name reporting for CNN there during the Gulf War in 1991.

I want to apologise to the American people for clearly making a misjudgement Peter Arnett

NBC broadcast a statement from network officials on its Monday morning Today show announcing the sacking of the New Zealand-born journalist.

On the same broadcast, Arnett, 68, apologised to NBC and to the US public, saying he was “embarrassed” by the controversy.

“I want to apologise to the American people for clearly making a misjudgement,” he said.

“I am not anti-war, I am not anti-military,” Arnett said, although he added: “I said over the weekend what we all know about the war.”

Pulitzer prize

Arnett, a naturalised American, is in Baghdad for NBC and MSNBC’s National Geographic Explorer.

Iraqi television broadcast him saying “the first war plan has just failed because of Iraqi resistance. Clearly the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces”.

NBC had initially defended him on Sunday, saying he had given the interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were analytical in nature.

But by Monday morning, after Arnett had spoken to NBC news president Neal Shapiro, the broadcaster said it would no longer work with him.

During the television interview, broadcast in English and translated by an Iraqi anchor, Arnett said: “Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States.

“It helps those who oppose the war, when you challenge the policy, to develop their arguments.”

Arnett’s comments drew criticism from US lawmakers.

Former New York senator Alfonse D’Amato said they gave “aid and comfort to the enemy”.

Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called them “just crazy” and Democrat Brad Sherman labelled them “absurd”.

Arnett won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for the Associated Press before making his name on television with CNN in Baghdad.

His reporting of an allied bombing of a baby milk factory there in 1991 drew criticism from the US military, which said it was a biological weapons plant.

Arnett stood by his report.

He was later the on-air reporter in the 1998 CNN report who accused American forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill US defectors.

Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded, later leaving the network. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/2903503.stm

Published: 2003/03/31 17:29:13

-Ian.

——– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38776-2003Mar27.html Key Rumsfeld Adviser Resigns His Post

By ROBERT BURNS The Associated Press Thursday, March 27, 2003; 6:24 PM

Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official, resigned Thursday as chairman of the Defense Policy Board that is a key advisory arm for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In a brief written statement, Rumsfeld thanked Perle for his service and made no mention of why Perle resigned. He said he had asked Perle to remain as a member of the board.

“He has been an excellent chairman and has led the Defense Policy Board during an important time in our history,” Rumsfeld said. “I should add that I have known Richard Perle for many years and know him to be a man of integrity and honor.”

Perle was an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. He took the advisory board chairman’s post early in Rumsfeld’s tenure.

Perle became embroiled in a recent controversy stemming from a New Yorker magazine article that said he had lunch in January with controversial Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist.

The industrialist, Harb Saleh Zuhair, was interested in investing in a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, of which Perle is a managing partner. Nothing ever came of the lunch in Marseilles; no investment was made. But the New Yorker story, written by Seymour M. Hersh, suggested that Perle, a longtime critic of the Saudi regime, was inappropriately mixing business and politics.

Perle called the report preposterous and “monstrous.”

Perle, 61, was so strongly opposed to nuclear arms control agreements with the former Soviet Union during his days in the Reagan administration that he became known as “the Prince of Darkness.”

© 2003 The Associated Press

War Coverage Spurs ‘Backpack’ Reporters Tue Mar 25, 1:42 AM ET Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer

Armed with $15,000 in satellite phones and computers, Preston Mendenhall calls himself a “one-man band” who writes stories, snaps photographs and shoots video in combat zones.

The international editor for MSNBC.com spent most of February traveling alone in Syria, then joined other reporters in northern Iraq (news – web sites) to record Kurdish reactions to the American-led bombing.

His latest multimedia report — video, still images and words — described the collapse of the U.N.-backed oil-for-food program, which blocked fresh food supplies to 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people.

“You get a connection, set up the camera, point it at yourself and just do it — you’re live,” Mendenhall said from a satellite phone. “But if there’s any weapons of mass destruction, I’m outta here.”

Mendenhall, who sends pixelated video through a pair of special satellite telephones, is one of a growing number of journalists relying on lightweight laptops, satellite phones, inexpensive editing software and digital cameras.

The technology has resulted in streaming video from the most remote places on earth. It has also enabled a new breed of reporter, known as a “backpack journalist,” who often has greater mobility and flexibility than a camera crew.

They file real-time reports with equipment that is a fraction of the cost and size of conventional, shoulder-mounted cameras and other gear. They file primarily for the Web, with images they’ve edited themselves at the scene, and occasionally contribute to television.

“The people who can shoot video, write stories, do radio on the side, basically do it all — these are the journalists of the future,” said John Schidlovsky, director of the Washington-based Pew Fellowship in International Journalism. “The technology has made journalism much more immediate and instantaneous.”

Although they’re a tiny minority of the hundreds of foreign journalists in and around Iraq, backpackers could eventually change the complexion of news gathering.

But backpackers — also called solo journalists, or “sojos” — won’t eclipse mainstream media soon. Fear, fatigue and confusion often vanquish their sophisticated, lightweight equipment, which larger television operations use only when higher-quality video is unavailable.

