Self-Promotion Department: Technologizer Wins an Award

I attended the Western Publishing Association’s 60th annual Maggie awards last night in Los Angeles. Technologizer was a finalist in three categories, and I’m delighted to report that we were also a winner–”Fanboy! The Strange True Story of the Tech World’s Favorite Put-Down,” which I wrote last May, was honored as the best Web or digital article/consumer. (The other two categories that we were finalists for were won by exceptional contenders: Mother Jones for best Web or digital publication blog and Chow for best Web publication/consumer.)

Here’s a full list of winners. As I said in my fifteen-second acceptance speech, I wrote the story mostly to please myself, but I’m sure glad that the Maggie judges liked it, too…

Playstation Network Outage: Still a Huge Mess

As expected, the tale of Sony’s Playstation Network security breach and resulting down time continues to get more complicated. What started as a simple outage is now a multifaceted tale of stolen data, communication failures, law suits, government inquiries and a whole lot of frustrated gamers.

Here’s a rundown of the many heads the PSN outage and breach has spawned as we head into the second weekend without service:

• Security experts, listening in on underground forums, claimed that PSN’s hackers finagled 2.2 million credit card numbers, and now wish to sell the list for upwards of $100,000. Over at Ars Technica, some readers are claiming that they’ve experienced credit card fraud, and think the PSN breach is to blame. However, the experts who originally reported the credit card thefts are now backing off their original claims, and stressing that they can’t verify the information. Sony’s sticking to its original story, that it has no evidence of credit card theft, but can’t rule out the possibility.
• Congress, meanwhile, is getting involved. A House of Representatives subcommittee has sent 13 questions to Sony, demanding answers by May 6. Some of these questions have already been answered. For instance, Sony already said when it became aware of the breach (April 19). Other questions are remain unanswered, such as why Sony can’t say with certainty that credit card numbers weren’t taken. Other governments around the world are also demanding answers from Sony.
• There’s still no word on exactly when PSN service will return (Sony said on Tuesday that “we expect to have some services up and running within a week”). On the bright side, Sony suggests that it’ll try to make up for the down time with a goodwill gesture of sorts. “We are currently evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online,” says the company’s latest FAQ.
• Meanwhile, Sony continues to take heat for the way it’s responded to the PSN security breach and outage. Over at Gamasutra, Colin Campbell puts aside the incident itself and argues that Sony’s response will cause long-term damage to the Playstation brand. Think of it as a longer, more thoughtful version of my rant on Sony’s refusal to apologize.

Twitter Tests New Text Ads

Twitter is continuing to monetize its service, and yes, that means more ads. They’re now appearing below the trends listings, in the section that has up until now been reserved for promoting various features of the company’s service or its own products, points out Tech Inspiration. The new ads also break with Twitter tradition by not clearly labeling the content as advertising: the only evidence that they are comes from the HTML code of the page.

Continue reading this story…

How to Tell Me You Let Somebody Steal My Personal Information

I’ve been getting a lot of urgent messages from major companies I do business with lately. Urgent messages telling me that information I gave them has been stolen by unknown parties.

Yup, I’m not only a PlayStation Network member–and therefore a victim of the current Sony security breach–but also a customer of at least three companies (Marriott, TiVo, and 1-800-Flowers) who were involved in the recent data theft from marketing company Epsilon. I wrote about this for my new TIME.com Technologizer column, But after reading all this correspondence, I have some advice for the corporate entities who send these e-mails. (I care about this stuff in part because I have the uneasy feeling I’m going to be getting a lot more of these messages in the future.)

Continue reading this story…

Is Google TV Salvageable? I Think So. I Hope So, Anyhow!

Logitech announced its financial results yesterday, and among the factoids it released was this: It sold $5 million’s worth of its Google TV-powered Logitech Revue box rather than the $18 million it expected to move.

I found Google TV so disappointing in its initial incarnation that I’m not the least bit surprised that consumers are staying away in droves. And I’m curious how a smart company liked Logitech, which usually makes very good products, misjudged it so badly—maybe the platform that Google described to it in the planning stages was better than the one that shipped.

Continue reading this story…

Devastation! White iPhone 0.2mm Thicker Than Black One

A man returns home with his newly-purchased white iPhone. Ten months of waiting—HE THOUGHT THIS DAY WOULD NEVER COME!

His trembling hands struggle to remove the cellophane surrounding Apple’s minimalist, yet irresistible product packaging. “I wish my fingers were knives!” he sputters to himself, breathless with anticipation.

Finally, the cellophane is no more. He grabs the box and gently shakes it up and down, waiting for WHAT SEEMS LIKE AGES for that weird, science-y suction phenomenon that holds box tops against box bottoms in a tender embrace to finally run its course. He imagines the box halves screaming to each other, “I’ll never forget you!” until they’re finally separated like high school sweethearts going off to different colleges.

Continue reading this story…

A Ghost of Ad Campaigns Back

If you’re bummed out about Cisco axing the Flip, don’t visit San Francisco–ads like this one (in a photo I took yesterday) are a sad reminder of how recently the product appeared to be an extremely viable entity.

