The future of digital government rests in building a model much like Apple’s, Tim O’Reilly told BBC News. That means creating “killer apps” and making them accessible, he added.

“The iPhone comes out and Apple turns it into a platform and two years later there is something like 70,000 applications and 3,000 written every week. They have created a framework and infrastructure and that is the right way we should be thinking about government,” said O’Reilly.

A working example of the strategy?

Apps for Democracy, a data hub site for government apps that also sponsored a contest that resulted in 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in just a month.

A $10,000 prize was awarded to Victor Shilo for an iPhone and Facebook app combination called 311 that allows users to send complaints and requests — abandoned cars, info on trash pickups, graffiti — to District of Columbia officials.

O’Reilly warned that “going back to politics as usual” was not an option.

“In terms of unlocking information, it’s not a question of fast enough, it’s a matter of strategically enough. The government is so large and there is so much data there that the real question is how much of it is really useful. This is why it is important for the government to think strategically.”

Via BBC

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sait24emvUw

Milan’s first Apple retailer is not in the heart of the fashionable city, as we noted last week,  but that didn’t stop people from turning out in groovy headgear and giving stadium cheers for the first to walk out with the signature inauguration tee after camping out overnight.

Giving a touch of style to the event,  web designer Marco Tognoli came adorned in Apple logos from old iMac G3s, topped by this fanciful conical hat with a real apple on top:

Proving Apple fans will live up to Milan’s reputation for daring fashion to open Apple’s second Italy store. (Hit the jump for more pics).

We start the week with an intriguing goose-neck desktop lamp from iHome. Not only does it shine 60-watts of artificial illumination, it’ll pump up your morning with tunes from your iPod. The light/speaker is also a dock. If you’d like a bit more boom for your buck, check out iLive’s portable boombox. But if you just want to chill on this Labor Day (for Americans) you can always nab some App Store freebies from Apple.

Details on these bargains and many others (like a universal touch screen stylus) can always be found on CoM’s Daily Deals page.

If you have a Google Voice account, you can make free VoIP calls on your iPhone. You’ll need to sign up for an account at Gizmo.com and download the free Fring app for your iPhone, but after that you’re done. You can make free outgoing calls to (up to three minutes) and receive unlimited incoming calls through Google Voice.

Hit the jump for instructions.

Spotify’s iPhone app has just gone live on the iTunes app store. But us poor Yankees are SOL. It’s available in Europe only — for now anyway.

The app is available here for free from Apple’s App Store, but requires a premium Spotify account to work at a cost of about £9.99 (about about $16) a month.

Neither the app nor Spotify is available in the U.S., but plans are afoot to bring the highly-rated service across the pond. It is set to come to the U.S. sometime later this year, or maybe next, pending licensing agreements with the record labels, and advertising deals that support the free service.

Because Spotify’s streaming music service is such a threat to iTunes, it was possible that Apple might somehow disable the iPhone app. Apple has disapproved of apps that replicate core iPhone functions, like Google Voice. While there is no indication yet that Apple cripples threatening apps, it doesn’t approve them. Apple perhaps doesn’t see the Spotify iPhone app as a threat while it is restricted to premium customers.

But Spotify’s app doesn’t seem to have any restrictions, except one imposed on all third-party apps — it can’t run in the background.

Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a music library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free (with the occasional ad).

Spotify’s iPhone app adds a very important feature: it can cache full playlists to be played offline. You can store up to 3,333 songs — that’s 10 days constant listening — and they will play when the network goes dark. The offline caching service allows tracks to be played anywhere offline: on airplanes, in subways or even when traveling overseas to avoid roaming charges.

Official screenshots of the app and a video of it in action after the jump.

Apple is already setting up shop for Wednesday’s “It’s only rock & roll” press event that will likely see new iPods with cameras and the return of Steve Jobs to the public eye.

Apple has already hung a big banner on the front of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — the venue of a press event next Wednesday at 10AM. The company last week sent invites to reporters with the line: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.”

The banner out front shows a rockin’ iPod chick kicking her feet in the air as she freaks out. The company has also hung a big banner inside the front door with a white Apple logo on a silver background.

There are no other posters visible inside the venue. The center is crawling with security guards.  There are half-a-dozen security guards with Apple-logo shirts at the front, back and sides. Apple will likely have a 24-hour security detail until the event starts on Wednesday.

There’s a TV van already parked to the side on Third Street. The van is likely there to transcode video from the event for distribution via iTunes and Apple’s website, which the company typically does just after the event ends.

The event will likely see the introduction of new versions of the iPod touch and iPod nano with built-in cameras, which has all but been confirmed by dozens of cases for the new devices. There will also likely be a new version of iTunes with built-in hooks to social software like Facebook.

The event will also probably mark the return of Steve Jobs to the public stage. It’s hard to imagine he’d let the event happen without him, even if it’s just a few words at the start. But let’s hope he’s well enough to MC the whole show. He’s been missed in the last year. No one does an Apple event like Jobs.

