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YouTube creators pen open letter to support net neutrality
The FCC is moving forward with its plans to undo the Obama-era rules put in place to protect net neutrality, and the parties that will be negatively affected have been scrambling to be heard. Take for instance, the 134 YouTube stars who've just penned an open letter to the FCC and the Congress to defend net neutrality. The creators argue that the current rules are "crucial to maintaining a level playing field for all creators" since they ensure "equal opportunity for success to anyone wishing to enter the market."
Buzzfeed will skip SXSW unless cancelled gaming panels are reinstated
On Monday, the South by Southwest festival announced that it was nixing a pair of gaming-related panel discussions because a bunch of mouth-breathing, neck-bearded man-children threatened "on-site violence" in response. Tuesday, three Buzzfeed executives -- EIC Ben Smith, President of Motion Pictures Ze Frank and Publisher Dao Nguyen penned a strongly worded letter to the festival, effectively demanding organizers put on their Big Boy Pants and not be swayed by unsubstantiated threats. Otherwise, Buzzfeed would pull its entire staff from the event and at least a half dozen other unrelated panels. Good on you, Buzzfeed.
BlackBerry's open letter to customers: 'You can continue to count on us'
In a move that's about as useful as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, BlackBerry has issued an open letter to customers and partners designed to quell their fears. Despite a recent spate of well-publicized ill fortune, the company claims that its loyal customers "can continue to count on Blackberry." To anyone with eyes or ears, the effort may seem overly optimistic, considering the harsh reality of BlackBerry's dire straits. The past few months haven't been the cheeriest; the Z10's disappointing launch was recently blamed for a loss of almost one billion dollars, massive layoffs are expected by the end of the year, and the company's future is anything but certain. But in spite of all that, BlackBerry claims that it still offers customers the best in mobile productivity, security, social networking and enterprise management. Essentially, the company is trying to put a sunny spin on its plans to cut costs by 50 percent through its restructuring efforts. "These are no doubt challenging times for us," the letter reads, "and we don't underestimate the situation or ignore the challenges. We are making the difficult changes necessary to strengthen BlackBerry." You can check out the full missive for yourself at the source link below.
HTC CEO issues rallying call to staff, tells them to 'kill bureaucracy'
HTC's Peter Chou is having his own "burning platform" moment after sending a company-wide email, leaked to Bloomberg, entitled "We are coming back." The CEO, shocked at recent sales dips has talked of a company lacking "decision, strategic direction or [a] sense of urgency" and requested that employees should "kill bureaucracy." He praised the success of the well-lauded One X, but said that the company's own "processes, rules and norms" could be stumbling blocks, instead urging employees to "follow rules and criteria, but don't let small things kill the major goals." The missive has already been confirmed as real by an HTC spokesperson, who probably promptly burned a stack of TPS reports to demonstrate their commitment.
Larry Page looks back at a year of leading Google, promises velocity, execution and focus in the future
A year and a day after taking over the reins at Mountain View, Google co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Larry Page has plenty to say about where the company has been recently, and where it's going. While there aren't any Project Glass bombs dropped, in this open letter he's promising a Google that will achieve even more, and faster, as it goes forward. First, a spoiler alert: he really likes Google's products. From Google+, to tighter integration with results for things like weather and airfare to that little Android side project there's plenty of praise to go around. One of the longest segments is dedicated to the "love and trust" Google desires to deserve from its users, mentioning that creating "a much better, more intuitive experience across Google" is a focus for 2012. Hit the source link to have your own look at the Google boss' innermost thoughts -- do you think he's on the right track?
Chuck Schumer writes open letter to Steve Jobs
Just in case you missed it yesterday, US Senator Chuck Schumer wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs asking him to deal with the ongoing iPhone 4 reception issues. "To address this concern," Schumer wrote, "I ask that Apple provide iPhone 4 customers with a clearly written explanation of the cause of the reception problem and make a public commitment to remedy it free-of-charge." Schumer cites the Consumer Reports posts about reception issues, and suggests that Apple both provide free software updates to make sure bars correctly reflect signal reception (which it did yesterday), and provide the actual formula it uses for bar strength (which it probably won't do). Politics aside (and please don't argue politics on our Apple blog, thank you -- if the comments get out of hand on this one, we'll just close them), I can't see how this is much more than Schumer jumping in on a cause that's already rolling along fine without him. Even before his letter went out, today's press conference had been scheduled, and the issues were well documented. I guess we appreciate the sentiment and all (we do want these issues fixed), but Jobs was probably going to do today whatever he was going to do without hearing from a New York Senator. Thanks anyway, Chuck. Probably time to leave the iPhone 4 issues to Apple and its customers, and get on back to, you know, governing the country.
