Not that this is a great surprise. After all, when you compare the legal budgets of the two companies, the balance is a bit to one side. But even past all that, Psystar got trounced. The EULA of OS X, prohibiting its installation on none Apple hardware, was fully upheld.

That means that the whole legal edifice of Psystar went to hell in a single line of judicial scrip. It’s like this: Psystar can no longer (soon, at least), sell computers running OS X and claim to be within the law. There goes the farm.

There is a remedies hearing on the 14th of December, at which Apple will reverse its previous stance, and welcome Psystar in to the fold. Just joshing you, Apple is going to continue to use the hammer and attempt to remedy Psystar right to the curb.

Psystar is about to go away, so get in before the last act. That is, if you want a Mac, and not a lovely Windows 7 machine. Sorry Psystar, maybe you should have learned from history, don’t step on Apple’s toes.

This is probably all over, but you have to give Psystar credit for trying their damnedest, even though their case apparently was a feather-weight in terms of legality.

TubeRadio.fm is a search engine for music videos on YouTube but with the ability to build and share video playlists of songs with others. The overall product comes across very much like ‘Spotify for music videos’.

The slick iTunes-esque interface allows you to search for music either via YouTube or via Last.fm’s database of releases. Then you can add individual tracks or whole albums to a playlist. As you play tracks, the video plays from YouTube alongside artist information from Last.fm with lyrics (where available) displayed from Lyricsfly.com.

TubeRadio.fm isn’t just for personal use though, it’s got the beginnings of a strong social side thanks to playlist sharing. You can share your music taste through Twitter, Facebook, by email or by a copying a direct URL. You can even befriend other users of the service and show off your finely crafted playlists to them directly on the site.

Everything about TubeRadio.fm screams quality – right down to small touches like the way a floating thumbnail for a video that appears when you hover over an item in your playlist.

It was developed by a London-based duo over four months and they are currently hard at work developing version 2 of the service. The revamp is due for launch next month but don’t wait for that – give it a go today.

Jerome O’Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, were arrested Friday morning and charged with conspiracy for falsifying books and records for Madoff’s broker-dealer and investment businesses.

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, O’Hara and Perez worked for Madoff beginning in 1990 and 1991, respectively, and were primarily responsible for developing and maintaining computer programs that supported Madoff’s investment business. Many of the programs ran on an IBM server known within the firm as “House 17.”

Between 2004 and 2008, Madoff’s firm underwent five reviews by the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) and a European accounting firm. In order to cover up Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, O’Hara and Perez allegedly developed and maintained programs that generated numerous false and fraudulent books and records.

In April 2006, O’Hara and Perez allegedly tried to delete 218 of the 225 programs on House 17 that contained fraudulent information, closed their own investment accounts with Madoff, and withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Government prosecutors say Madoff then directed DiPascali to pay O’Hara and Perez “whatever they wanted in order to keep them happy”, essentially bribing them, and both men then received a 25% pay raise and bonuses of $60,000.

Bail for O’Hara and Perez was set at $1 million bond each during a brief Friday afternoon appearance in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Investigators say between twenty-five and thirty employees, outside accountants and fund managers and Madoff family members could ultimately face criminal charges for their roles.

Madoff, 71, pleaded guilty in March to running a decades long Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of clients of billions of dollars.

Image Credit ABC

Take a look:

1000 GB = 1 Terabyte (TB)
1000 TB = 1 Petabyte (PB)
1000 PB = 1 Exabyte (EB)
1000 EB = 1 Zettabyte (ZB)
1000 ZB = 1 Yottabyte (YB)
Put in a much more mild way, a Yottabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000 GB. There, now you know.

The EDT has mainly focused its electronic actions against the Mexican and U.S. governments to draw attention to the war being waged against the Zapatistas and others in Mexico.

Their latest project is the development of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a GPS device based on a cheap cell phone that will help Mexican immigrants safely cross the border.

