Cody Taylor

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Parkingticket.com just announced new compatibility with the Safari web browser on Apple’s iPhone, giving you new tools to immediately contest a parking ticket. The site is so confident in their service that if all steps are followed and the ticket is still not dismissed they will pay towards your ticket. “The process begins by navigating the iPhone’s Safari browser to the Parkingticket.com website where you’ll find a straightforward means to fight a parking ticket; whether the ticket was issued in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. Simply register for a free account and choose the city in which the ticket was issued. Enter your ticket and vehicle details then answer a few quick questions. The detailed process takes about ten minutes, from A-Z. To allow easy entry of your ticket, a look-a-like parking ticket is displayed – for your specific city – with interactive functionality.”

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treqie writes “During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team’s work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers. There’s even a Facebook group for it.”

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Glyn Moody writes “Thanks to the indispensable Wikileaks, we have the opportunity to see how an organization close to Microsoft is attempting to re-write — and hijack — an important European Union open source strategy paper, currently being drawn up. Analyzing before and after versions visible in the document demonstrates how the Association for Competitive Technology, a lobbying group partially funded by Microsoft, is trying to widen the scope of open source to include ‘mixed solutions blending open and proprietary code.'” And reader Elektroschock adds some detail on EU processes: “The European Commission lets ACT and CompTIA participate in all working groups of the European Open Source Strategy, which defines Europe’s future open source approach. A blue editor questions the objectives: ‘Regarding the “Europe Digital Independence” our [working] group thinks it is, in general, not an issue.’ ‘European digital independence’ is a phrase coined by EU Commissioner V. Reding, that is what her European Software Strategy was supposed to be about. She didn’t reveal that lobbyists or vendors with vested interests would write the strategy for the Commission.”

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MissMachine writes “I’m a computer science major who has been recently getting involved in local grassroots politics in my county and state. I’ve been discussing the idea with some of my state legislatures of submitting a couple of resolutions, opening up to the idea of switching to open source software in our state’s K-12 schools. I’m looking for more information/literature about this topic, open source solutions in public K-12 education, pros and cons, studies that prove or disprove many of the assumptions of open source and linux in public schools. Any help in this field?”

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DeviceGuru writes “Having recently constructed the BoxeeBox, DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum naturally was eager to check out Neuros Technology’s somewhat similar IP-TV set-top box. Lehrbaum’s first-impressions review of the Neuros Link describes the device’s hardware and Ubuntu-based software, shows screenshots of its functionality, identifies a handful of weak spots, offers some specific suggestions for improvement, and shares a few hacks (including adding an HDD and Boxee). All in all, he concludes, the Link’s hardware is more than worth its minimal 0 pricetag.”

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Barence writes “Microsoft has unveiled a slew of new features that will appear in the Release Candidate of Windows 7 that didn’t make an appearance in the beta. ‘We’ve been quite busy for the past two months or so working through all the feedback we’ve received on Windows 7,’ explains Steven Sinofsky, lead engineer for Windows 7 in his blog. A majority of these features are user interface tweaks, but they should add up to a much smoother Windows 7 experience.” In separate news, Technologizer reports on Microsoft’s contingency plan, should things not go well in EU antitrust, to slip Win7 to January.

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Ponca City, We love you writes “With a high level of technical sophistication, critical customers, and high innovation rate, Japan is the toughest cell phone market in the world. So it’s not surprising that although Apple is the third-largest mobile supplier in the world, selling 10 million units in 2008, in Japan the iPhone is selling so poorly it’s being offered for free. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn’t cut it. For example, Japanese handset users are into video and photos — and the iPhone has neither a video camera, multimedia text messaging, nor a TV tuner. Pricing plans in Japan are also very competitive, and the iPhone’s -and-up monthly plan is too high compared to competitors; a survey lat year showed that among Japanese consumers, 91% didn’t want to buy an iPhone. The cellular weapon of choice in Japan would be the Panasonic P905i, a fancy cellphone that doubles as a 3-inch TV and features 3-G, GPS, a 5.1-megapixel camera, and motion sensors for Wii-style games. ‘When I show this to visitors from the US, they’re amazed,’ according to journalist Nobi Hayashi, who adds, ‘Carrying around an iPhone in Japan would make you look pretty lame.'”

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darthcamaro writes in with an interview with Markus Rex, Novell’s top Linux exec and the former CTO of the Linux Foundation. While some open source vendors see the current economy as a boon to open source, the interview concludes with Rex’s speculation on the contrary possibility. “The other thing is in both Europe and the US the rise of the unemployment rate is something that is rather unprecedented… The open source community to a certain degree is dependent on the willingness of people to contribute. We see no indication that anything might change there, but who knows? People need something to live off.” Have you thought about scaling back open source work as the economy continues to contract?

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ScrewMaster points out an short article according to which purchasers of the G1 Android phone’s developer-oriented variant will be out of luck if they want to buy apps from Google’s application store. “Google is not going to allow programmers who have purchased the Dev Phone 1 to purchase paid apps from the Android Market. I just signed up as a G1 developer, and was about to plunk down the 9 for a Dev Phone 1, but now I’m going to have to think about it. I know that Google is interested in preventing (cough) ‘piracy,’ but does this seem like the right way to go? I know the Dev Phone 1 is primarily a developer’s tool, but I would like to actually use the thing, and not have to spend another 0 from T-Mobile for a regular G1 just for the privilege of buying software.” I hope this isn’t true; the unlocked G1 looked like a pretty cool phone, especially (being unlocked) for travel to countries where pre-paid SIM cards are the norm.

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Ian Lamont writes “Overlooked in last month’s news about Microsoft laying off the entire Flight Simulator dev team is the news that Microsoft’s ESP development team has been gutted as well, and the future of the platform is in doubt. ESP is oriented toward industrial use, and lets companies build 3D simulations for flight and other applications. Late last year Microsoft announced big plans to expand ESP to other verticals, such as real estate, city planning, and law enforcement. That looks increasingly unlikely. Even though Microsoft declined to comment on ESP’s future, companies which invested in the product are angry, judging by some of the comments on an MSDN thread. As noted by one user, ‘my company used it for a solution and invested time and money into getting it approved and purchased. Microsoft sure handed us a raw deal for taking a gamble on their platform.'”

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