More pictures after the jump.

Since I mount my iPhone on my windshield for easy access to my music, I thought it would be appropriate to drill a hole in the plastic to let me take pictures and video while driving. It wasn’t difficult to do. If you have a dremel or a drill you can crank this out in 3 minutes. The plastic is durable enough to handle the pressure of the drill and there isn’t any cracking.

I have the Griffin WindowSeat which comes with adapters for ipod touch and the 1st gen iPhone. It’s a great deal/gift for someone who has an aux input in their car.

Hit the jump to see a video showing the DIY dash cam at work.

Assembly 2009 is a gathering for programmers who love to write low-level code. Basically, any cross platform language has a level of abstraction from the hardware that prevents you from running truly optimized code. These folks love to get the most out of any chip.

That’s in abundant evidence in this clip, “3 1/2 Inches is Enough” by Unreal Voodoo. It’s a drama starring two modern laptops and an earnest classic Mac that was rendered entirely in assembly language on a Mac Classic II — presumably running a 68030 16 Mhz processor. It’s beautiful, and it’s got a great beat. Nice.

Unreal Voodoo via BoingBoing

All the icons for folders and apps in Snow Leopard are now drawn in glorious 512 x 512 pixels. It’s a step toward making the operating system resolution independent, and perhaps also to make Snow Leopard a touchscreen friendly OS.

But it’s also obviously done just for the art of it. These icons are real beauties. They are full of great details and little surprises. One icon contains the words to a song, visible only if you blow it up to its full size.

Hit the jump for a gallery of hardcore icon porn.

When I first went to pick up my iPhone 3G, I was scared. I know what my hands are capable of: Horrible, unthinkable acts of clumsiness. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve hurt others. I’ve even hurt my kitties. So why would I want to put this salvific piece of tech gold into harm’s way? I need to protect this treasure, specifically because I don’t have another $600 to spend on a replacement. And I will be needing one soon.

But I don’t put my iPhone in a case. You shouldn’t either.

Twitter user livelovelight just posted this picture of Steve Jobs’ car in a handicapped spot at Apple’s campus. The snap was posted at 2.43 PST — about half an hour ago. Steve’s car is probably still there.

Forty minutes earlier, livelovelight tweated that he’d just missed Jobs: “At apple headquarters. Just missed steve jobs by 2 minutes,” he said.

Jobs is famous for parking in the handicapped spots (check out this hilarious gallery), but perhaps now he’s recovering from a liver transplant he has a genuine handicapped permit. I don’t see it hanging off the mirror though. He must have taken it with him.

And here he is talking to Jonny Ive. This picture was uploaded to Skitch about 33 minutes ago.

If Apple wanted to stand the world on its ear next Wednesday at the It’s Only Rock and Roll But We Like It event in San Francisco, the company would announce it is opening iPhone software development to all comers and is dropping the facade of exclusive distribution through the iTunes App Store.

Heresy, you say? Perhaps in the eyes of some, but read on to learn why those two moves would be best for the company, the platform, for developers and – most of all – consumers.

We’ve read of all sorts of ingenious ways to power our favorite electronics, including solar and our own body’s heat or movement. But in one of the more practical examples, a New York company harnesses the power of your bicycle to keep your iPod or iPhone charged.

The BioLogic FreeCharge, unveiled at the Eurobike show in Germany, can fully charge your iPod or iPhone in 3 hours. Although its unlikely most of us go on three-hour bike rides, the $100 gadget will keep your iPod from going flat when you’re nowhere near an electrical outlet.

The BioLogic FreeCharge works by taking the power from your bike’s generator hub, filtering the juice through some circuitry that prevents spikes, and sending the electricity off to you iPod, iPhone or any gizmo with a USB port.

The BioLogic FreeCharge will be available March 2010.

[Via Gadget Lab and Bike Hugger]

Apple clone maker Psystar’s got some new lawyers who believe the federal case against the Florida company is difficult, but not “crazy.”

Kiwi Camara and Tim Nyberg of Houston legal studio Camara & Sibley agreed to defend Psytar in June. They’re taking a winner-takes-all approach, charging the Mac cloner a flat fee — only if they prevail over Apple in court.

“We take hard cases, but not baseless ones,” Camara told the Houston Chronicle.

Marc Sky, better known as the “Dollar Artist,” crafts legal tender into everything from dog sculptures to bookmarks and chopstick holders.

Now he’s made these cool iPod sculptures, about which he remarks:

“Although it can’t be seen in the photos, the scroll wheel (eagle seal) is creased in around the border of the circle. This creates a 3-D effect of the scroll wheel rising up. When you run your finger around the circle, you feel the edge.”

He’s also coaxed dollar bills into cheap iPod stands, meant to angle your device so you can comfortably watch videos.

Basic one-bill sculptures cost $7.95; the more complex ones using two cost $15.90., they can be ordered from his online showcase.

