Steven VanRoekel, the new Chief Information Technology Officer for the United States, says smartphones and apps have raised the bar for citizen expectations of their government.
The second person to hold the CIO post, after nearly a decade at Microsoft VanRoekel headed to the FCC. There, he launched Apps.gov and ran a public contest for a Mobile Broadband Testing app that earned him a phone call from late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
You can hear a collective sospiro of relief from Italian Apple fans today after a judge in Milan denied a request by Samsung to block sales of the iPhone 4S in a preliminary hearing.
At stake was the launch of the iPhone 4S on October 28, the device that some Italians have already been buying on eBay just to say they’ve established intimate relations with Siri before anyone else.
To commemorate the launch of the official Steve Jobs biography in Taiwan, a bookseller handed out apples and bags printed with two portraits of the Apple co-founder.
You were supposed to be dressed in a Steve-esque black turtleneck to get the snack and commemorative bag at bookchain Eslite, but as the guy holding his bag wearing a Steve McQueen t-shirt shows, the rules for the giveaway weren’t strictly observed. (Or maybe all Steves look alike?)
The news comes to us from tireless Steve Jobs spotter Dan Bloom, who notes that Eslite’s sales of the bio are expected to outstrip Harry Potter.
Now that’s truly magical.
Via Dan Bloom
Here’s a question for the nervous flyers: would you be reassured to know that an iPad was scheduling your plane’s upkeep?
Flightdocs, a Florida-based company that helps airlines keep track of the moving parts that keep the friendly skies safe, has just launched an iPad app.
David Kelley and Steve Jobs have a lot in common. Kelley, the designer of Apple’s original mouse, was diagnosed with throat cancer back in 2007.
In addition to working with Apple on the mouse project, Jobs introduced Kelley to his wife. When Kelley was in the hospital, Jobs came to visit his old friend. And just like any well-wisher, he didn’t come empty handed.
Instead of flowers or candy, Jobs brought Kelley, who went on to found seminal design firm IDEO, the very first iPhone as a “get well” present. There was just one small problem: Jobs couldn’t get the iPhone to work.
Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor invoked Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as an example of fairness that the U.S. should emulate in the heated ongoing debate about income equality.
The details are a little blurry, but it could be an interesting case so here goes: a photographer is suing Apple claiming that two apps in its iTunes store have ripped off 80 of her pics.
Shanti Deva Korpi filed a suit on Oct. 18 in Texas for copyright infringement. That much we know. In the complaint, Korpi is described as an “avid photographer and artist” who regularly posts to Flickr groups.
The hate-mongers of the Westboro Church are out with their profane placards in Cupertino today, as we said they would be.
Right now, they’re outside Cupertino High School, where Justin Li snapped this pic of a counter protester dressed in all black (is that a Jobsian turtleneck?) and sneakers with a sign making a mockery of the church member’s display.
Later, Westboro has said it will try to ruin the Steve Jobs memorial service by brandishing the same trademark awfulness outside Apple headquarters in Cupertino.
But Apple fans are on the case. As you can see in the picture above, Apple fans are uniting to counter-protest Westboro’s homophobic, hate-filled picketing.
Let’s just say it: any smartphone that recognizes my lineage by calling me a queen is right as rain in my book. (Namely because it saves those tiring discussions about “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” etc.)
The learning curve with Apple’s new iPhone 4S voice activated personal assistant Siri may or may not be steep – depending on your point of view – but a Twitter feed launched Oct. 15 compiling the more unusual responses is exceedingly droll.
Teams in the National Football League are experimenting with iPads to substitute unwieldy playbooks, even though they are forced to turn them off before taking to the field because of NFL rules.
The Baltimore Ravens, for example, have sidelined their old school three-ring binders with iPads. Team organizers bought 120 of them to give players better access to a wealth of info – film sessions, nutrition guides and team calendars.
To honor Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple retail stores around the U.S. will close for around 90 minutes on Wednesday, October 19.
From 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (PST) tomorrow, Apple’s iconic stores will be shuttered so employees can take part in a memorial service for Jobs. They’ll watching a live broadcast of the event being held at an outdoor amphitheater at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. Apple employees outside the U.S. will be able to view a re-broadcast of the celebration.
Reuters reports that in preparation for the closure, stores across California aren’t accepting online bookings for Wednesday morning, either for tech-support or tutorials.
Via Reuters
Although they missed the chance to picket his funeral and memorial service, the Westboro Baptist Church still plans to stage two hate-mongering protests for Steve Jobs in Cupertino on October 19.
