Among today's most-discussed personalities is one Ori Allon, a 26-year-old student whose algorithmic discovery has cuaght the attention -- and lured dollars rumored to be in the millions -- from Google. Following in the footsteps of the founders of such namestays as Google, Napster and Apple computers, he's another whiz kid whose brainiac idea paid off, literally. He's today's fourth burstiest person in the blogosphere. Google Blogoscoped provides some discussion.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:28 PM

It sounds as serious and hard-working as it might be: Apple Boot Camp, which this week has been one of the most-discussed issues in the blogosphere. When Apple announced mid-week that it opening its new Intel-powered computers to run Windows applications through a download called Boot Camp, the industry shifted, paradigmically speaking (is that a word?). The first blog buzz, captured by BlogPulse citations to the Boot Camp news, is definitely hefty and international in flavor. Is this the beginning of Bill & Steve's Excellent Adventure? Will diehard PC users consider switching? The Unofficial Apple Weblog examines another motivation for the long-discussed marriage of the two platforms: the education market.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:31 PM

Could it be? A virus that actually infects a Macintosh/Apple product? The MacRumors blog (today's ninth most-cited link) tells of a virus that can infect iChat. Techies wonder if it could be the first OSX virus? Again? In other Apple-related news, Amazon is hinting its intentions to take on iTunes by offering music downloads as well (today's No. 15 top link), and at AppleInsider, speculation is up about which Intel chips Apple plans to use in its upcoming notebook and desktop computers. Discussion already has an international flair.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:54 PM

Could it be true? Could Apple, king of the iPod everything, be snooping around Palm for a possible acquisition to maintain its dominance in the personal music player marketplace? Today's no. 25 top blog post from Personal Computer World hints at the possiblity, and the resulting blogger discussion has an international flavor. "Stranger things have happened," opines an optimist Ectopic Brain. Tom's Spin on Things isn't so gung-ho.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:26 PM

Maybe it's something that Construction Barbie would play with. Maybe it's the creative output of someone with waaaaaay too much time on their hands. But if it's Miss Kitty, it's gotta be cute, right? Today's No. 23 top blog post from Boing Boing presents the Hello Kitty Belt Sander..."color coordinated, cute, and truly decorated," according to its inventors. (Click on the link to find other entries, including an Elvis sander and what looks like an Energizer bunny with a derriere in its mouth?). Gizmodo provides more details on the New England Belt Sander Racing Association Nationals (they actually HAVE an event like that?). Miss Kitty, by the way, went home with the Rookie of the Year trophy. Meow.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:34 PM

Who among us with an Internet connection and a pulse could forget last summer's most famous piece of then-vaporware, the Optimus Keyboard? The answer: No one. Everybody in the entire world has been looking disgustedly down at their current keyboards since seeing the Optimus, with its hundreds of keys that are also LED screens, each one of which can be customized to display different things and perform different functions, depending on the program or the operating system. Well, do we even have to tell you that today's top link refers to a rollout date for the Optimus? Can you even contain the unbridled, childlike excitement bubbling up inside you at the prospect of owning such a keyboard? The answer to both: no. Here it is, with an expected ship date of Feb. 1. Can they do it? Can they really transform imagination into reality in less than a month? Everybody and they mama hopes so. Engadget already has its credit card out, they write, and this guy is going Harry Potter-style crazy over the prospect of getting this keyboard. That's understandable, though. (And there's still no word whether you can stream text or video across all the LED keys, though this says individual keys could be animated...)

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:17 AM

Those of us in the Internet gadget rumormongering community know that when ThinkSecret posts the latest "scoop" coming out of Steveland in Cupertino, it's always gospel, like their piece from this summer that said "sources" at Apple didn't think there'd be a fifth generation video iPod "anytime soon." So this latest report is administered with an appropriate granule of sodium chloride, but in our no. 37 top link today, AI writes that Apple will debut some kind of " iPod boombox" at MacWorld in January, and that it could have a hard drive, wireless connectivity of some kind, and even satellite radio. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a photograph of what they think such a project could look like, but their post describes AppleInsider as "wacky," which does not speak well of its credibility. The wackiness continues with these responses on the relevant Engadget post, where one guy writes that he hopes the iPod boombox "supports video," and the whole thing just turns into madness. A boombox with an iPod, satellite radio, and a video display? What is this, the 21st century?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:52 AM