According to an interview with VICE, Dominguez explains that the primary goal of the Transborder Immigrant Tool is to increase safety during border crossing by directing heavy-footed immigrants to safe routes, shelter, food, water, and friendly sympathizers.

Based on the Virtual Hiker Tool, Dominguez and his research lab BANG (Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes) took the GPS enabled Motorola i455 phone, which is under $30, available even cheaper on eBay, and cracked it to create a simple compass-like navigation system.

“We were also able to add other information, like where to find water left by the Border Angels, where to find Quaker help centers that will wrap your feet, how far you are from the highway—things to make the application really benefit individuals who are crossing the border.” Dominguez explains.

Dominguez isn’t too concerned with the border authorities impression of the tool either.

“I would imagine they won’t be too happy with us, but again we’re not trying to hide. It’s a safety tool….They’re well aware of who we are and what we do. Once they get full knowledge of the Transborder Immigrant Tool—and we’re very transparent about it—I’m sure they’ll be quite critical.” he says.

Via BoingBoing

An unknown Brazilian blogger has begun a crusade against unfaithful men and women by posting, on Google’s social network Orkut, a list of names of people he/she claims have been unfaithful.

The list contains 300 supposed cheaters from the small rural city of Lagoa da Prata in Brazil. As you would imagine, particularly in such a small community, the list has caused somewhat of a stir amongst the people involved and others living in the area.

Sadly since the list was made public, a woman is being said to have been beaten by her husband. A housewife, who asked not be identified because her husband of 28 years was in the list told a local publication that she and the husband had to meet the alleged lover and talk for a long time before things would go back to normal. “This is someone who wants to do us harm. The reason why I don’t know,” she said.

The boyfriend of Juliana Oliveira, a businesswoman, appeared in one of the lists. Talking to MGTV, a local TV station, the woman told about her frustration and embarrassment: “People comment when I walk by and I end up feeling uncomfortable. This is not a funny joke and I don’t know what to say.”

Police are attempting to find a way to reveal the blogger’s identity but in the meantime are asking residents to remain calm.

Several other copycat lists – entitled “The cuckolds of Lagoa da Prata” – have also emerged.

via Guardian

We discovered, and then Twitter publicly announced, that the feature had been removed due to bugs that needed to be resolved.

You’ll be glad to know the retweet functionality is officially back – at least to those of you had it before. For the rest of you, I’m afraid it’s a waiting game but Twitter assures us the rollout will continue shortly.

If you haven’t already, be sure to read our guide to how Twitter’s new retweet feature works and looks.

Update: We’re being told that the functionality has not returned for everyone who had it before. Again, aside from waiting there’s not much we can say to help.

We’ll be going through the week’s tops stories that we covered as well as some of those we didn’t. We will be refining the outline and approach to this post over the next couple of weeks with your feedback. Please feel free to comment below on what you would most like to see in this Weekly Recap post and the format you prefer.

News Corp to block Google?
Rupert Murdoch hinted in a interview that News Corp’s properties could be opting out of Google and refuse to be indexed. This created a flurry of analysis in the blogosphere as Jason Calacanis hinted at the possible genius of the move while Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan was quick to challenge Jason’s idea. Our own Alex also chimed in offering his thoughts in light of Mark Cuban’s post which praised Murdoch’s comments. It will be interesting to see how this situation evolves, the latest news reveals that Murdoch may put up his pay wall and block Google within months.

Deals and more deals
The week saw a flurry of big deals. EA acquired social game maker Playfish for $400 Million. Google acquired mobile advertising giant AdMob for $750 million in stock as well as VOIP startup Gizmo5 for a rumored price of $30 million. During the week, HP also acquired 3com for 2.7 billion.

This week in Twitter
Twitter this week began to launch the new retweet feature but soon pulled back on the launch after numerous bugs were being experienced by users. The feature will likely be re-launched soon has been relaunched although not without controversy. Many users dislike the implementation of retweets as it no longer allows for commentary to be added to the retweet. In Twitter client news, TweetDeck released their new and improved iPhone app which now includes support for Facebook. This will likely bring back the debate on the iPhone’s best Twitter client. Most people agree that Tweetie 2 is the best app out there but TweetDeck’s new iPhone app certainly re-opens the debate. Finally, LinkedIn announced that status updates on their service now offer a two-way sync with Twitter.