Geohot Chimes In

George Hotz–the PS3-jailbreaking hacker whose Sony-instigated legal woes probably had something to do with the PlayStation Network security attack–has blogged about the breach. He’s not happy with it, isn’t sympathetic to Sony’s plight, and (like me) wonders how it was done.

Is Netflix The Solution To Movie Piracy?

Ernesto over at TorrentFreak has an interesting premise: the meteoric rise of Netflix, and especially its streaming movie service, are having the surprising effect of tamping down on movie piracy here in the US. Impossible you say? Not so fast, it may actually make sense.

You could argue that movie piracy is much more popular for those movie watchers who don’t feel like paying an arm and a leg for a movie they’ve already seen, or is a couple years old. Just like an old car, these films lose their value. Thus piracy seems an attractive option since you don’t have to pay for it.

Enter Netflix. Its streaming movie service offers a lot of these films that these folks are looking for, and its price — only $7.99 a month — makes it quite attractive. Add to this the quality is likely much, much better in most cases than you’d ever get from a ripped movie, and more on-demand than downloading, and you’ve got a winner.

Ernesto says the site does have some evidence that the number of pirates out there in the US has decreased. With Netflix’s growth, one could easily argue that the site could be a contributor.

Hulu Plus is Great on Xbox Live; With Kinect, Not So Much

Hulu Plus comes to Xbox Live on Friday, and Microsoft let me have an early look along with a Kinect loaner unit to check out voice and motion controls.

If you’re not familiar with Hulu Plus, it’s an $8 per month streaming movie service focused mainly on current television shows. The selection isn’t as broad as Hulu’s free website, but it’s the only way to get Hulu on set-top boxes, iPhones and iPads (without workarounds like PlayOn). It also lets you watch archived back seasons of many television shows, instead of just the most recent episodes.

The most striking thing about Hulu Plus on the Xbox 360 is how closely it resembles Netflix’s console app, and for that matter the entire Xbox 360 interface. Microsoft has imposed a nearly identical design, with a list of sections on the top left and tile-shaped movies and TV selections in a sliding horizontal strip down the middle. Even Hulu Plus’ search function works exactly the same way as Netflix, with a row of letters on top and a strip of results that narrows down as you type. Microsoft’s made some big strides in user interface lately, borrowing much of Windows Phone 7′s uniformity and design flourishes, and it shows here.

Kinect support, however, needs a lot of work.

Continue reading this story…

Okay, Sony, Time to Say “Sorry” for the PSN Breach

Maybe I’m just over-sensitive, but it strikes as odd — and maybe a little arrogant — that Sony hasn’t apologized for the Playstation Network breach that resulted in stolen passwords and personal information.

I’ve read all seven of Sony’s updates on the official Playstation Blog, and not a single “sorry” or “apologize” is uttered throughout. The most Sony can muster is this: “We sincerely regret any inconvenience or concern this outage has caused, and rest assured that we’re going to get the services back online as quickly as we can.”

Continue reading this story…

Internet (Not) Everywhere

Photo by Flickr user Secretlondon.

I know it’s possible to live without access to the Internet. (Hey, I lived the first fifteen years or so of my life before I heard the dulcet tone of a dial-up modem connection for the first time.) But a funny thing has happened as broadband, cellular networks, and Wi-Fi have put the Internet within my reach the vast majority of the time: I’ve gotten really bad at doing without the Net.

Case in point: Earlier this month, I flew from San Francisco to Alicante, Spain, for an event called the IFA Global Press Conference. The trek involved three plane flights and took close to 24 hours. And aside from a couple layovers, during which I fiddled my iPhone and futzed with iffy airport Wi-Fi, I was disconnected the whole time.
Continue reading this story…

The Nub of the Matter

I used to swear by ThinkPad-style tiny pointing sticks as my mobile input device of choice. I’ve since grown accustomed to touchpads–and come to think of it, before I swore by pointing sticks I swore by trackballs–but Laptop’s Avram Pitch is still a pointing-stick man, and has gone so far as to review them.

Resolved: Useful Software is Worth (at Least) Five Bucks

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, has a smart post up on why he’s discontinuing the free version of the app and asking every new customer to buy the $4.99 version.

Don’t Panic About Security Leaks. Do Defend Yourself.

My new TIME.com Technologizer column is on the PlayStation Network and Epsilon leaks, and a few things we consumers can do to help defend ourselves from anything too nasty happening as a result of this kind of stuff.

Windows 8 Takes Your Settings to the Cloud

A popular theme among Microsoft’s Windows 7 commercials has been this idea of the cloud, and it appears the cloud will play an even more integral role in the next version of Windows. Some astute beta testers have found settings called “Roaming Options” in the User Accounts settings of Windows 8.

While I don’t have a copy of this beta build in hand, this is what I’m gathering: these settings would be sent to the cloud and would be retrievable on a friend’s computer or on another device.

Continue reading this story…