The year-in-retrospect blog posts, magazine stories and TV specials soon will be coming out in full force, and this gadget blog, our no. 1 blog post today, gets the prize so far for the best concept. It lists the oddest shapes that manufacturers have managed to stuff a little bit of flash memory into, including a human thumb, fish sticks, and even a Barbie doll — it's sick, you pop off her head and there's a USB port. It reminds of a time when we sat down in a Japanese restaurant, as we often do, and were served sushi. But when we tried to eat the sushi, it turned out to be a USB drive! Actually, that never happened. Still, the USB drives get a thumbs up from this blogger, whereas this one prefers the duckie. It's thumbs again for MandelBear, who writes: "Having a thumb sticking out of your computer is really, really weird, and it also gives a completely new meaning to the expression 'thumbdrive.' It looks very realistic, so you can probably use it in some pranks to your friends and colleagues." Probably. We'd rather find that in our sushi than a real thumb, anyway.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:52 PM

No one who loiters as much as we do in the world's endless cybernetic convenience store parking lot (or "Internet," as it's also called) can miss the constant, throbbing buzz around Apple products, most typically around the company's newest iterations of its iPod. These days people are talking excitedly about the new computers Apple will release that, for the first time, will have Intel chips. What does that mean to you, Joe Punchclock, or you, Sally Sixpack? You can use it to record TV shows, but it's also a computer. That's the latest word from spy-site ThinkSecret, anyway, in BlogPulse's no. 15 top link. The new Mac Minis, it seems, will be set up to work as CD/DVD players, but they'll also serve as DVRs, too, if you feel like it, and may even have an integral iPod dock to make them the complete nucleus of tomorrow's home entertainment systems. Add to that the Front Row application debuted on the recent iMac G5 desktop machines, which allows you to access your computer with a remote, and you've got what adds up to — for lack of a better term — a spicy meat-a-ball. Mike criticizes ThinkSecret, though, for what he says is perhaps a superfluous bit of information: "Well, duh, I've been saying that since the Intel switch was announced... These guys tend to predict anything and everything, and if it doesn't happen, they imply Apple backed off of the coolness that coulda/shoulda been." Wait, so does that mean we shouldn't hold our breath for that Apple digital camera that TUAW wrote about yesterday?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:26 AM

One of the greatest days in our life, it's fair to say, was the torrentially rainy night in 2003 when, flush with lucre from an internship, we strode dripping into a Circuit City and ordered the pimple-faced attendant to get an XBox out of the case, we'd be taking it home, thank you. Since then it (and others, belonging to friends) has afforded us thousands of hours of transcendently awesome fun, meaning the stakes couldn't be higher for the new XBox 360, which drops soon. BlogPulse's no. 17 top link today investigates the innards of one of the new machines, in the new Internet tradition of dissecting new gadgets so that timid, penniless geekoids can get their jollies without having to actually plunk down their own cash. For XBoxes this is especially pertinent, as many people loved modifying the original machines to save games, use as basic PCs, etc. The reaction seems to be pleasant surprise, becuase Microsoft swore the 360 model would be immune from meddling. Joystiq: "Listen up future 360 modders, ‘cause they provide step-by-step instructions for splaying your console wide using only standard tools and a couple of metal sticks." Pocketfactory is a little less enthused about Microsoft's new hardware, which, despite earlier promises, won't necessarily be backwards-compatible with old games, unless you pay $100 for the "premium" version: "Now, with backwards compatibility costing you that extra hundred bucks in the XBox 360, the people who own many games will have to get the $400 XBox 360 so they can play their old stuff. Of course, you can keep both consoles, but then, what's the point of an upgrade?" What indeed? Can the 360 model promise transcendent awesomeness, or just different games?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:16 AM

Sometimes, folks who like to tinker with stuff create new stuff out of old or they dream up accessories that no one has dared yet fathon. Which is the case today in the blogosphere, where the day's 23rd most-cited blog post describes a new-from-old creation from Ben Heckendorn, whose previous creations have included a portable Nintendo 64 set. This time, it's a jerry-rigged Atari laptop (really), as captured by Engadget. Do you suppose it plays Pong?