Droid takes on iPhone
After a week in the wild, the overall impressions most users have of the Droid are positive. It was reported that 100,000 units were sold over the initial launch weekend and that the Droid has already captured 1.44% of US mobile browsing market share. Although it may not be the “iPhone killer” as many had claimed, it’s definitely the most formidable opponent the iPhone has faced to date. In other Android news, Dell just announced that they will begin selling Android based smartphones in November.

Quick Hits

• The latest rumors have it that the launch of Google’s highly anticipated Chrome OS appears to be imminent.
• What websites have the biggest street cred out Twitter? TweetMeme launches Retweet Leaderboard and lists the top retweeted sites.
• Citizen Journalists and those who live stream from mobile devices rejoice as Qik launches DVD-quality live video streaming.
• Travelers get a break on being ripped off from airport WiFi until January 15th as Google offers free WiFi across US airports.
• Looking for Facebook Fan Page inspiration? Make sure to check out these Custom Facebook Page galleries which aggregate the most inspiring Facebook Fan Pages.

Defrag is, in its own words “focused on the tools and technologies that accelerate the ‘aha’ moment, and is a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, and thinkers that are building the next wave of software innovation.”  It was a fantasic event with a sort of who’s who attendee list.  Monitoring the realtime twitter back-stream was dizzying at times but very insightful.

I boiled down the event into four themes based on the sessions I attended. If you were there you may have seen it differently:

• shift from search to discovery – online social graph(s) becoming more important and driving the information that finds you. Like Khris Loux said, if the information is important to you, it will find you.  Keyword searches in Google will be largely replaced by  the “flow”.
• flow and filtering – the flow is a massive expanding river of realtime information/noise. The ability to filter information that is most relevant and important to the individual from the flow is the next big challenge/opportunity.
• identity – fundamental to enabling discovery and filtering the flow is identity which is currently in a very fragmented state. There are also big privacy and segmentation concerns that need to be addressed by selective sharing of identity attributes
• the “cloud” – more of an undertone enabler but mentioned in almost every presentation I attended.

Through all of the insightful discussion and visionary commentary, I was surprised there was little mention of or acknowledgement of the “digital divide“, especially as it relates to social collaboration. The masses are barely catching on as we’re accelerating further away. If your online social graph only represents 15% of your real relationships, it will be inherently flawed in providing the basis for what information will “find” you.

I was also surprised that the importance of the mobile shift and mobile device explosion was absent from most conversation, possibly because the group has moved passed it already. But I think there will be drastic paradigm shift in how the masses interact “online” enabled by ubiquitous mobile connectivity that’s incomprehensible.

This was a great event and certainly by far the best I’ve attended in terms of power availability (strip at every table) and wifi (access point every other row!).  The format, flow, atmosphere and attendee passion made for a wonderful experience.  Denver’s a fantastic place for a conference, the Hyatt was a great venue and I am lucky to be local. And thanks to my employer for making the investment for me to attend this event!

We have yet to have word when, if ever, Dell plans on selling the phone in the United States.

The new Dell phone, called the “Mini 3,” (you can see it in the image), will be available for sale to some 542 million people through its two carriers at lauch, giving the phone a market large enough to even have a modest success mean sufficient volume.

The phone runs “OPhone,” China Mobil’s version of Android, which is quite a bit different from the Android flavors that we enjoy here in the United States.

In all honesty, Dell might pull this off. The phone does not offend the eyes, runs a current OS, and is being launched onto some of the largest carriers in the world. This is an excellent introductory circumstance for Dell to make its mark in the smartphone market.

Do you think that this is an appropriate or intelligent move on the part of Dell? Sound off in the comments.

