Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of FriendFeed
Seriously, these never get old.Daring Fireball: Phil Schiller Responds Regarding Ninjawords and the App Store
The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store. The big story is about the App Store itself, and whether Apple’s management is attempting to correct its course.Twitter and Facebook DDoS Attacks Targeted One Man
Did Twitter, FacebookFacebookFacebook, LiveJournal, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube, Google Sites and GoogleGoogleGoogle’s Bloggerbloggerblogger all get attacked yesterday to silence one man? According to the testimony of a Facebook executive, they did.Pirate Bay's IPREDator not a place to hide - Security - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au
A blogger in the Republic of Georgia with the username Cyxymu was the victim, according to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly. The claims cement earlier reports that social networking sites have been dragged into the Georgia-Russia crisis, leading to the first simultaneous attack on the largest social media sites. Kelly told CNet::
“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”
Google is quoted as saying:
“We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.”
As part of the attack, spam was sent to LiveJournal users that appeared to come from cyxymu.
Last month's beta launch of the IPREDator anonymity service has raised questions about security of commercial Virtual Private Networks (VPN).It's SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites | Media | The Guardian
The service claims to allow subscribers to access the Internet anonymously via a VPN that is based in Sweden.
By accessing the Web through the VPN, subscribers are able to hide their traffic data from Internet Service Providers (ISP), and bypass ISP-level censorship.
But the network isn't exactly bulletproof.
It is run by Swedish VPN company Trygghetsbolaget, which also built the once-popular Relakks service in 2006.
Unlike Relakks, IPREDator does not log its users' traffic information.
However, the services are based on the same software, including the use of 128-bit encrypted point-to-point tunnelling protocol (PPTP).
PPTP is a user-friendly VPN protocol that was first implemented on Microsoft's operating systems in 1996. Reports by security experts such as Bruce Schneier have since revealed a number of flaws in the technology, including password hashing and encryption issues.
IPREDator co-founder Peter Sunde, who also founded popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, told iTnews: "128-bit encrypted PPTP can probably be broken by someone that can eavesdrop on the traffic."
"But in order to eavesdrop on the traffic, the government -- at least in Sweden -- must have a valid reason to do that."
"We're not here to protect criminals; we're here to protect private citizens against undemocratic laws," Sunde said.
However, according to Douglas Spink, who is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Canadian networking company Baneki Privacy Computing, IPREDator's security systems may not be sufficient protection for persons such as an activist in Iran.
Although their love of being online shows no sign of abating, the percentage of 15- to 24-year-olds who have a profile on a social networking site has dropped for the first time – from 55% at the start of last year to 50% this year. In contrast, 46% of 25- to 34-year-olds are now regularly checking up on sites such as Facebook compared with 40% last year.Howto: Install KDE 4.3 on Ubuntu Jaunty
Overall, 30% of British adults have a social networking profile, against 21% in 2007 when Ofcom first did the research. Half the UK's online population have a Facebook profile and spend an average of nearly six hours a month on the site compared with four hours in May 2008.
"There is nothing to suggest overall usage of the internet among 15-to 24-year-olds is going down," said Peter Phillips, the regulator's head of strategy. "Data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites."
James Thickett, director of market research at Ofcom, said that while older people seemed to be embracing social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace remained immensely popular with children under 16.
Unfortunately if you are on Ubuntu Jaunty (or Kubuntu), you will not officially get KDE 4.3. It will be featured in the upcoming Koala version scheduled in October. However you can get your hands on the latest KDE offering now on your 9.04 desktop.The Press Loves a Good Social Media Meltdown [VIDEO]
Twitter (Twitter) already gets plenty of press attention, but when it went down due to a DDoS attack, the news seemed to have unprecedented reach, serving as top story on a number of mainstream news sites for a good part of the day.Amahi Turns Old Systems Into Full-Featured Media Centres | Lifehacker Australia
Why was this such huge news? The cynical onlooker might say that because old media wants to highlight when things go wrong in new media. However, the more realistic answer is that because of how massive sites like Facebook (facebook), Twitter, and even LiveJournal and other impacted services have become, when they go down, it’s a story that impacts tens of millions of people.