As for new-thing enhancements, the UK's Sun Online copy desk probably meant no Freudian slip (or did it?) with this headline: "Huge buzz for iPod gizmo" (today's 6th most-cited news story). It's an attachment, let's say, that provides libidinous pleasure and movement when hooked up to an iPod. And it's called an iBuzz. "This goes on the Christmas list just because it's genius!" raves one LiveJournaler. "Hell, almost makes me wish I was a woman" intones another. "Probably not safe for work," cautions another. Although in all honesty, that admonition could depend on your line of work.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:50 AM

We concur with the title of this blog post, which expresses just a measure of the incredible explosion of the Web's bottled-up excitement over the once-fabled, mythical Video iPod, today's top BlogPulse link. (Speculation had run rampant over what exactly it would look like and what it would do.) As our eminent senior partner has mentioned, BlogPulse today is packed with links and references to Apple's special event yesterday, at which the new iPod, a new computer and new version of iTunes all were unveiled. And bloggers' reactions thereto tend to be positively electric : "Apple Has Done It AGAIN!" A slightly more thoughtful reaction from The Lord of the Morning, whose "inner geek" is pleased with the new iPod tech specs. Scott-o-Rama is more explicit: "It’s good to be a geek these days." Yes it is, friends. Yes it is.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:04 AM

Not since Apple debuted its nano model have there been such egregious traffic consequences for the Web's foremost iPod site. As of about noon EST, if you checked out iLounge you would've seen an interstitial screen that explained the site had been destroyed by all the attention. Last time it took four days before you could check out their new iPod coverage... hopefully this time they'll recover quicker.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:16 PM

Buried near the bottom of today's Harriet Miers-heavy blog discussions is PCWorld's 100 Best Products of 2005, (today's No. 36 top news story) which assumes, of course, that October, November and December are pretty much out when it comes to inventing top products for the year. Among the year's winners nonetheless: Mozilla Firefox (No. 1), Google email, Skype, the Sony PlayStation Portable, Epson's PictureMate photo printer and Dell's UltraSharp 24-inch wide-screen LCD screen. "We still have three months to go!" protests a LiveJournaler. Download Squad pointed out the announcement and also noticed that 2005 still has 25% left to go. Schestowitz.com notices the prevalence of open-source products, while Kompato performs an ownership inventory. Impressive...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:27 PM

The Internet and the blog world pay the same sort of attention to Steve Jobs as you see paid in the msm to Alan Greenspan. Will he be at the next Apple Computer event? What under-the-table deals has he been making? So for His Steveness to actually sit down with reporters and take questions has created something of a shock of information. Jobs said that music labels who want to charge more than 99 cents for songs on iTunes are "greedy," which impressed this blogger — "I like him more and more" — and that he didn't believe the hype about the future of computers being in a convergence with home entertainment. "It does explain why Apple's product line follows the 'Do one thing and do it well' strategy," this blogger writes. "For the most part, I can agree with his statement. Somewhat." That's all well and good, but what concerns us are Jobs' remarks about the elusive Video iPod: "Jobs said that the market isn’t yet right for personal video devices. 'You can already download movies on the iTunes Music Store, and some albums offer video as an incentive to buy the music,' said Jobs. 'We also offer video podcasts, but will people buy a video device just to watch this video? So far they haven’t. No one has been successful with that yet.'" So the days of carrying Stewie Griffin in our pocket still seem far off...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:18 AM

We — and everybody else with an Internet connection, it seems — were checking out Apple's new iPod nano online today while listening to our existing model, a dumpy old 20GB fourth-generation model, and we asked it, "Why can't you be thinner than a pencil and have a color display and fit in our jeans watch pocket?" As a response, it faithfully continued playing the song we were listening to, and so we felt bad and said "Awww, little iPod, we were just kidding, we love you just the way you are." But in our heart was a burning lust for the new nano. And, again, we're not the only one: "Must. Not. Buy. One. Have. To. Save. Up." It replaces the iPod Mini, which is fine with this blogger: "Just when you thought the iPod mini couldn’t get any cuter…" And if you thought it was creepy or inappropriate the way we talked to our iPod, check out this post, which includes references an existing iPod Photo named "Sophie". Sample passage: "Sophie was like a flirt teasing me to own her. The nano, on the other hand, left my jaw dropping and mouth agape." Oh yes.

Students of blogs and the web should note that iLounge, the web's preeminent iPod blog/site, has apparently been so deluged with people seeking its take on the new device that the site has basically melted down... browsers pointed there have spun fruitlessly since this morning. Now that's buzz.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 03:55 PM

We don't count ourselves among the legions that Bill Gates and others have predicted will gobble up the "It" device of tomorrow — actually, it could be the device of Wednesday next — which technologists describe as a mobile phone that doubles as an mp3 player. But there are nonetheless lots of people out there excited about the iTunes-compatible phone that may (or may not) be unveiled at an Apple special event on Sept. 7. The professional geekoids who track such things have been theorizing about it for months as Apple and phone maker Motorola have repeatedly dragged their feet in unveiling the iPod Phone, or iPhone, or whatever i-Name they'll slap on it. ("After the multiple, seemingly endless delays getting this thing to market, a splashy press fest seems almost embarrassing," writes The Digital Music Weblog.) But the biggest evidence of an iTelephone may be in BlogPulse's no. 9 top link today, in which The Newspaper Of Record reports that the Apple event indeed will debut the iCommunicator. Maybe Apple and Motorola have cried wolf too many times, judging by the way some bloggers received this news: "Yawn," says this one, though at TPMCafe, of all places, at least one contributor says "the phone/iPod combo seems much more logical than the common phone/camera combo." Maybe. About as logical, anyway, as having a flash drive in your Swiss Army Knife.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:04 AM

