You can call it a fight for their rights, but don’t call it a comeback. Following the removal of an HD-DVD code posting from Digg, users of the “user driven social content website” revolted, posting and digging only stories that contained the code or a code derivative. Abiding by the cease and desist, Digg fought the onslaught by removing all stories that contained the code, but the community would not be silenced. Wave after wave of stories and comments followed, until at last, Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, issued the following statement on his blog, titled
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin
Apparently, once you give your community control, a removal of that control results in revolt.
In case you’re new to the Digg movement, the site features stories that are submitted by the community of users, dugg (good) or buried (bad), and then sorted by popularity. As the Digg movement has grown, users have become fanatical, following Kevin Rose like an idol, and creating all sorts of Digg accessories and tributes to feed their digging need.
What’s interesting is that the code in question, a string of numbers and letters that means nothing aside from this issue, is being claimed as intellectual property. Though it’s easy to see how a company can claim a name or an image, it’s much harder to see how a company can claim a random string of numbers and letters as their own.
What’s going to be fun to watch is the progress of both Digg and this issue in the coming weeks. Will it make its way to court, where the issue of intellectual property over numbers and letters will be decided once and for all? Will the proposed user protest shut the site down and stop its exponential growth? Will this whole thing (and the links that come from stories like this)Di make the site even more popular then it was before? Stay tuned to find out. Can you digg it?
Though I didn’t expect any of my predictions to actually come true (I hoped they would, but didn’t expect they would, and I think I ended up with 0 out of 8 correct), Apple dropped a bomb in the form of the iPhone that caught everyone by surprise. I even got a few Apple fanboy goosebumps when the full specs were announced. Combining “a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching”, the iPhone will do it all and then slip away into your pocket. Features include:
3.5-inch widescreen display
Multi-touch input
OS X based operating system
Bluetooth 2.0
Wi-Fi
EDGE/GSM
5 hours of talk/video/browsing time
16 hours of audio playback
Weighs in at only 4.8 ounces
Comes in either a 4 or 8 GB versions
There’s also a sensor to know when you’re rotating it so it can change the orientation of the screen, a sensor to know its proximity to your face so your cheek doesn’t make any unintentional phone calls, and a sensor to turn up and down the brightness depending on how much you need
Oh yeah, and it’s beautiful
Since this thing is already clogging all of the Internet’s tubes, I figure I’d give the readers of DYH a little something different. First off, let’s see how the 10 people whose reputations relied on the iPhone did.
Kevin Rose got the January launch date right but missed out on the Cingular exclusive, was definitely wrong on the size, number of batteries, and slide-out keyboard; but he was right on the number and size of the models, and somewhat right on the touchscreen.
Rebecca Runkle from Morgan Stanley got the number and size of the models right, dimensions right, colors wrong, Cingular right, virtual clickwheel wrong, and full screen LCD right.
Think Secret got the fact that their would be a camera right, EDGE/GSM right; but got the megapixel count and the display size wrong.
The rest of the 10 just put their money on their actually being an iPhone, and though they were right, though it wasn’t too hard to figure that one out.
What I find interesting is that if you combine everyone’s information and pick and choose the good stuff, you could have had a pretty good idea of the specs of the actual iPhone. Most got the fact that there would be two models in 4 and 8 GB form right, Kevin predicted the January launch date and the touchscreen, Rebecca got the pricing very close, the size close, the Cingular exclusivity right on, and the LCD screen size right on, and Think Secret got the GSM/EDGE thing right as well as the inclusion of a camera.
Besides the iPhone, Apple (as they’re now officially being called after they announced they’ve dropped the word Computer from their name) finalized the specs on the Apple TV (the now official name for the iTV). Designed to bridge the gap between your iTunes and your TV in a wireless way, the Apple TV features its own Intel processor, a 40 GB hard drive, 802.11n networking, and does 720p high def video. Plus, it’s scheduled to ship in February.
Lastly, Apple secretly updated their Airport Extreme Base Station to 802.11n specs and changed the form factor to a more Mac Mini style. Very sneaky.
Overall, some great stuff, though some definite shockers. No iLife update? No cameras in the monitors (Is that one really that hard to include)? I did like what I saw though, and Apple definitely managed to show that the first 30 years were just the beginning.