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could turn an old laptop or desktop into a media centre that served and streamed movies, music, and files, and even backed up your other systems? With an Amahi installation, it’s not too hard.What Works: The Web Way Vs. The Wave Way | Lifehacker Australia
Amahi is really a repository you add into an installation of the Fedora Linux system, but when you do, it gives that system a whole new look and purpose. From a web interface you can access from anywhere on your network, Amahi can organise and offer up access to movies, music (with streaming to iTunes and other players), photos, calendars, Outlook systems, and any old files you’re in need of. Amahi can also set up a VPN for your household network, giving you remote access to your files without too much more geeky configuration than the standard setup.
Amahi can run on pretty much any system that Fedora 10 can install on—that’s about a 1.0 GHz processor and 256MB of RAM minimum.
Google Wave is an impressive set of technologies, the kind of stunningly slick application that literally makes developers stand up and cheer. I’ve played with the Google Wave test sandbox a bit, and while it’s definitely too complex to live up to the “this will replace email!” hype that greeted its launch, it certainly has some cool features. So the big question is whether Wave will succeed as overall in becoming a popular standard for communications on the web, because Google has made an admirable investment in documenting the underlying platform and making it open enough for others to build on and extend. I think the answer is no, and the reason is because the Wave way is not compatible with the Web way.FORGET APPLE: Google Voice for iPhone to Reemerge as Web App
ast month, Google Voice’s iPhone application was rejected from the iPhone app store, a controversial move that the FCC is looking into. Now, it appears that Google (Google) may be working to circumvent Apple and AT&T, or at least seriously force their hand, by developing an iPhone optimized web application for Google Voice (Google Voice).Upgrade Windows 7 RC To The Final RTM Release | Lifehacker Australia
According to The New York Times, “Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.”
This is precisely what Google did recently with Latitude for iPhone, when Apple “requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google (Google) to serve maps tiles.” Using the Web to make calls on iPhone is nothing new or overly complex either: Jajah launched an iPhone optimized interface for VoIP calling all the way back in 2007.
In other words, assuming Google goes ahead and launches a Web interface for Voice, the only option AT&T and Apple will have for keeping customers away from it would be to block access to the URL the app lives on. And if that were happen, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the feds don’t get extremely serious about the anti-competitive nature of what Apple and AT&T would be trying to do.
Microsoft released the final version of Windows 7 to Technet and MSDN subscribers, but you can’t upgrade directly from the release candidate to the final release—at least, not without a hack.Protect Your Privacy When Downloading - BitTorrent - Lifehacker
Over at the How-To Geek site (my home away from Lifehacker), I’ve written up a guide to the simple process of successfully upgrading from the RC—the trick is a simple hack to the file that controls the version checking. To perform the hack for yourself, simply open up the cversion.ini file in the sources folder and change the MinClient value to 7000. Once you’ve done so, you can upgrade without any issues.
Hit the link for the full walk-through and screenshot tour of the upgrade process. Readers should note that you can only upgrade to the Ultimate edition of Windows 7 RTM—since the release candidate installed Ultimate by default, you can’t use a Home version to upgrade.
How to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) [How-To Geek]
When you download a file using BitTorrent, you're connecting to several peers who are distributing chunks of the file you're downloading. In order to send data back and forth, you and your peers exchange IP addresses. (IP addresses are like mailing addresses for sending data over the vastness of the internet.) When you're downloading copyrighted material, sometimes disingenuous organizations will join in the download and log your information, like your home IP address. Once they have your address, they can find out who your ISP is and contact them to complain about copyright-infringing activity.Murdoch’s Pay-for-Online News Plan to Start With The Sunday Times
There are a few methods you can employ to protect yourself from this sort of tracking when you're sharing files with BitTorrent, thus setting up a layer of protection between you and those who might track you and report you. Below I'll cover a couple: PeerGuardian2 and proxies—particularly a new proxy service called BTGuard.