Somewhere in his command center deep beneath Apple Computer headquarters in Cupertino, California, Steve Jobs tented his fingers and said "excellent" as he watched the most recent bedlam unfolding around his products. He knew that when a school system in Richmond, Virginia sold off its used iBooks for $50 apiece, people would clamor for them like 19th century Russian serfs. (Which, if they don't already use Macs, they basically are.) This story appears up and down in BlogPulse today as our no. 3, no. 6 and no. 15 links. One woman, rather than give up her place in line, peed on herself. Yikes! Was that Jobs' maniacal laughter just now? Bloggers hear it: "Way to go, Mac users!" writes waveflux, who can't see this sort of furor over a Dell selloff (though the iBooks are being replaced with Dells). Another blogger asks that you pay attention to the photos associated with this story: "Note the look of stunned horror on the security guard’s face. Boy did he pick the wrong day not to call in sick." We just hope Duke University brings in the National Guard when it eventually sells off all the surplus iPods it has...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:39 AM

Top-Secret Meeting Transcript
Date redacted Location redacted
Present: S. Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer; E. Schmidt, CEO, Google

Jobs: Hey, Eric, you know what we oughta do, we oughta team up.

Schmidt: Well, ok, Steve. As CEOs of two of the most beloved companies in the Internet and personal computing industries, I'm sure we could happen upon some agreement that would benefit our beloved customers, for whom all major decisions are made.

Jobs: Yeah, y'know, what we wanna do, we wanna fix it so, y'know, iTunes and Google work together somehow. Like, so you could search on Google for a song, or an artist, y'know, and you guys would return the search results, but also you'd return a link that would say, like "Buy this song from iTunes."

Schmidt: Interesting. Using the Google ThoughtLink surgically implanted in my cerebrum, I can tell without even using a computer that many people on the web would like the idea. Good idea, Steve.

Jobs: Yeah, thanks, but, ah, y'know, let's leak rumors of it to my legions of fanatical devotees and let 'em stew over it for awhile before we actually announce it, eh?

Schmidt: Hey, Steve, we all know that's how you get down.

TRANSCRIPT ENDS

NOTE: Transcript is fictional. Links are not.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:36 AM

Blog watchers will note that the links and ideas trafficked these days on the information superhighway are a real drag, man -- war, politics and neo-Nazi border patrollers. So thank goodness for the power of monastic nerds, closed off from the brutish world, parsing apart lines of code so they can achieve things that will ennoble, not cheapen, the human spirit: Porting Doom onto an iPod. This link is no. 15 in BlogPulse today, perhaps for the good reason that sometimes the world just makes you want to sit by yourself and kill monsters on a tiny screen. And it's heartening to know there are maverick developers who'll forgo Apple's original firmware and riskily install Linux in the best traditions of DeSoto and Magellan. Bloggers big and small have taken note, from TUAW ("I didn't think this was real when I first read it, but apparently it is") to SomJuan ("This is rather awesome"). What new achievements could the iPodLinux developers shoehorn into the little music players? Their only limit is imagination. And processing power.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:53 AM

We had hoped this BBC story about a lifelike Japanese android would quietly disappear after awhile, but, instead it's become today's top link. The reason we hoped it would fade away is that many bloggers keep talking about having sex with it. The robot, not the BBC story. Perhaps there are ways to dance what they're saying on the blogosphere, but why mince words? Many bloggers seem to be interested in having sex with this robot. (Shades of Blade Runner.) "...(T)echnically it aint adultery," writes biowalker, though, according to this blogger, it's evidence of humanity's ingenuity: "Dude. We have an android in the works. I don't care what anyone says, that's so cool." That isn't the popular consensus, though. That would be sentiments like those expressed by Nate: "I know exactly what you're all thinkin'... cause I'm thinkin' the same thing..." These are the people who're going to replace the mainstream media?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:03 PM