N2 recall leaves Neonode reeling, pleading for patience
From the outside, it has been easy to assume that everything was humming along nicely at Neonode's California / Sweden-based offices. Based on a recent open letter issued by the interim CEO and chairman Per Bystedt (not to mention the earnings report), that is indeed not at all the case. Neonode has failed at meeting guidance and anticipated sales for this year, with a number of things partially to blame. For starters, it admittedly tried to enter "too many markets, too fast," and a recall of the N2 surrounding "reception issues" didn't make things any better. Bystedt confessed to having just south of $3 million of his own money invested in the outfit, while he asked for other shareholders to be patient as he attempted to right the ship. Best of luck to ya -- we hear it's a pretty tough sector. [Warning: PDF read link][Via RCRWireless]
Jeff Bezos posts Kindle apology on Amazon's front page
Sure, Philippe Starck may not care for the Kindle, but an open letter posted on Amazon's front page suggests he's in the minority. We already knew that the company was having a difficult time filling orders, but we had no idea the wait for buyers would warrant what amounts to a public apology from Jeff Bezos. Apparently, the online superstore is drawing heat for six-week delays on delivery for some customers, and is scrambling to get itself into an "order today, ship today" scheme. The original release of the device sold out in just 5 1/2 hours says the letter, which might explain why no one is hacking it -- no one has it.[Thanks, Michael]
Blizzard outlines 'acceptable use' for machinima
One of the things that I learned last weekend at Dragon*Con was a great deal more about machinima than I'd ever really known before. Sure, I've got FRAPS, and I've tried to make cool music videos too. Then I realized that I'd need something more interesting than my Tauren Druid running around to my favorite Rush song. So my dreams of making machinima went by the wayside, best left to the machinimators with that little thing called "talent." One of the things that I always wondered about was just precisely what you could and couldn't get away with in regards to making films using World of Warcraft. After all, the characters on my account are Blizzard's IP. I could argue about not being paid for it, but I've always been curious about the larger legal issues involved. Blizzard has finally put out what they consider to be their acceptable use policies in regards to machinima created using Blizzard's IP. After listening to the talk that Matt Kelland and Clint Hackleman gave during the Machinima 101 panel at Dragon*Con, I'm pretty happy to see that Blizzard has taken such a step to reach out to the community. This open letter lets artists know they have the potential ability to get licenses to show their work, and just how much commercial "sponsorship" is acceptable. It also defines where many of the boundaries are (for example their edict that movie/video content remain consistent with World of Warcraft's "T" rating) that I feel will hopefully help to clear some things up on where the artists stand in all of this legally.For those of you who are budding machinimators, check out Blizzard's open letter. It's fairly straightforward reading, and they've gone so far as to put a contact email address in for specific concerns not outlined in their letter. With these guidelines in hand, hopefully artists will feel free to go in even more creative directions in the future.[via Hugh "Nomad" Hancock, author of Machinima for Dummies]
Palm's Ed Colligan responds to our open letter!
Ok, so we totally weren't expecting this one, but Palm's CEO Ed Colligan publicly responded to our open letter to Palm. He's brief, but he cuts to the quick: "I forwarded it to our entire executive staff and many others at Palm have read it. ...We are attacking almost every challenge you noted, so stay tuned." Wow, um, alright, we'll do just that. Granted, we'd prefer it if Ed would engage us in a chat about the future of Palm -- you name the time and place, Ed, we're totally there! (It's probably worth noting that he's turned down multiple interview requests with us in the past, so you'll all know right quick if that whole transparency thing changes any.)Read - Our open letter to PalmRead - Ed Colligan's response
Dear Palm: It's time for an intervention
Dear Palm,Man, what a crazy year, right? We know things haven't really been going your way lately, but we want you to know that we haven't given up on you, even though it might seem like the only smartphone anyone wants to talk about these days is the iPhone. It can be hard to remember right now, but you used to be a company we looked to for innovation. You guys got handhelds right when everyone else, including Apple, was struggling to figure it out. And it was the little things that made those early Palm Pilots great -- you could tell that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to think about what made for a great mobile experience, like how many (or rather, few) steps it took to perform common tasks. The problem is that lately we haven't seen anything too impressive out of you guys. Sure, over the past few years the Treo has emerged as a cornerstone of the smartphone market, but you've let the platform stagnate while nearly everyone (especially Microsoft and HTC, Symbian and Nokia, RIM, and Apple) has steadily improved their offerings. So we've thrown together a few ideas for how Palm can get back in the game and (hopefully) come out with a phone that people can care about. (And we're not talking about the Centro / Gandolf.) Read on.
CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XXV - Warner CEO Bronfman calls Jobs' DRM stance "completely without logic or merit."
While EMI might be giving the concept of DRM-free online music sales a bit of thought, it doesn't sound like Warner Music is digging the idea in the slightest. "We advocate the continued use of DRM," said CEO Edgar Bronfman during the Q&A portion of an earnings conference call on Thursday. "The notion that music does not deserve the same protection as software, film, video games or other intellectual property, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product in the physical world, is completely without logic or merit." Edgar apparently couldn't be troubled to spell out exactly what's illogical by the stance espoused by Steve Jobs in his open letter to the industry, but he did decry Steve's method itself: "Frankly, manifestos in advance of those discussions is counter-productive." Wait, does that mean that you were considering getting rid of DRM, but Jobs ruined it all with a whiny letter? Or do you mean that because of his actions you're going to slap your tracks with even more cumbersome DRM just to teach us what happens when people attempt to dissent? We're so confused.
SanDisk does up its own "Open Letter," drops the ball
If we didn't know any better, we'd accuse SanDisk of a bit of anti-Apple-ism right here. Sure, it's hard for Eli Harari, CEO of SanDisk, to come out in agreement with a competitor of his whose market domination makes his 2nd place standing look completely inconsequential, but there was really no need for SanDisk to shoot themselves in the foot here. See, while Steve Jobs laid out quite clearly the ridiculous nature of DRM for digital distribution, even if sidestepping the issue on FairPlay interoperability at the same time, Eli seems to be perfectly fine with the way things are in DRM land. "SanDisk is looking at the big picture, by creating solutions rather than conflict. Building an infrastructure to give consumers fair access to digital content while protecting content creators is vital for the long-term health of the music industry, as well as to our business and to our competitors. SanDisk stands committed to making this happen." SanDisk's open letter highlights the numerous music stores its players interoperate with, and poo-poos proprietary systems which is all well and good, even commendable, but lines like "the decision on using digital rights management (DRM) should rest with the music industry, not with device makers." don't really win them a lot of points with consumers. This all especially rings false since Mr. Harari seemed plenty miffed by the music industry's stance on DRM at his recent CES press conference, stating that he hoped the industry was coming around. So what's it going to be, Eli?[Thanks, Matt]