Rupert Murdoch indicated that his company – News Corp – soon plans to start charging for all of the news content that it publishes online.Slashdot News Story | Murdoch Demands Kindle Users' Info
It’s not a completely unprecedented move by News Corp – they have long charged for online access to The Wall Street Journal with some success – but most readers agreed with our conclusion that the plan probably won’t work for most news outlets.
As it turns out, we’ll soon find out who’s right – us or Murdoch – as The Guardian reports that Murdoch’s master plan will start with a test on The Sunday Times website as soon as November.
The plan is to launch The Sunday Times at its own URL (sundaytimes.co.uk) and charge a to-be-determined fee for access, with a to-be-determined business model (subscription or per-article charges). It should be a decent sized test bed; according to The Guardian, the printed edition of the newspaper sells more than 1 million copies each weekend in the UK.
In his prior comments, the media mogul indicated that he plans to be charging for all of his company’s news websites by the middle of next year. Of course, that plan could get derailed quickly if The Sunday Times test proves a massive flop.
In yet another move to display how antiquated and completely ignorant of digital culture he is, Rupert Murdoch has started demanding that Amazon hand over user info for all Kindle users. This demand comes right after Murdoch just finished negotiating a larger share of revenue from Amazon sales. At least Amazon hasn't decided to comply with this request yet. "'As I've said before, the traditional business model has to change rapidly to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their old margins of profitability,' Murdoch said. 'Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting.'"Storing text docs in XML may run afoul of Microsoft patent - Ars Technica
In the middle part of this decade, Microsoft engaged in an extensive effort to create open standards derived from its own XML-based file formats, such as XPS and Office XML. This work was widely interpreted as an effort to forestall adoption of competing formats, such as the Open Document Format, and concerns were raised about whether the Office XML format was severely encumbered by the company's patents. Despite these fears, Microsoft ultimately saw its efforts succeed. A recently granted patent, however, reveals that the entire effort took place while Microsoft had a patent pending that covers nearly any use of XML for storing word processing documents.Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec? • The Register
The patent was filed back in late 2004 and was apparently approved only this month. It's entitled "Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML," but it appears to cover the use of an entire class of XML documents by any word processing program.
After acquiring On2's video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them?Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Upgrade Chart - Windows - Lifehacker
It certainly looks that way.
In both the press release and the blog post announcing the acquisition of On2, Google makes a point of saying that it believes "high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform" - and that On2 is a means of achieving that goal.
As is typical of Googlespeak, this tells us close to nothing. But if you also consider the company's so far fruitless efforts to push through a video tag for HTML 5 - the still gestating update to the web's hypertext markup language - the On2 acquisition looks an awful lot like an effort to solve this browser-maker impasse.
When it comes to built-in video compression, Apple Safari uses H.264. Firefox and Opera use the open and license-free Ogg Theora. Google Chrome uses both. And Microsoft's Internet Explorer uses, well, nothing, continuing to rely on plug-ins like Adobe Flash and its own Silverlight for video.
According to ZDNet, "the blue boxes are for custom (clean) installs; the green boxes mean you can do an in-place upgrade." Granted, a chart's better than nothing, but folks (like ZDNet's Ed Boot) are also calling it out for being altogether confusing; in fact, Boot created a simplified version (click through to ZDNet to see it) that cuts out whole rows and gets straight to the point. Take a look at one or both for a closer look at what your upgrade path will entail.Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Ubuntu's New Firefox Is Watching You
"Ubuntu recently released an unannounced and experimental 'multisearch' extension to Firefox alpha 3, apparently in an effort to improve the default behavior of new tabs and of search. In a response to one of the initial bug reports the maintainers mentioned that the extension's other purposes were 'collecting the usage data' and 'generating revenue.' Since this extension installs by itself and offers no warning about potential privacy violations, quite a few people (myself included) feel pretty unhappy. The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons." Most posters to this Ubuntu forum thread are not happy about multisearch.Stupid pitfalls of social media - Boing Boing
This American Society for Information Science and Technology paper by Yahoo's Christian Crumlish has a tidy little cosmology of dumb things that social media does:IE6 MUST DIE: 70+ Sites Unite to Kill IE6
Briefly, the Cargo Cult means imitating superficial features of successful websites and applications without really understanding what makes them work...