We warned you that hostilities had been escalated irreversibly last week, and today we bring you a gruesome report from the blogobattlefield. Dispatching a fleet of fearsome, death ray-armed tripods from Fortress Redmond, Bill Gates wiped Apple Computer off the face of the Earth in today's no. 22 link. Or, wait, maybe the world's third-most innovative corporation just doesn't have up-to-date information for its much-hyped challenge to Google Earth, explains its web apologist Richard Scoble. (Information so old it still includes the World Trade Center, which has made them uneasy over at LifeHacker: "Eek.") Matazone says it proves that despite its bluster Microsoft still can't quite connect on most things: "Let’s face it, we ‘Google’ for things, we don’t ‘MSN’ for them, and there’s a good reason for that." As the slugfest continues, other bloggers are just enjoying the show. "You gotta love geek fights," writes MyopicZeal. "Man, that’s funny."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:22 AM

We all knew this day would come. From the north -- where Bill Gates' burning, lidless eye sees all from Redmond -- to the south -- where Steve Jobs and his hearty band of rogues are staging sorties from their camp at Cupertino -- the winds of all-out geekoid war are unmistakably blowing. Microsoft announced on Friday (in BlogPule's no 6. link) that its secret weapon, once known as Longhorn, actually will be called Windows Vista. Jobs' Jackals wasted no time skewering the name and Microsoft's long delays in finally rolling out Vista, which is supposed to be the next-generation competitor to Apple's Tiger operating system. The uberblogger and Microsoft executive Richard Scoble unleashed this broadside in response, today's no. 2 blog post. Fathers are pit against sons. Brothers against brothers. Chippa: "I ♥'d the name Longhorn." Mr. Dew: "I hope this version of Windows will make me more confident of my computer." Tom Coates: "Screenshots of the new Windows operating system do little to excite, I'm afraid." Davisson: "In my opinion, [the] Windows desktop might finally be on par with the long loved Mac OS." For how long can this war continue to rage?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM

Bloggers seem to be appreciating the old-fashioned journalistic enterprise shown over at GameSpot, where editors undertook the rough work of playing a video game in hopes of discovering hot sex scenes. Since New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton brought national attention to the "adult material" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, game author Rockstar has been on the defensive, claiming the sex scenes were the work of autonomous hackers hoping to make them look bad. (So bad that rating authorities changed San Andreas to an "adults only" game, in today's No. 40 link) But it wasn't hackers, says GameSpot, whose editors say they've proved the game code already contained the sex scenes, and that no malicious outsiders were responsible. This gamer isn't happy Rockstar did it -- the rest of the industry will suffer, he says -- and this one says it shows the programmers must've been pretty lonely. Just the same, DiscW wonders if the politicians' reactions aren't misplaced: "This is a game where you could stalk prostitutes, slit their throat, maim them with chainsaws, then go steal a stranger's car, run him over, go back over to the prostitute's body, and peel out on her corpse. Then get out, take her money, drive away, and run over a few cops for good measure." And people are upset over a little hey-hey?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:35 AM

Bloggers, geekoids and techies have been drooling the past few days over the Optimus Keyboard, which promises to revolutionize computing peripherals by costing hundreds of dollars for an accessory that now can be had for under $30. Each key on the board is its own LED display, y'see, meaning it can be adapted to have unique keys for each application or OS -- you could plug the thing into your Dell and have a Windows start button key, then move it to your iMac and have Apple command keys instead. Everybody thought it was just a concept, but, as BlogPulse link no. 20 tells us, they're building it. Steve Jobs wishes he could get this buzz so long before he rolls out a new product: "I want it so bad," writes ksilebo. "...[T]his thing is going to be the best addition to a computer since the monitor," gushes right-thoughts. Not as much excitement, however, about the keyboard's companion, the cursor-shaped mouse. Maybe if they made it wireless?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:19 PM

iPodlounge has no official say-so with Apple but iPodders nonetheless consider the site gospel, meaning there've been a lot of responses to a new article about the 10 features Apple should include on a new fifth-generation iPod. (Poster Divad 1 wants his to have a 9mm pistol). Bloggers elsewhere are talking too about the new iPod and what new features it might have -- the web is rife with fanciful designs that reflect what people want the new model to be. The consensus? Most techies want movies, Bluetooth and a user-replaceable battery to replace the expensive, inaccessible model Apple now uses. And they want that stuff now. Fortunately, it might not be very much longer. Engadget reported Friday that Apple is inviting people to a "special media event" on July 7, but keeping quiet about what exactly that means. Could Steve Jobs roll out the iPod of tomorrow? If so, what will it look like? Wouldn't it be delicious if it looked like this?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 02:41 PM