FriendFeed Is Not Going Anywhere, Says Co-Founder

VentureBeat’s Anthony Ha reports from the Facebook f8 developer conference that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor is in attendance, and says that the site will not be shutting down. Facebook acquired the site in August of last year, and FriendFeed developers were re-tasked to responsibilities within Facebook. Taylor now works as Director of Product for the social networking giant.

Taylor confirmed that Facebook still has no plans to develop anything for the service, however as of yet it still remains alive and well. “For all two of you out there, thank you, FriendFeed users,” he joked.

A Tweet’s More Than Just 140 Characters

Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb has a interesting piece on what exactly compromises a tweet from the backend. While it looks complicated already, it will get even moreso when Twitter debuts “annotations” later this year. That’s because for the first time a tweet will be able to contain even more data than just your standard 140 characters of text.

Now you know how much coding it takes for someone to tweet what they had for lunch this afternoon…

iPad+3G To Begin Shipping May 7th

Apple began informing customers who had preordered its 3G-enabled iPad model that the product would ship in late April as originally announced. In addition, it updated the Apple store page to list the product as shipping “by May 7th.” Customers will be limited to two devices per order.

This doesn’t do anything to help the situation internationally. Pre-orders would still start on May 10, with shipment in late April. Its not immediately clear whether Apple would make both models available for pre-order initially, or follow a similar release schedule as they have here in the US.

Running a Country…on Your iPad

What happens when you’re head of state and you’re stranded in a foreign land, and there’s pressing national business to attend to? Simple, pull out your iPad. That’s exactly what Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg did in New York, CNN reports. With ash from and erupting Icelandic volcano grounding flights to Europe, the Prime Minister was able to stay on top of business back home.

Government officials posted a picture of Stoltenberg hovering over his iPad on the government website, saying “the prime minister is working at the airport.” Along with the iPad, Stoltenberg is using a mobile phone and the Internet to stay abreast of the situation back home. Apple couldn’t get any better PR for its highly popular device than this…

Song Lyrics Site Serves Up Java Attack Code

Popular lyrics site Songlyrics.com was discovered to be delivering attack code which could open up visitors to remote code execution attacks, several news outlets reported Thursday. The exploit was discovered by researcher Tavis Ormandy last week and reported. Songlyrics.com has taken action to remove the offending code from its website.

Ormandy and partner Ruben Santamarta said it was easy to exploit the issue, and AVG researcher Roger Thompson has called upon Oracle to patch the issue as soon as possible. However, according to the Register, the company has neither answered their requests for comment, nor confirmed the exploit exists at all.

Jobs Calls Out Android Over Porn

Easily the line of the day from today’s presentation. Following a question from gdgt’s Ryan Block on why the iPhone will not allow the running of unsigned apps like both Palm and Android already offer, Steve Jobs comes back calling out Android’s “porn store: “There’s a porn store for Android … your kids can download them … that’s a place where we just don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there.” That is NOT going to make Google very happy…

Looks Like End-of-Line for Original iPhone, iPod Touch

At the end of today’s presentation, Jobs said that the full benefits of iPhone OS 4.0 would be available only to customers owning the iPhone 3GS and 3rd generation iPod Touch. For customers with an iPhone 3G or 2nd generation iPod Touch, the update would still be available, however functionality (including multitasking) would not work.

Left out was any mention of the original iPhone and iPod Touch, now both coming up on their 3rd anniversary. Looks like this means its the end of the line for these two devices…

450,000 iPads Sold

Steve Jobs has just took the stage at Cupertino for the iPhone OS 4.0 event and starts it off with iPad news: 450,000 have been sold to date. Jobs says Best Buy is out of stock, and  that Apple is “making them as fast as we can.” A total of 600,000 iBooks have been downloaded to date, along with 3.5 million applications. Jobs reports that some 3,500 applications are now available that have been optimized for use on the device.

Windows Mobile 7 to Debut at WMC 2010

You may have remembered our reporting about two weeks ago putting the future of Windows Mobile 7 into doubt, and pushing its release further into the future. Enter DigiTimes, who its refuting some of that reporting saying Microsoft is ready to debut WM7 at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona complete with a release date.

DigiTimes says that Microsoft will announce an OEM availability in September, translating to a retail availability by the end of the year or early in 2011. This would be for English and European languages: Asian translations will come later, probably in 2011.

So who’s right? DigiTimes is probably a more reputable source than whomever Bright Side of News is, but their track record in accurate scoops isn’t much better. Guess we will see…

Mysterious Random SMS Tweets: Still Mysterious!