The Kansas-based congregation, infamous for picketing the burials of slain soldiers and its “God Hates Fags” slogan, plans to picket outside Apple headquarters during the employee celebration of Jobs and at a local high school.
In a rambling online statement, the church cited the immorality of “some nerdy people possessing ONLY what God loaned them for a very short while, have stolen God’s glory and given it to themselves.”
Earlier, the church had announced plans to picket Jobs’ funeral on October 6.
The MacRumors forum has a cautionary little tale about an iPhone 4S which says that it helped locate a cheating wife.
Titled “Divorcing wife. Thanks iPhone 4s and Find My Friends,” the post claims that a husband loaded up his wife’s new phone with the “Find my Friends” app – without telling her about it. (Like any story that starts “so I was checking his/her text messages/emails/browser history,” you know this will end badly).
Here’s the video to that “Steve Jobs” rap song that hit the Internets last month.
It’s got a few things that might not be safe for work – mainly rapper Supreme General who wrote and performs the song in various states of undress with obligatory crotch grabbing and too many obscenities to count. (Not that I didn’t try to count the obscenities – I’m like that.)
Although Apple has slashed international shipping times for many countries, eBay auctions may bring the iPhone 4S to early adopters before they can buy them in stores.
eBay currently lists a whopping 8,000 iPhone 4S for sale on its international circuit, in addition to individual country markets.
Some 22 European countries await the iPhone 4S launch on October 28, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to sell them now via the online marketplace.
Historic but now down-at-heel retailer Sears isn’t known for its cool stores, but the company is hoping a massive iPad and iPod deployment will change that.
Sears Holdings is equipping 450 stores nationwide with Apple’s sleek devices to train sales people and boost productivity by allowing them to check inventory, order products online and access product information before customers get frustrated and go somewhere else.
Apple guidelines prohibit third-party giveaways with iPhones and iPads as prizes — but that hasn’t stopped enterprising companies from using Apple’s latest hot product, the iPhone 4S, as a contest giveaway.
In the past, the Cupertino company has cracked down on a few iPad giveaways – in one case not approving a company’s app until it pulled the contest – but it has been hit and miss.
The folks over at Hipstamatic sent either the best or the worst email subject line, ever.
It announced “We Heart Boobies GoodPak,” presumably touting a limited-edition lens of the photo app for October. (Spam filters everywhere are convinced it’s an advert for a new porn toy. But of course we opened it anyway.)
Both the Android Market and iTunes are like flea markets: there’s some good stuff up front and lots of junk the more you rummage around the piles of crap in the back.
And the junk just seems to multiply the more you look.
Case in point: Google recently yanked “Is My Son Gay?” from the Android market after allout.org launched an online campaign about the homophobic quiz app. (Questions included “takes a long time to do his hair,” or if he “likes football” rather than “musicals.”)
The trouble is that both iTunes and the Android Market have apps that are just as offensive.
Police busted over 100 people who stole credit card information, mainly so they could get their hands on Apple’s insanely great products.
“This is primarily an Apple case,” NYPD deputy inspector Gregory Antonsen told the International Business Times.
If you want one of those iconic black mock turtlenecks made popular by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, you may have to wait a couple months.
Following Jobs’ death October 5, St. Croix Collections, maker of the mockneck, reported that it has sold out of the black version Jobs wore.
Shareef Allman, suspected of killing three and wounding seven in a rampage yesterday, has been shot and killed in Sunnyvale.
The search for Allman, 47, shutdown campuses at Apple and Hewlett-Packard yesterday as well as a number of local schools.
Robert Scoble snapped pics of the Cupertino campus with the flags flying at half mast today in honor of co-founder Steve Jobs’ passing.
You can see more of his photos here.
Via Foursquare
CBS News called the 56-year-old co-founder of Apple the “Edison” of our times.
Apple has started an email address for people to share your thoughts, memories and condolences on the death of Steve Jobs: rememberingsteve@apple.com
How will you remember Steve?
At least three of Apple’s Cupertino Campus buildings and Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters were shut down as police chase the suspect of a multiple homicide.
Radio station KQED’s extensive reporting during the day has it that suspect Shareef Allman, an employee of a Cupertino quarry, was at an early work meeting this morning attended by around 15 employees. Allman left the meeting, returned with an automatic rifle and a handgun then shot eight people, killing three, wounding seven others.