Don't Break Email warns against the practice of using email as a one-way notification or broadcast medium while disabling your users' ability to hit reply as a normal response...
The Password Anti-Pattern is the pernicious practice of asking users to give you their passwords on other systems so that you can import their data for them, thus training them to be loose and insecure with their private information...
The Ex-Boyfriend Bug crops up when you try to leverage a user's social graph without realizing that some of the gaps in a person's network may be deliberate and not an up-sell opportunity...
Lastly, a Potemkin Village is an overly elaborated set of empty community discussion areas or other collaborative spaces, created in anticipation of a thriving population rather than grown organically in response to their needs (see also Pave the Cowpaths)....
IE6 No More, the movement to accelerate the death of Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer) 6. The campaign asks sites to include code that detects IE6 visitors and encourages them to upgrade to Firefox (Firefox), IE8, Safari (Safari) or Google Chrome (Google Chrome). On Tuesday the movement composed of around a dozen sites, today that number exceeds 70 participants.Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We've Ever Used - spotify - Lifehacker
Imagine a music app with instant access to any song you wanted to hear. Imagine creating a playlist from those songs and quickly, easily sharing it with friends. Such an app does exist, it's called Spotify, and it could change music forever.Will Apple Open Up the iPhone to iTunes Rival Spotify? - TIME
Hyperbole alert! I admit it, I'm over-the-moon about Spotify—both over what it currently is and more importantly over the potential it has. If you get a chance to try it out, I think you may feel the same way.What Is Spotify
In short, here's how it works: Spotify is a peer-to-peer music streaming service; it's a desktop application, but its content all comes via the cloud. Think of it as though the entire iTunes Music Store were actually just your library, and that instead of the poorly designed mess that it is, imagine that it was refreshingly streamlined, fast, and easy to search and use. That gives you a little bit of an idea what Spotify is like. It also works under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (using Wine).
The best part: It's completely legal. Spotify seeks out licensing deals with the music industry before going live, meaning it sits comfortably in the 100% legit territory.
The catch: Oh, you knew there'd be a catch, didn't you. Spotify is currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain.
If Spotify has its way, though, iPhone owners will no longer be slaves to iTunes, song-by-song payments or finite disk capacity. Last week the Swedish company behind Spotify's streaming music provider announced plans to release a free iPhone application that will let users listen to songs played directly off of its online service, with no need to download. That would give iPhone users instant access to any of Spotify's 6 million songs, without taking up precious memory space — way more than the maximum 7,000 tracks that a 32 GB iPhone can hold. Songs can also be temporarily stored, or cached, ready to play during those moments when Web connection drops, like when you're in a tunnel or underground. Spotify's new application could change the way iPhone users listen to music. But first it has to get the O.K. from Apple.Digg Ads Are Here: Will Users Bury Them Into Oblivion?
Two months ago, Digg (Digg) announced a lynchpin in its revenue strategy: Digg Ads. The program, an attempt to fix the company’s inability to turn a profit, allows users to vote on specific ads within the homepage feed. The more diggs, the less the ad costs to the advertisers. But if Digg users hate the ad, then their downvotes increase the ad price.Telstra admits to exchange access deception - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au
It’s a system to made ads relevant to the user while giving them prime placement. Until now, however, it’s been under construction. That changes soon though, as we we’ve learned that Digg Ads are rolling out this week.