Earlier today I blogged about widespread instances of folks getting random tweets delivered to them by SMS for no apparent reason. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler has written about the same issue, and notes that Twitter has acknowledged the problem. But it looks like Twitter hasn’t yet completely diagnosed the problem–it’s asking for people to post information on the mystery tweets they see, (As of a couple of hours ago, I was still getting them.)

Both MG and Twitter’s items indicate that some people are seeing the tweets online as well as via SMS, and MG says that some of the tweets are from users who have protected their accounts so their items are (theoretically) private. Oops!

Parrot’s new Wi-Fi Picture Frame and Wireless Speakers

(This post is part of the Traveling Geeks tech tour of Paris. David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions and a tech journalist that blogs at Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio and on John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.”)

At a visit at phone-accessory and gadget maker Parrot in Paris, I interviewed Parrot’s CEO, Henri Seydoux, about a couple of new products: Grande Specchio, a wi-fi picture frame that just came out a few weeks ago, and some giant wireless speakers.

Grande Specchio has a few fun features such as retrieving geo-tagged photos from Picasa and the ability to send photos to the frame. In the video demo Seydoux tries to send a picture of me to the frame. He didn’t succeed at the moment. For a pricey 500 Euros ($750 US) you would hope it would be a little easier. But to give him a break, it wasn’t a prepared demo, and he wasn’t already connected to a network at the time.

As for the wireless speakers they’re only wireless in the transmission of music, not power. I haven’t seen a good solution to wireless power without lots of batteries. My feeling is if you have to drag a power cable, then the “wireless” aspect really isn’t that attractive because you’re still physically tethered. At 1200 Euros ($1800 US) it’s definitely only for audiophiles.

Dick Tracy Watch from LG/Orange

(This post is part of the Traveling Geeks tech tour of Paris. David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions and a tech journalist that blogs at Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio and on John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.”)

At the end of the first day of the Traveling Geeks tour in Paris, we went to the demonstration labs of Orange, the European telco company. They showed us what they’re offering in the areas of IPTV and 3D TV. Completely unrelated, I saw a quick demo of a very cool Internet watch by LG that can do video conferencing. Cool phone, but you now need to find the second person who has that watch just so you can have a video chat. Same problem I have with my Nokia N82. It has video conferencing and I’ve never used it. I haven’t found a second person who has the phone. Check out the video. BTW, the quality is much better, but I shot it with a Flip video camera and it doesn’t have macro focus so that’s why it’s a little blurry.

Google Reveals Chrome OS

I’m at the Googleplex this morning, where Google is showing off Chrome OS for the first time. More details to come, but I’m tweeting the news fast and furious at the moment–follow me at Twitter to see the news as fast as I learn it.

Sidekick Sales Resuming

If you’re brave enough to want a Sidekick from T-Mobile after last month’s data loss fiasco, wait no longer. The carrier has resumed sales of the device, even throwing a price cut in for good measure. The older Sidekick 2008 is $49.99, and the fancier Sidekick LX will retail for $149.99, both with a two-year contract commitment. The meager price drops (about $25) may not be enough for many to take a chance on the company, however.

At least two states, California and Washington, are in the process of suing the company over the data loss. T-Mobile itself has done a little damage control by giving $100 credits to unhappy customers. All in all, October was a month the carrier would like to forget. Let’s just hope this time they have a backup…

Hey, I’m Chiming in at Another Webcast

Back in September, I was asked to watch a Webcast with Wired’s Chris Anderson and tweet my thoughts as I took it in. I had fun, so I was happy when I was asked to serve as a greek chorus for another Webcast hosted by HP. This one’s an interview with George Halvorson, CEO of health insurance megacompany Kaiser Permanente, and it’ll cover technology’s role in reforming health care in this country. (Timely, no?)

The Webcast is this Wednesday November 18th starting at 2:30pm ET; you can find it here. Stop by if you have a chance–it’ll feature tweets selected from everyone in the audience, and you’ll be able to submit questions for Halvorson via Twitter…

Nokia N-Gage Gets the Boot

When Nokia failed to generate enough buzz with its gaming phone offerings under the N-Gage name, it switched gears in 2008 to offer the platform instead as a gaming service. It now appears that strategy was a failure as well: N-Gage is set to be phased out in 2010.

Games would be able to be purchased through September of next year. The community site attached to the N-Gage platform would stay online through 2010, Nokia said. A complete exit from gaming is not happening however: the manufacturer said its Ovi service would still offer a selection of games.