The original code was done by someone else and I did the design. When we went live someone suggesting adding some ‘Terms and Conditions” to the site to make it look more serious and make sure we weren’t liable for stuff. Of course, with no funding in place, we couldn’t afford a lawyer to draft something for us.

So I improvised. I went to Hotmail.com, copied their Terms and Conditions file and did a search for “Hotmail” and replaced it with “V3 Redirect Services”.

Done. (here is a copy, courtesy of the Internet Archive)

Two years later, in 1999, I sold the service to Fortunecity for a small fortune, which was paid in shares. The shares tanked and by 2001 I was back where I started, financially at least. Then, in 2002 the Dutch Tax offices wanted to have a word with me. They had looked into my case and had decided that I had incorporated my company too late so they were going to tax me for the small fortune in private. We estimated I would have to pay somewhere close to EUR 3 million if they would be proven right. Ouch.

Of course I didn’t agree and I also explained to them that there was no small fortune so I would never be able to pay the 50% taxes on the small fortune I ended up never making. Their reply: “that isn’t our problem”.

So we started gathering evidence to prove that we had incorporated in time and there was no basis for their assumptions. It took a lot of time and money to get all our stuff ready and in the process my lawyer told me that even in the best case scenario I would have to prepare to pay at least a substantial fine. Any fine would have meant personal bankruptcy, I was about to lose everything I owned, so you can imagine it was a stressful time.

One day we had another meeting with the investigators of the tax offices. We were going to look over some of the ‘evidence’ they collected. We sat there and listened to what they brought to the table. The first documents they showed weren’t very impressive but it was clear they were working up to something. Then one of the investigators turned to me and asked me “When did you start the company, really?”. I replied “Somewhere in 1997. I can look up the exact month if you want”. He said that wasn’t necessary but he wanted to remind me that everything I said was on the record. Then he asked me again “I want to ask you again to make sure we all hear you correctly: what year, exactly, did you start the company?”.

By now I was starting to get worried. What were they up to? I was pretty sure I knew when I started the company. I repeated the year we founded the company: “I’m pretty sure we started the company in 1997″. The investigators looked at each other, smiled and then the head investigator reached into his bag and produced a document. It looked familiar. He held it up and said “We have proof that you actually started this company in 1996 and have been lying to us, on the record, all this time and even today”.

I was puzzled. It just didn’t make sense. I knew when I had started the company. I reached over and took the papers to read them. It was a printed copy of our original “Terms and Conditions”. The one I stole from Hotmail. At the bottom of the document it said:

“All rights reserved  | V3 redirect Services | Copyright 1996 – 1997″.

That copyright notice was their proof that I must have started the company in 1996. It was one of the most important pieces of evidence in their case against me.

I read the whole document for a while until I came to the last paragraph. It was titled “LAWS” and contained the following sentence:

“The TS shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the state of California, excluding its conflict of law provisions. Member and V3 Redirect Services agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the state of California.”

When I did the find and replace I forgot to change “the state of California” to “The Netherlands” where we were based. I looked at the main investigator and told him “If you really want to use this document I suggest we move the whole case over to California as that is what this seems to apply to”. Then I went on to explain that these were simply Hotmail’s terms of service and how they got there.

The document disappeared from the table into the briefcase and wasn’t mentioned again. Three months later I got a letter that my income for 1999 was permanently set at EUR 0,-. At first I didn’t even get what that meant. Then my accountant called and asked me whether I was drinking champagne. I asked “Why should I?” and he explained “That letter is the tax offices way of saying that the case is closed. This is the last thing you will ever hear about it”.

The moral of this story? We will never know how serious that single document was in their case and I still don’t know if it saved me or caused my predicament in the first place. Either way, when you do a find and replace, better be thorough, and always check the small print…

TheNextWeb will not, and can not point you towards where in fact to download the software. Cursory research into the matter points to its finding being quite simple. Office 2010, the hotly anticipated successor to the very popular Office 2007 was expected to reach a beta release next week.