Via Mac Surfer

Adobe’s Flash is fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that’s in the hands of a limited number of developers.

The seed updates Adobe Flash to version 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard shipped with version 10.0.23.1, which is known to be insecure and needs to be patched to close various security holes. (If you’re running Snow Leopard and haven’t updated Flash, follow this link to download the latest version).

Apple seeded the update less than a week after shipping Snow Leopard on August 28. The other fixes seem to be relatively minor. According to World of Apple, which has published the seed notes, the 71MB update includes:

– compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
– an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
– some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
– an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
– instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
– an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
– Motion 4 becoming unresponsive

It’s not unusual for Apple to continue working on the operating system after the launch of a major OS update. In the past, the first update has typically been released in a couple of weeks.

We end the week with a grab-bag of bargains, including two deals on MacBooks, more accessories for your iPod nano, and App Store price cuts.

Details on these and other Apple items (such as an FM receiver for your iPod/iPhone) can be found on the CoM “Daily Deals” page.

Here’s a selection of games to take you through the weekend from Mac Games and More. Games include a medieval RPG where you play a megalomaniac monarch, an addictive alien shooter, and a challenging puzzler set in Amsterdam. Click on the images to see a larger screenshot.

Snow Leopard’s revitalised Services menu is probably my favorite improvement among the many included in the upgrade.

At long last, the user has been given total control over Services. We can choose whether or not they are used, we can assign keyboard shortcuts that suit us, and we can create entirely new Services using Automator.

The crucial difference between Services in Leopard and Services in Snow Leopard is context.

OK, this one’s a bit niche, but some of you might find it useful. For the benefit who’d rather read than watch a video, here’s an explanation.

Many of you will already be familiar with OS X’s built-in zoom feature (which you can reach via the Mouse or Trackpad prefs in Snow Leopard). Hold down Control (by default; you can change it to Option or Command if you wish), then two-finger scroll up or down on your trackpad, or use a mouse wheel if you have one. Your display will zoom smoothly in and out.

And many of you will also have heard about the new QuickTime screencast recording feature in Snow Leopard, which offers does a fine job but lacks the bells and whistles found in full-scale screencasting apps like ScreenFlow.

Combine the two, and you have a neat way of calling out or highlighting details while using QuickTime to record a screencast.

The iPhone Spotlight search feature has been improved yet again.

Universal Search, a jailbreak app from Efiko Software, takes searching with Spotlight to a whole new level. With this add-on installed, Spotlight can access mobile search sites and generate location-based results all from within the Spotlight search window.

Universal Search’s smart input monitoring allows the user to enter a phone number or url directly into Spotlight and options to call, text or visit the url pop up in the results. It also searches Google Maps and mobile sites directly rather than going through a search engine’s web results.

Search sites include Wikipedia, Google Maps, Twitter, CNN, ebay, IMDb, flickr, and ESPN.

Universal Search is available for $4.99 in the Cydia Store.

You just installed Snow Leopard. Now what?

Here’s the best 10 tips and tricks we found for putting the beast to best use.

Multimedia Messaging Service is coming to the iPhone on September 25, AT&T just announced in a press release. The service will be available at no additional cost to iPhone customers with a text messaging plan (which start at about $20). But there’s still no word on tethering (which allows your computer to access the internet via the iPhone’s data connection).

The MMS announcement comes as AT&T draws fire for its slow, unreliable data network. MMS is likely to put more strain on the network, but AT&T claims it is ready.

“The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.”

We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.

The MMS service will allow iPhone users to send and receive messages containing images, audio, video. MMS is widely available in other countries, and can be enabled on many iPhones with a simple hack.

Tethering is not likely to be announced for several months as AT&T builds out its network with 2,100 cell towers and 100,000 new backhaul links.

The cruel but funny People of Walmart website is looking for a developer to create an iPhone app for the website.

If you’re interested in making an iPhone app to make fun of misfits — and possibly get sued for publishing their unauthorized photographs — contact People of Walmart at [email protected].

Surely you’ve seen the viral website, which publishes candid-camera style pictures of the various meth tweakers, rednecks, and other sundry weirdos that frequent the nation’s largest retailer, along with cruelly funny captions.

Just a few weeks old, the site is often down due to server overload. The developers are also looking for a new host that can cope with the traffic.

Via QuickPwn.

Now you can create tilt-shift photographs on your iPhone thanks to a new app called TiltShift Generator.

Available now for 99c (the price rises to $2.99 in two weeks), the app makes those fake miniature pictures so popular on the internet.

Created by developer Takayuki Fukatsu, the app works by selectively blurring parts of the picture to simulate a very narrow depth of field, making the subject look like a miniature.

The software can be used to create other effects, like vintage-looking photos.

If you want to try it out before plunking down your hard-earned 99c, the developer also offers a free online web app, and a free Adobe Air version. More sample pictures after the jump.

Link to TiltShift Generator on iTunes.

Developer’s website.