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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 124 declined, 43 accepted (167 total, 25.75% accepted)

Java

Submission + - Introducing JITB: A Flash player built on the JVM (joa-ebert.com) 1

MBCook writes: "Joa Ebert has started working on a new program called JITB. Announced in a talk at FITC San Fran, it's a Flash player written to use the Java JVM to run ActionScript, and in simple graphics test case (making 1 million flash.geom.Point) was 30x faster than Adobe's Flash player. There is an impressive demo video on YouTube showing the point test."
Media

Submission + - Is This Really The Future of Magazines? (interfacelab.com)

MBCook writes: "Interfacelab has put up a review of Wired's new iPad app, and declared "The only real differentiation between the Wired application and a [1990's] multimedia CD-ROM is the delivery mechanism[.]" While providing little interactivity other than a fancy page-flip, the application is made of XML and images, including two for the text of each page in portrait and landscape mode. This seems to be why the application is 500MB. The article suggests this was done to get the app out quick after Flash was officially vetoed by Steve Jobs."
Apple

Submission + - iPhone: 46% of Japanese Smartphone Market (appleinsider.com)

MBCook writes: "Despite claims earlier in the year that the iPhone was hated by Japan (later disproven), the iPhone has been doing well in the land of the rising sun and the evidence is in. Apple has taken 46% of the Japanese smartphone market, cutting the 27% market share of the previous lead, Advance Sharp W-Zero3 (Japanese site), in half. The article includes a large chart of the market share of Japanese smartphones over the last 3 years."

Submission + - The Voynich Manuscript Decoded? (edithsherwood.com) 1

MBCook writes: "The Voynich Manuscript has confounded attempts to decode it for nearly 100 years. A person named Edith Sherwood, who has previously suggested a possible link to DaVinci, has a new idea: perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words. There are three pages of examples from the herb section of the book, showing the original text, the plaintext Italian words, and the English equivalents. Has someone cracked the code?"

Submission + - The Kafka-esque Nightmare of Palm App Catalog Subm (livejournal.com) 1

MBCook writes: "Jamie Zawinski, shortly after the release of the Palm Pre, wrote two free software programs for the phone: a Tip Calculator and a port of Dali Clock. In trying to get the apps published to the App Catalog, he has had to sign up to be a developer twice, fax contracts around, and been told (apparently incorrectly) that he was not allowed to release free software for the phone, and asked to give PayPal his checking account number.

It's been two weeks, and I have received no reply. In the months since this process began, other third-party developers seem to have managed to get their applications into the App Catalog. Apparently these people are better at jumping through ridiculous hoops than I am.

"

Toys

Submission + - How Hollywood Tie-Ins Saved Lego (nytimes.com) 2

MBCook writes: "The New York Times published an article on Saturday profiling Lego, and how tie-ins with movies have helped save the company.

"Even as other toymakers struggle, this Danish maker of toy bricks is enjoying double-digit sales gains and swelling earnings. In recent years, Lego has increasingly focused on toys that many parents wouldn't recognize from their own childhood. Hollywood themes are commanding more shelf space, a far cry from the idealistic, purely imagination-oriented play that drove Lego for years and was as much a religion as a business strategy in Billund."

The article also mentions coming Lego Stores, a Lego board game, how Lego now allows sets with violence (like a gun for Indiana Jones), and how since 2004 Lego has cut part count nearly in half by encouraging re-use of parts and stopping one-off pieces."

The Media

Submission + - Danish Expert Declares Vinland Map Genuine (newsdaily.com)

MBCook writes: "A Danish expert named Rene Larson has finished a study of the infamous Vinland Map and declared it genuine. "All the tests that we have done over the past five years — on the materials and other aspects — do not show any signs of forgery," he said at the press conference. He and his team studied the ink, the paper, and even insect damage. They believe that the ink, which was discovered to contain titanium dioxide in 1972 and thus supposedly too new for the map to be genuine, was contaminated when it was being dried, causing the contamination."
Wii

Submission + - Atari Sub-Sub-Contractor used ScummVM for Wii Game (blogspot.com)

MBCook writes: "In several recent releases, it seems that Atari published games for the Wii based on ScummVM. Atari contracted Majesco, who contracted a company named Mistic Software with offices in the Ukraine. When the fact the GPL was being violated was brought to Atari's attention, they were kind at first until it was discovered that Nintendo doesn't allow open source software to be used with the Wii SDK, so updated documentation mentioning the GPL wasn't an available solution. So what happens to the games?

"There is a period of time in which all current copies have to be sold. Any copies beyond this period or any reprints get fined with quite high fine for each new/remaining copy. The remaining stock has to be destoryed [sic]."

Atari and Majesco seem to have been very nice about this whole thing, but had their hands tied by the agreement with Nintendo."

Robotics

Submission + - Tweenbots Test NYC Pedestrian-Robot Relations (tweenbots.com)

MBCook writes: "Kacie Kinzer seems to have come up with the idea to see if people in New York City would help a cute little robot get where it's going, and thus created tweenbots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

"

Cellphones

Submission + - Dell's Smartphone Rejected: Too Dull (appleinsider.com)

MBCook writes: "AppleInsider has an article discussing Dell's attempt to enter the smartphone market, as well as the news that the phone was rejected by carriers as "too dull." The article doesn't pull punches:

Dell's failure to successfully step from the commodity PC business into the mobile handset market should come as no surprise, as smartphones requires expertise in software platform development, consumer design savvy, and portable device engineering, all things Dell has never demonstrated any proficiency in.

"

Cellphones

Submission + - Japanese "hate" for iPhone all a big mista (appleinsider.com)

MBCook writes: "AppleInsider has posed a great article explaining that Wired's story about Japanese iPhone hate (/. discussion) was completely false and has been edited at least twice. The comments in the article were recycled and taken out of context, with those interviewed blogging about the mistakes. The piece then goes on to analyze the iPhone's standing in Japan, as well as some of the major factors working for and against it. At last it points out that the Wall Street Journal tried the same myth of failure just after the phone's launch in Japan, recycled from the myth the year before, pushed by a research company with a possible anti-Apple agenda."

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