masonlee

Twitter already has client-to-service encryption with their https APIs.

iCloud doesn't enable public sharing. It's a personal backup system.

You cannot yourself with Xcode install the very same signed "Distribution" binary that you submit to the App Store. The closest you can get is one signed for "Ad Hoc" distribution, but even those binaries interact with the OS differently than a "Distribution" binary. In-app purchasing, for example, differs between the two.

That said, this guy broke the legal agreement that we partly rely on for trusted computing in iOS. He can be thankful if he doesn't get sued, and he should have gone about it differently if not willing to face the minimal consequences of violating the legal agreement.

Will Apple open Siri to third party developers before Siri is out of "beta"? It would be nice to be able to ask Siri to do something that involves an arbitrary third-party app. Maybe apps could register to respond to certain voice "intents", similar to Android?

The ace up Apple's sleeve is their full hardware and operating system control on iOS devices. Siri is just another example of this. Third-party software on iPhone is sandboxed in many ways that give Apple apps a competitive advantage.

With regard to Siri and voice control, no third party app is allowed to respond to the critical press-and-hold-home-button shortcut. Another example is the hardware volume buttons, which Apple repurposes for Camera.app shutter control, but access to which was denied for the popular third party Camera+ app for that same purpose. Only Apple's Camera.app gets a lock-screen shortcut. Only Apple apps are allowed to access the carrier's SMS and voicemail. Only iBooks got access to real brightness control (may have changed in iOS 5). Only Apple apps can show a photo preview (e.g. MMS/iMessage) in a notification. Only Apple apps get to put widgets in the iOS 5 Notifications panel. The list goes on...

Namecoin and .bit

This is a good idea for a business! Custom site design of that quality can easily run someone a couple grand.

Feature request: room for iPad screenshots!

Yikes. Hope Twitter is preparing for a DDOS themselves. These bot nets need to be shut down.

But it gets more interesting. He adds:

"goal is p2p dns, not root-servers. We need root-servers for transition fast."

http://twitter.com/brokep/status/8857561784651777

This is most disconcerting. Here's a bit of background:

The original NYTimes Charlie Savage article from September breaking the news the that "crypto wars" may be heating up again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html

Blog pointing out that current law specifically allows for encryption, and that what the Feds are after could be a significant change:

http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.htm...

Two good articles from networkworld:

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2010/100610antonopoul...

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2010/101810sec1....

The EFF's position:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/government-seeks

Seriously! In his keynote, Jobs likened the feel of the iPhone 4 to an old Leica camera. A Leica without a shutter button?

It was Wikileaks' publishing of the private pager messages in New York from the day of 9/11 that turned me off to them. (http://911.wikileaks.org)

Would Wikileaks also have published all my private email from that day had they obtained it? Can't say I'd be down with that.

Ouchie! My particular combination of installed fonts and plugins makes my browser unique among all 250,000 browsers tested there so far.

Hm. Use one letter variable names for scoped variables? Excerpt from lines 92-112:

"* The length of an identifier determines its scope. Use one-letter variables for short block/method parameters, according to this scheme:

    a,b,c: any object
    d: directory names
    e: elements of an Enumerable
    ex: rescued exceptions
    f: files and file names
    i,j: indexes
    k: the key part of a hash entry
    m: methods
    o: any object
    r: return values of short methods
    s: strings
    v: any value
    v: the value part of a hash entry
    x,y,z: numbers
 
  And in general, the first letter of the class name if all objects are of that type."

Well not exactly... The work we are doing at Borange is more concerned with scheduling and availability than sending group SMS, and my main point was that there are possible strategies for migrating people off of SMS by including SMS compatibility. It's the lowest common denominator in mobile messaging, and you really can't afford not to include it to some degree for moving forward.

Yeah, crazy dead heap there, though! How long until SMS joins it? :)

There are still a lot of innovations you can make here without replacing the SMS backbone wholesale.

For example, users interact with user interfaces, not messaging layers. If you can get people using your interface, you can switch the messaging layer where appropriate. Notice Google now sending IM to SMS?

At my startup, Borange, we send group SMS for free on the iPhone, and are working with metadata and a user interface to innovate around sharing social availability and impromptu invitations, one of SMS's big use cases. When the time is right (read PUSH for iPhone?), we'll migrate users to a modern mobile messaging layer, and keep our backwards compatibility with free SMS for interacting with the rest of the world.

Check us out, by the way. We just launched our iPhone app and are looking for investors and partners who believe in the Matrix and major change in the communications space. http://www.borange.com.

Gives new meaning to grading on a curve.

It took us four weeks and four rejections to get Borange approved.

The back and forth via email with the App Store people moved at a snail's pace. The most helpful thing was for us to call Apple developer relations people and discuss our issues, despite that developer relations people have no involvement with the approval process.

I heard recently that there a 10 people at Apple working to approve 700 apps a day, including new apps and updates.