June 2007

Once More, with Feeling

June 26, 2007 by Ellen

Today is the Internet Radio Day of Silence. To quote from the official press release:

“The arbitrary and drastic rate increases set by the Copyright Royalty Board on March 2nd threaten the very livelihood of thousands of webcasters and their millions of listeners throughout the country.

Major webcasters like Yahoo! Launchcast, Rhapsody, and Pandora.com will silence their streams along with other Day of Silence participants like KCRW.org, Live365, MTV Online, Radioio, RadioParadise, and AccuRadio.” (full list)

Please help us support this effort. This site will help you send letters, get banners for your own site, and spread the word to your friends.

They’ve been a little busy lately, which is great, so if you have any problems with that link, you can pick either of the ones below:

• Call your representative (the link will give you their phone number) and ask for their support of the Internet Radio Equality Act: S. 1353 in the Senate and H.R. 2060 in the House.
• If you’d rather write a letter or an email, this link will help. But be sure to also mention the Internet Radio Equality Act: S. 1353 in the Senate and H.R. 2060 in the House.

Don’t let internet radio go silent permanently. Act now.

Thanks.

Hype Meter: Harry Potter and the Killer iPhone

June 25, 2007 by Ellen

Comparing the two most-anticipated and hyped events of the summer. Yes, this is only tangentially related to mobile computing, but one too many news stories just put me over the edge. Harry Potter Book 7Apple iPhoneWinnerRelease DateJuly 21June 29iPhonePriceList: $34.99; street: $17.99 – $20.99$499 - $599HPAvailability after releaseEverywhere. I expect to see it in grocery stores, gas stations, and probably on street corners.Best guesses are that it will be hard to get, or even to find.HPAppeal / Cool factorMass / Probably notCult / Very highiPhoneSecrecy surrounding releaseInfo, or at least rumors, are starting, but clearly unauthorized. (I’m trying hard not to read them, so please don’t post any here.)Lots of official info leaks. This article says “Issuing nuggets of news may be a marketing tactic.” We say: may be??HPBiggest decisionWhere to buy it? Amazon, get the best price (and a $5 coupon) but wait for delivery, or a local bookstore, and pay more and fight the crowds.How early to show up at the AT+T store to wait in line.iPhoneBiggest open question:Is Snape the ultimate good guy or the ultimate bad guy?Will it ever run third-party apps?tieBuzz v. hypeBuzzHypeHPGoogle matchesLoosely 30 millionAbout 55 millioniPhoneTotal44tie!

Alex's Letter to Warez Sites

June 20, 2007 by Ellen

Probably everyone who reads this blog has already seen this elsewhere, but in case not:

Our good friend and fellow mobile developer, Alex Kac, has written an Open Letter to Warez Sites in his forum, and asked some other developers to help publicize it. Of course I agree with what he wrote (or most of it - maybe not the “have a great day” part), and while I’m not at all convinced that this will change anything (do people really go to warez sites without realizing they’re stealing the content?) I’m completely behind any efforts to do anything to stop software (or any intellectual property) piracy, and happy to do whatever I can to help publicize the problem.

We Couldn't Have Done it Without You!

June 12, 2007 by Julie

Our big tenth anniversary party is over now, and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate. I know I had a lot of fun with the contests on this blog, and I hope you guys did too.

Speaking of blog contests, there’s still one more contest to announce the winners to. We spent some time and voted on our favorite five haikus, and the winners are: spmwinkel, Dave, Tim Heimerl, doog, and Mark Jones. Congrats to everyone! All of the submitted haikus were really creative, and you can read them in the comments to this post. The winners should see an email from me shortly requesting their info so I can ship out their swag packets.

Thanks once more to everyone, and we’ll do it again next year!

Ode to a Pocket PC

June 7, 2007 by Julie

It’s time for another contest, and since you guys did so well making up captions for our anniversary picture, we decided to see if we could squeeze any more creativity out of you!

For this contest, all you need to do is write seventeen syllables about mobile devices. Or about Ilium Software. That’s it! Of course, the technicality is that they need to be in the form of a haiku. Before you rush out and dust off your old textbooks - let me remind you what haiku is all about, and the rules for this contest:

1. Haiku is a quick little poem, three lines long, consisting of 17 syllables
2. The first line is 5 syllables, the second is 7, and the third line is 5 again
3. Your haiku entry must be related to mobile devices or software in general
4. If you want to earn some extra points from the judges, write a haiku related to Ilium Software!

Want some examples? This site defines haiku for you, and has some sample poems. And check out this page too for some pretty humorous haikus. Oh, and our judges are a little lenient, too. If you think of something really, REALLY cool to write, but it’s one or two syllables too long, go ahead and submit it anyway! We’re not sticklers; just don’t write an entire sonnet! Keep them as short and sweet as possible.

Because sometimes you can’t rush creativity, I’m going to let this contest run until Monday, at 8:00 a.m. EST. Then we’ll choose our five favorite haikus. The winners will get an Ilium Software swag pack - 2 click-pen styluses, one stick stylus, and one luggage tag, and the chance to have your haiku read at the next Ilium Software Annual Poetry Slam. Oh, and as mentioned in the blog title, here is Ode to a Pocket PC, my example for the contest:

I grow impatient As you sit in your cradle Recharging for me

Found: Ten Good Captions

June 7, 2007 by Julie

It’s time to announce the winners of our recent caption contest. We stayed up all night, and even had a couple of pretty good screaming matches trying to decide….well, maybe not. But  there were a lot of great entries, so it wasn’t easy!

 The winners, in no particular order, are:

1. Jaimie Birk: “It was a banner day at the Ilium Home for Wayward Programmers.”
2. spmwinkel: “The Ilium Software team shows the result of another productive day”
3. Judy Dye: “The Harry Potter Wizard theme party got off to a slow start. Only 2 people managed to conjure up non-standard hats”
4. Brian: “This is the best picket line I’ve ever been on! Hats and streamers! Just wait until those scabs at Developer One show up to work!”
5. David Tucker: “Don’t laugh at our thinking caps. When all 10 of us touch the tips of our hats together, our brainpower is amplified beyond all human imagination.”
6. Joe D: “Kirk to Enterprise: Scotty, we have installed NewsBreak 2.0 on our tricorders. Nine to beam up.”
7. Melvyn: “The new range of Ilium Garden Gnomes promises to make your lawn the talk of the town.”
8. Ernie: “Ok, ok, just so you promise you won’t post this picture on the webpage”
9. Aaron: “It’s been 10 years, can we take the hats off now?”
10. Timothy: “See I told you..We couldn’t get jobs at Jack in the Box, but the hats came in handy anyway!”

Congrats - you should see an email from me shortly, so I can get the info I need to send out your prizes! Thanks to everyone for playing, there were a lot of funny entries. I’ll have another contest up and running soon!