Apparently people were too enthusiastic to wait. Craving Tech claims to have received the software from Microsoft themselves, and have captured a number of screenshots, some of which posted below.

Recall as well, that this is only part of the office suite. Microsoft is still building a browser version of its Office suite to fend off competitors such as ZoHo and Google Docs. The desktop version of Office will most likely remain the most popular for the foreseeable future.

Take a look at the screenshots, are you going to upgrade?

Sounds the war drums, Google is about to become quite a bit less useful. No small thing. If Rupert Murdoch can indeed pull off leaving Google, and demonstrate that a pay wall is possible and profitable, we will see a cascade of news organizations moving to follow suit.

Once all the news is gone from Google (and eventually Bing, Ask, etc.), we will be forced to watch the news come out in wholly different ways. Mark Cuban thinks that Twitter and Facebook are suitable substitutes for Google News for the masses. I disagree.

Google sends 100,000 clicks a minute to news organizations, but to News Corp, that means little. “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it,” said Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer.

They are serious, and if they do this, they will revolutionize (probably negatively) the way the internet, and news, work. It’s hard to put a finger on just how big this really is. This changes the largest paradigm that we have had on the internet: content wants to be free.

Love it or hate it, you had best have a plan for what you are going to do when news goes paid.

In actual fact, that’s exactly the way they like it. As for their iPhone app? It’s ready but you can’t have it.

Grow slow

Speaking at the Northern Startup 2.0 event in Manchester, UK last night, We7 CEO Steve Purdham made clear that growing an innovative music service is a delicate business and that Spotify is heading for a fall.

By pushing for fast growth through international expansion and mobile apps, Purdham argued, Spotify is increasing its costs to an unsustainable level.

Thanks to music royalties, an increase in users equals an increase in costs. That’s why Spotify is so keen to get you onto a Premium subscription plan and why there are rumours that its delayed US launch (now expected early next year) may end up being subsciption-only with no free option at all.

We7, meanwhile, is taking the ‘Steady and slow wins the race’ approach. Its user numbers may lag behind Spotify’s but Purdham is looking at the long-game. By ensuring that advertising revenue balances with the number of users, he argues, We7 will outlast its rivals even if it means growing at a slower rate.

The iPhone app stays in the CEO’s pocket

The slow pace even stretches to We7’s iPhone and Android apps. Similar to Spotify’s hit apps, they provide mobile access to We7’s vast music catalogue. Despite having been ready for several months, they are yet to see a release.

I asked Purdham why this was and he dramatically threw the book he was holding to the ground, furiously explaining that there was no point releasing the apps until the business was ready to support them. The marketing and support costs for such a release were too high, he said. What’s more they may drive too many new users to We7 too early.

It’s about the ads, not the music

Purdham sees We7 as an advertising company that just happens to use music as its vehicle. He says that the main challenge for the future of We7 is ensuring that advertising continues to grow with user numbers.

User numbers certainly are growing. Even by relying largely on word of mouth promotion and concentrating on the UK market, the service has grown to 2.5 million unique monthly UK users, just behind Spotify’s 2.7 million.

Purdham is well aware of the challenges of growth. He pointed out that Last.fm has gone into decline since being bought by CBS – it simply didn’t know how to adjust from being an early-adopter product to a mass-market one.

We7 may not have the sexy PR of Spotify behind it but don’t let that fool you – “Steady and Slow” may yet win the race.

Alleged screenshots and fake torrents have been passed around, everyone hoping to get at least a glimpse of what could potentially be a game changer.

Well, if Techcrunch’s sources are to be believed, we could see Google Chrome OS be made available as early as next week. In what state? We’ll have to wait and see.

Support for external devices is likely to be limited and clearly available software will be equally so. But the release will be a telling sign into Google’s future and ambitions.

The other question lies in exactly how users will be able to get their hands on the OS. Will Google will make it possible to download and install immediately is a big question. Google has made agreements with the likes of Acer, HP, Lenovo and others, therefore it’s likely we’ll see the OS come built into netbooks galore before long.