Telstra has admitted to the Federal Court that it rejected requests for third parties to install equipment in telephone exchanges across the country where space was found to have been available.Privacy at risk in location-based systems - Security - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au
Court documents viewed by iTnews confirmed speculation raised Wednesday in the Australian Financial Review that Telstra would "plead guilty" to allegations levelled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The competition watchdog had alleged Telstra failed in its obligation to give competitors access to main distribution frames within Telstra's telephone exchanges.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging policy makers and engineers working with location-based systems to incorporate cryptography technology into their designs in order to protect individuals' privacy.3 Key Reasons Facebook Bought FriendFeed
The Locational Privacy report from the US-based organisation points to the increasing prevalence of digital systems that track people's movements, ranging from travel cards to mobile phone GPS systems and electronic swipe cards for doors.
The EFF argues that "location privacy", which it defines as an individual's position not being tracked and covertly recorded for later use, has changed significantly in recent years without much legislation to protect the public.
While tracking an individual's whereabouts used to mean physically following them around, location-based services now track individuals with little cost and time, and usually without the individual knowing.
The EFF acknowledges that location-based services are useful and should not be banned, but believes that they need monitoring.
As you probably now know, the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, just bought the real-time web aggregator, FriendFeed, for an undisclosed sum.Rear-Projection 1080 Pee Urinal Lets You Pee Over O'Reilly
While there’s no immediate changes being made to either product today, we’re likely to see a number of changes at Facebook (Facebook) in the months ahead that could shape the future of real-time search and the flow of shared information on the web.
Although the deal appeared to come out of nowhere, we knew that Facebook was looking closely at the space when it was revealed that they had been in serious talks with Twitter about an acquisition. Of course, that deal never went through, but Facebook may have been gifted a better long-term mate in the FriendFeed (FriendFeed) deal. Below we’ll explore three key reasons why Facebook has been following FriendFeed since 2007, and why the buy was a smart move on their part.
1. The FriendFeed Team
2. Product Direction and Alignment
3. A Better Buy than Twitter?
A pub in Melbourne came up with what potentially could be the best and wrongest multimedia device ever invented: A urinal with a rear projector, so you don' miss a single second of a game when you have to pee or when your favorite TV anchor appears .... you pee.Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On: Web 2.0 Summit 2009 - Co-produced by TechWeb & O'Reilly Conferences, October 20 - 22, 2009, San Francisco, CA
Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years OnTwo in three Australian companies leak data - Security - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au
By Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle
Download the Web Squared White Paper (PDF, 1.3MB)
Watch the Web Squared Webcast
Some 69 percent of respondents said they experienced at least one data breach in the last 12 months, up from 56 percent in 2008.Off the clock? Hyperconnected workers sue employers - Ars Technica
One in four of those companies that experienced a data breach suffered five or more breaches in the 12 months, up 22 percent on 2008.
Of those organisations that did admit to losing data, 65 percent chose not to inform the public - a figure the report's authors said was "sure to add to the demand for Australia to adopt data breach notification laws similar to those in the United States."
The Federal Government has spent the last few months reviewing privacy laws, the first draft of which was due to be released to the public within a week.
But no timeline has been set for the introduction of mandatory data disclosure laws, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
In the interim, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has produced a voluntary guide to managing data breaches.
Ubiquitous Internet connections and a proliferation of smartphones have put more employees "on call" than ever before, and many aren't being paid for the extra time. Some are pushing back in lawsuits against their employers, but it may simply be time for companies to draw a clearer line on out-of-office communications.Blu-ray may be less of a bag of hurt with iTunes support - Ars Technica
A rumored update to iTunes may signal that across the board support for Blu-ray is coming to Apple's product line, assuming it proves accurate. In addition to iPhone application organization and social media integration features, iTunes 9 is said to be gaining support for Blu-ray high definition video.Windows 7 the complete guide, part 1: good news for gamers? - News - PC Authority
According to a "pretty reliable" source for Boy Genius Report, iTunes 9 will gain the capability to visually organize iPhone OS apps—a process that can quickly become unwieldy if you have loaded more than a couple dozen apps on your iPhone or iPod touch. Also, the new version of iTunes may have built-in capability to send information about the current playing track to popular social media platforms, such as Last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter. But most surprising of all is the revelation that iTunes 9 will have "Blu-ray support."