Some experts also worry that less-seasoned sojos, particularly those who post directly to Web sites and don’t file through editors back home, will produce reports that lack context or analysis.

“Backpack journalists have to know the difference between when you’re a lone wolf and when you’re part of a greater whole — and they have to file with that in mind,” said Jane Ellen Stevens, a pioneer backpack journalist who teaches at University of California, Berkeley. Stevens specializes in science and technology and has been reporting backpack-style since 1997 from such locales as a research icebreaker in Antarctica and a space camp in Russia.

Travis Fox, a video journalist for WashingtonPost.com, filed footage on Saturday of coalition troops in Umm Qasr, Iraq building a POW camp.

For most of his stories, Fox uses a Sony PD150, a roughly $7,000, 12-pound digital video camera with a 5-hour battery. The gear is less than half the weight and one-tenth the cost of equipment used by crews for large networks.

But Fox, one of hundreds of U.S. journalists “embedded” with U.S. troops, knows that no medium can mask the limits of human endurance.

“We’re going to make a run for the border tomorrow, early,” Fox said wearily from a Kuwaiti hotel before the war started. “There are roadblocks. It’s a long shot. I’m not so much nervous or excited as I’m tired.”

Although Fox usually travels with other reporters, many backpackers work alone.

They worry about battery life, power outages and technical hiccups — without backup from co-workers.

CNN correspondent Kevin Sites is a pioneer backpack war journalist who mixes solo with team coverage and has, at times, been frustrated with the technical hurdles of his vocation. In one recent entry on his Web Site, he complained that “Iraq tech hell.”

Sites stopped posting journal entrys and photos on his own site last week when CNN asked him to concentrate on working for the network exclusively.

Other media organizations have shied away from backpacker technology because the quality of the images remains grainy.

London-based Associated Press Television News relies primarily on Sony’s broadcast quality electronic news gathering equipment — a $70,000 package that includes a shoulder-mounted camera, tripod, lens, batteries, lights and microphones. APTN usually dispatches a camera person, who hauls the 30-pound camera, as well as an on-camera journalist, who totes gear as well.

APTN has purchased smaller cameras but editorial manager David Modrowski said the company has no plans to migrate fully to backpack-style equipment.

“In proper, full sunlight, it’s pretty tough for the untrained eye to tell the difference,” Modrowski said of the lighter equipment. “But when you notice it is when you get to low-light conditions, and certainly now we’re seeing a lot of nighttime activity in Iraq.”

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57111,00.html

09:15 AM Jan. 07, 2003 PT

OLYMPIA, Washington — Suppose someone was handing out $20 bills and almost nobody wanted one? That’s roughly what’s happening with a massive price-fixing settlement involving states and compact disc companies.

The deal calls for payments of as much as $20 for customers who bought CDs between 1995 and 2000. But so far, only a few people have signed up, and officials fear the money will go begging.

In September, the five top U.S. distributors of compact discs and three large music retailers agreed to pay $143 million in cash and CDs to settle allegations they cheated consumers by fixing prices.

The lawsuit alleged that the companies upset with low prices charged by some stores conspired with retailers to set music prices at a minimum level, effectively raising the retail prices consumers paid for CDs.

Part of the settlement about $44 million in cash is earmarked to pay customers from $5 to $20, depending on how many people wind up dividing the money.

By the end of December, only about 30,000 people nationwide had applied for a piece of the pie, a tiny fraction of the number the settlement could handle.

“The response thus far has been fairly abysmal,” said Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire, who’s been on morning radio shows to promote the settlement.

Gregoire was among the attorneys general of 41 states and commonwealths who accused record companies of conspiring with music distributors to boost the prices of CDs between 1995 and 2000.

The companies settled rather than wage a costly legal battle.

The settlement’s website has been up for a month, and legal notices have been published in TV Guide, Parade and other national magazines, but the response rate has been very low, said Tina Kondo, a senior assistant attorney general in Gregoire’s office.

“I guess people don’t like to read legal notices,” Kondo said.

Gregoire and other officials hope a radio advertising campaign set to launch soon will boost interest in the settlement.

Anyone who bought a CD, cassette tape or vinyl record at a retail store between 1995 and 2000 is eligible. The application window closes March 3.

You don’t even need a receipt to prove you bought CDs by Hole, Metallica or Shania Twain in 1998. Just click to the settlement’s website, answer three questions and fill in your name and address. But don’t try to recoup the entire cost of your music collection: Only one claim per customer is permitted.

While 41 states took on the music companies, consumers in all 50 states are eligible for the cash.

There is one catch. If more than about 8.8 million people apply, in which case the per-person share would drop below $5, the customer part of the settlement will be canceled. Sending out such small checks is just too expensive.

Instead, the money will go to public entities and nonprofit organizations in each state to promote music programs. The settlement already calls for those organizations to receive 5.5 million CDs valued at $75.7 million.

The music distributors participating in the deal are Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. Also included in the deal were three national retail chains: Trans World Entertainment, Tower Records and Musicland Stores.

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