Tech brief
On Tech brief today: "surrender monkeys", spiderbots and the whiteboard girl.
• On yesterday's Tech brief we dedicated the whole blog to reaction to Google and Verizon's proposal on net neutrality. Today, the story continues and it does not get much better for Google.
:
"Principles are easy to discard, it seems, when one's in search of the next gold mine "
• Jeff Jarvis - author of What would Google do and along term ally of the firm - also .
"I am baffled by the Google-Verizon agreement on nonnet-nonneutrality. I'm mostly baffled by why Google would put its name to this."
He particularly objects to the two firms seemingly categorising new services and the mobile web as being exempt from their network neutrality proposals:
"So ol, grandpa internet may chug along giving us YouTube videos of flaming cats, but you want to get that while you're out of your house? Well, that's the nonnet. I can hear the customer "service" rep explaining this to us: 'Oh, no, sir. That's not offered on the internet. That's on the schminternet.' You want something new? Anything created after 2010? 'Schminternet, sir'."
• In a piece not a million miles away from the net neutrality debate, . He points out that many of the things that we accept as part of having a mobile phone would not be tolerated elsewhere.
we're still largely buying a device for a particular carrier and then living with that carrier for two years. It's an absurd situation that we'd never tolerate with our computers."
• Elsewhere, it's bad news for a UK start-up that hoped to challenge some of the Silicon Valley behemoths. Plastic Logic, a spin out form Cambridge University, designed to rival the Kindle. Now, .
Plastic Logic had already delayed the Que several times after showing early versions of the product for years. Starting at $649, the Que was priced well above the iPad and many notebook computers, not to mention all other e-readers on the market. And that was before a recent spate of price cuts that has pushed the price of the Kindle, Nook, and many other devices below $200. "
• Gabriel Perna at International Business Times picks up on research at the University of Utah, seemingly inspired by Spiderman. The researchers have designed a wall climbing robot that can "swing like an ape from tree to tree".
" The robot, called ROCR (the last three letters are for oscillating climbing robot), has two claws, a motor and a pendulum-like tail and can scale an eight foot wall in 15 seconds. "
• Finally its hoax over. Yesterday, the internet by emailing her colleagues a set of 33 photographs of her holding a set of whiteboards with various messages on them, many directed at her boss. Many were sceptical of the story and today :
"The Chive (which gets around 5.6 million unique visits a month, according to Google) is part of a network of viral sites run by brothers Leo and John Resig, who have a storied history of manufacturing Internet hoaxes, most notably the $10,000 Donald Trump tip and the infamous 'virgin text messages her dad that she lost her virginity.' Both hoaxes ended up punking various mainstream media outlets including Fox News, Gawker and Jay Leno."
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