PC gamers are among those most likely to benefit from any improvement in raw performance, so does Windows 7 bring any glad tidings for 3D action aficionados?Technology Review: An Operating System for the Cloud
Google is developing a new computing platform equal to the Internet era. Should Microsoft be worried?10 Must-Follow Usability Experts on Twitter
The popularity of the “#fail” meme on Twitter is proof positive that the tool is great for pointing out when things are wrong. “Usability” practitioners and those in the related fields of “user experience” or “user interface design” tend to be obsessed with fixing designs that aren’t intuitive to use and helping their clients avoid those mistakes.Chrome Releases New Beta, Improves New Tab Page, Adds HTML5 Functionality - Featured Windows Download - Lifehacker
You might be surprised by the range of things that are open to usability critiques: web site designs, ATM interfaces, beta software releases, confusing elevator buttons (all real examples from the Twitter (Twitter) feeds of usability pros). Experts in the field often tweet about their latest projects, conferences they are attending, or just point out their most recent usability outrage.
Google has released a new beta for Chrome, featuring changes to the new tab page including the ability to pin web site thumbnails, hide pages, and other improvements.Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words) - Gmail - Lifehacker
You can now use "the new New Tab page" to pin web site thumbnails to a designated spot to keep better track of them. Another addition is the ability to use the layout buttons to hide parts of the page. Additionally, the Omnibox now shows icons next to each site in the drop down menu. Google has also started to implement HTML5 capabilities like video tagging into this release. And yes, the new release promises even more speed in the form of JavaScript improvements and optimizations in how Chrome fetches pages.
Those "Sponsored Ads" in e-mails are an annoyance to both sender and recipient and they seem to escape blocking. Until now. These two (so far) fail-proof sentences at the end of an email will let you enjoy e-mailed rants, ad-free.The Pushbutton Web Now in Google Reader - Google Reader - Lifehacker
(Click the images above and below for a closer look at the before and after effect.)
In his personal blog, Joe McKay writes about his experience in blocking Gmail's sponsored ads using words referencing tragic or catastrophic events (which Google bans from their ads) as well as words from George Carlin's infamous list of seven words you can't say on TV.
That's great news, but how on Earth do you send an email to your boss that's littered with f-bombs and talk of murder? After finding a few victims and experimenting with various potential ad-blocking words, here's the relatively kindly signature we came up with:
I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.
Googler Mihai Parparita announces that Google Reader now sends realtime updates to FriendFeed when you share items using the PubSubHubbub protocol.Apple dumps app developer and his 900+ apps from App Store - Ars Technica
Huh-wha? you ask. Yeah, I know. It's no Google Wave. But that's what makes this exciting. This kind of small Pushbutton implementation is how real web pages will easily use existing technology to notify one another of new updates. The Google Reader/FriendFeed integration is just the first tiny step in what will be a broad deployment of realtime-enabled sites. These sites and services will let one another know when they have new data to share without the sucky inefficiencies of polling. Check out how fast FriendFeed updates when you share an item in Google Reader in the video.
In short, it's almost zero latency.
Apple has been criticized lately for some of its questionable app rejections, as well as the recent expunging of Google Voice apps from the App Store. Now, it seems as if Apple has seen fit to use its veto power to address one common criticism of the App Store—the flood of apps with questionable content or utility. Developer Khalid Shaikh had his iPhone developer license revoked, and his 900+ apps were summarily removed from the App Store.
Shaikh built a business model that took advantage of the worst aspects of the iPhone App Store. His team of 26 engineers—based in India and Pakistan and working 12 hours days, six days a week—churned out nearly 1,000 apps that merely agregated articles and other content from the Web in such cleverly titled apps as "US Army News," "Skin Care Updates," and "WWE Updates." He sold these apps for $4.99 each, with the goal of "less product value" and "more monetization." Shaikh told MobileCrunch that he was making thousands of dollars a day with this technique.
