Apple has only announced its new musical social network and already reports of censorship are appearing; in California they want to chip children for surveillance, the American FCC is staying neutral and an online phone book raises concerns.

Apple held another press conference that as usual received to much attention from the technological media and blogs. If you want to read the tiresome details you can do so here. Since we continue not getting our payroll from Apple’s PR department we’ll focus, as usual, on what the well oiled bluffing maching from Cupertino doesn’t want you to know.

The most recent thing Apple announced was the launch of its songs social network, Ping, who aims to show users the songs others are listening to, in a clear attempt to try and convince them to purchase them. From now on the product and not the user is the center of the experience and that in a way is revolutionary (although not very magical). Of course since Apple is trying to convince us that the world looks like Disney’s version of Snow white, the almost first announcement of the users experience in Ping is about censorship. Apple have removed Lady Gaga’s twits regarding her support of the gay community. Now, in Apple’s defense it can be said the it supports the gay community, it publicly opposed initiative 8 in CA that outlawed gay marriage, it gives the same benefits to gay and heterosexual couples. But – Not in front of the kids! We are creating a wholesome experience for the good old traditional, homophobic family.

And bad by Apple was the announcement that it is renting movies and series for 99c only on her online media store – iTunes. The problem is that Amazon sells the same movies and episodes for the same price; it allow you to download the video and not just view it temporarily. Revolutionary? Not.

The “just one more thing” gimmick was reserved this time for Apple’s step child. Apple TV. Jobs introduced it with his usual enthusiasm. Only those with really good memory remembered that less than three months ago he said in an interview that the company is not going to enter the area and that it was going to leave it up to “smarter people”.

It is of course, not the first time Jobs, who shall we put it, changes his position quickly. At the time he said Apple doesn’t know how to create a computer that costs less than $500 which isn’t garbage. At that same time, the iPad was already in the advanced planning stages. So from now on, if Jobs says he isn’t going to do something, it is exactly what he is going to do in his next public announcement.

Another point worth mentioning is the fact that the event was broadcasted live, for the first time in seven years, to Apples customers. Apple regarded it as an “open” broadcast even though you needed one of its media devices to watch. The reason is apparently that Jobs is tired of having everything he says go through the media’s filter and especially tired of real time reports by bloggers who exposed him during the last event. Now Jobs can speak to his followers without middleman or danger of exposing them to unreliable information. It is worth mentioning that Apple has not commented on the death of its old workhorse, the classic iPod. Three iPod models received an upgrade; the “regular” music player didn’t.

Just another brick in the wall

Kindergartens in CA are starting a troubling experiment; children will receive a kindergarten sweater that contains a RFID chip – a radio chip also used for tracking – to track their movements, and see if they ate on time and so on. On the surface, sounds economic and efficient: instead of teachers ensuring children are ok, there will be a chip to do that and report to them.

The abuse potential is of course, astounding. The device will track the child at any point during his stay in kindergarten and maybe even a little later if he continues wearing it. It will allow tracking him at any given moment. Its hard to believe that the data collected about the child wont be put into a data base, diagnosed and used for personal file notes. After all, once this information exists, that’s what you do with it, that is why it was created. So from early on kids could be labeled as “lazy” (if they move less than average) or “hyperactive” (if they move too much). The pressure to become one of the herd, someone who conforms will begin early on. After the program succeeds in kindergarten, it will probably be introduced in schools. After all, it enables savings.

Ok, so maybe not

About a year ago, the FCC was full of fire, and was going to pass regulations that advance networks neutrality, meaning the perception that network providers are not allowed to intervene in the content passing through their pipelines or prioritize one over another – in regards to quantity or content. The FCC also wanted to promote a free broadband connection to every US citizen to minimize the digital gap in the country.

Meanwhile, the FCC was hit with one blow after another. A court of law reprimanded it for fining Comcast for deliberately slowing transmission of heavy users and determined that it was not qualified to do so. Later Google – the leading champion of network neutrality – put a knife in the back of the conception when it reached an agreement with Verizon that said cellular network will not be neutral.

Yesterday, the FCC quietly folded its flags. It was due to submit recommendations on the subject but instead announced that it needed more time to rethink the issue. Neutrality backing organizations protested saying the FCC had all the information it needed. This is probably true but the information itself is not enough; it also takes political stamina to face tycoons and this is probably lacking.

A general online phone book? Is it smart?

A small company called, Inflection, is taking a controversial initiative. The company that has been running an exemplary service for family history, is expected to launch today Peoplesmart.com. what does it do? It is meant to be a phonebook for the www age.

Inflection means to mine massive amounts of information, from social networks and available online sites as well as from official sites, to find the following information about people: phone numbers, email addresses and social profiles. You can guess where this is heading. Inflection personnel who have already raised 30 million dollars from investors swear that they’re going to retain user privacy and are in contact with companies specializing in the area and that they’re not going to collect information used for security questions like what was your late aunts maiden name and so on, even if its innocently available online and that they would allow people who really don’t want to be part of their phone book to remove themselves.

Its just that, a phone book that whomever doesn’t want to be on it isn’t on it sounds like a problematic investment, one that doesn’t justify 30 million dollars. The road to hell is paved with good intentions is what they say, and that’s because good intentions are such cheap paving material.

Google has already announced the intended passing of Google Wave, who made waves when it was announced and turned out to be something else that wasn’t clear what it was good for. Google announced that it will continue to support it although not develop it anymore. Now it says that it will exist at least until the end of 2010 and that by then users will have the tools to export the material they accidently put into it. The obvious conclusion: Google Wave is passing on.

Google has recently announced that upgrade of its email service – Gmail, with an Inbox that will try to guess what is more important to you. The announcement was accompanied by a nice musical video. Embarrassingly it was Google’s browser, Chrome, that played the music constantly to Gmail users. Many of them were bothered and flooded the company with cries of help. Google claims it is aware of the problem and is taking care of it.

The government of China, as a part of its depression campaign against its citizens – its enemies – as any communist country, is running a war against it own population, is now demanding they identify themselves while acquiring a celllar phone. Officially the goal is fighting terro.. oh sorry, fighting pornography in reality, of course, the goal is fighting whatever is left of its civil liberties. In the past demonstration organizers would buy cheap cellulars in chash without identifying themselves and organize demonstrations with them. Now its harder.

Target chain stores, who already sell Kindle’s will soon start selling Facebook credits cards. This is a revolutionary and magical device that takes your good old money which is good almost anywhere and turning it into a sort of monopoly money that can be used on Facebook alone to buy virtual goods such as air. The wonders of modern economics. Then again, if we’re used to the idea of selling debts…

A quiet month , more or less, passed in the war of the browsers. Microsoft’s market share dropped from 60.7% to 60.4% during August although in Redmond they are probably happy that internet explorer 8 is cutting into more market shares of the IE6. Chrome by Google registered an increase of 0.3% from 7.2% to 7.5%, and firefox is standing still at 22.9%. Apple’s safari rose from 5.1% to 5.2%. firefox are saying they are working on launching firefox 4 quickly.