Exciting times ahead for consumers and businesses alike.

note: We’ve contacted Google for an official response and will update as and when we receive one.

The social network imitates the functionality and ideals behind Twitter to create a smooth and well developed user interface with some features I’d actually like to see Twitter adopt.

With hash-tags, direct messages, followers, followees, users will quickly settle into the sites familiar environment and allow them to start engaging with topics, businesses and individuals that interest them and their current involvement’s.

The site has been clearly well thought out and designed, possibly identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the Twitter native web app. The filters option is one feature, that emulates the recent addition to Twitter with Lists, that I really admire and in this particular environment adds real value to organizing the stream of information and opinion on display.

Threaded conversations though, is what moves it a step on from the native Twitter client when in direct comparison. Sending a message in response to a ’sprout’ (Sorry, couldn’t resist) places it below the original message and in the familiar threaded format, encouraging discussion revolved around a particular statement or topic.

So the aesthetics and interface are a winner, but what about the main objectives of the service and it’s potential to achieve a long term viable operation?

Instead of asking Twitter users, ‘What are you doing?’, Sprouter is asking ‘What are you working on? with a view to connecting entrepreneurs, small businesses and sharing opinion and information.

Sarah Prevette, the founder and CEO, believes that “Sprouter can provide the forum for real-time networking and collaboration so everyone can benefit from mistakes and successes.”. Indeed it does and after it’s beta launch back in August 2009, it’s providing it’s user with a unique space to market themselves, their ideas and businesses. Another anchor to Sprouter’s popularity is the Sprout Ups, again emulating the success of Twestival’s that have been a real hit with the Tweeks (Twitter Geeks) around the globe.

According to Erin, the Community Manager, an iPhone app is planned which will be crucial in adding that accessibility aspect to the service. It will add real bite to Sprouter’s offering and with such a emphasis on the business world, they should definitely be looking to develop a Blackberry version too.

For anyone looking for direction, funding or even ideas, Sprouter is an intelligent place to start. With an astute interface and well developed site, it’s a key and accessible resource for any budding entrepreneur.

It shows that while everything you say and do online might feel permanent some things still fade away.

Every time you visit the page (do it now!) it gets a little smaller. As Zach explains:

Virtual data isn’t subject to decay like traditional media. Despite this, we can still lose personal data to disk failure, viruses, or accidental deletion. Unlike personal data however, data on the internet has a seemingly infinite shelf-life. Between search-engine caching, cloud-hosting, re-blogging, plagiarizing, and the way-back machine, the net collects and eternally stores vast amounts of information.

Temporary.cc eschews this paradigm. For each unique visitor it receives, Temporary.cc deletes part of itself. These deletions change the way browsers understand the website’s code and create a unique (de)generative piece after each new user. Because each unique visit produces a new composition through self-destruction, Temporary.cc can never be truly indexed, as any subsequent act of viewing could irreparably modifiy it.

Eventually, like tangible media, Temporary.cc will fall apart entirely, becoming a blank white website. Its existence will be remembered only by those who saw or heard about it.

Sometimes I get the impression that by often reloading my website stats we get more visitors too. Guess this site appeals to the same set of emotions but in reverse. The more you reload the more will be lost. Guess it must feel really familiar to Geocities users.

Not good. But it gets worse.

Adobe has acknowledged the problem, and has promised nothing. No patch, no quick fix, nothing but a thumb of the nose. Adobe has made it plain that websites and their creators are responsible for their security.

That sounds like GM saying drivers are responsible for exploding gas tanks. This is a big, bad problem. Expect to see backlash to Adobe, and some fix in the pipeline. If not, a large swath of the internet is now very, very insecure.

Mike Murray of Foreground Security said it well: “Any site that allows user-uploadable content is vulnerable, and most are not configured to prevent this.”

H/T @MichaelKlurfeld for the tip.