Wow, This App Turns Your iPad Into An iPhone (AAPL)

According to Sean Hollister at Engadget, the jailbreak developer team iPhoneIslam has put out an app that brings cellular voice and texting to a 3G iPad.

The video below shows the app in action, both making calls and sending and receiving text messages.

The app is called PhoneIt-iPad, and if this is up your alley, it's available for jailbreakers in the Cydia store for $20.

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See Also:

• Our 5 Favorite iPhone Games This Week
• Is Apple Adding Panoramic Photography To Your iPhone?
• Wow, It Looks Like Apple Ripped Off This Jailbreak Developer's WiFi Sync App

Wow, This App Turns Your iPad Into An iPhone (AAPL)

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If A Rumor Turns Out To Be True, Is It News?

I learned long ago not to feed the trolls -- not even when they happen to be columnists in prominent trade publications like AdAge -- but this guy seems so angry about my post calling Twitter the new CNN that I figured a quick reply was in order.

It's true, as Simon Dumenco at Ad Age argues, Twitter didn't break the news.

But, Twitter isn't a living sentient being, it's just a conduit for information. That would be like saying "TV" broke the story.

Keith Urbahn did.

He got the tip from a TV news producer. But he made it public first.

In the old days, those kinds of tips maybe would have been passed along from newsroom to newsroom on the informal gossip network while everybody waited for the official confirmation.

But Urbahn posted it immediately, along with two or three followups saying he wasn't SURE the news was true.

The point is, Twitter gives normal people access to the newsroom gossip that previously remained private. That's a huge change in how information is disseminated.

Why is Simon Dumenco so angry about my calling attention to this?

I have no idea, but I have a theory, and it comes down to a different point of view about "news."

News is something that happens in the real world.

That's it. Events happen. They are waiting to be uncovered.

Journalists add value in many different ways. Some are good at discovering events that happened but that somebody wants to keep private. That's breaking news. It's hard work. It takes connections, smarts, and persistence. SAI does it a lot.

When some random guy posts an unconfirmed rumor on Twitter and it turns out to be true, that seems to undercut the value of the old-fashioned grunt work necessary to break real news. So reporters scream and cry and call attention to the fact that real news takes real reporters -- like in this case, the TV person who got the news in the first place.

But where did that TV reporter get the information from? Why was he supposed to wait on it? What "confirmation" was he waiting for -- a press release? The official scripted presidential announcement?

Is that "real" reporting? Or is that transcription?

Nobody is suggesting that Twitter will replace journalists or that anybody should rely exclusively on Twitter as a news source -- that would be like getting all your news about the first Gulf War from CNN. But yesterday's events should make it clear to everybody that it's now an essential news resource.

If you're worried about that, go break some news.

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See Also:

• This Guy Live-Tweeted The Bin Laden Raid Yesterday Without Knowing It
• Twitter Just Had Its CNN Moment
• The Most Interesting Tweets About Osama Bin Laden's Death

If A Rumor Turns Out To Be True, Is It News?

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Turns Out Square Isn't Secure Enough For Its Big Fancy New Partner, VISA (V, PAY)

Mobile payments startup Square plans to make all of its dongles encrypt credit card data on the fly, a Square exec said at a conference. This is after Square said in response to accusations from competitor Verifone that it doesn't need to encrypt credit card data.

Square is doing this to conform to Visa's new set of mobile application best practices. Those new best practices were released yesterday, just as it was announced that Visa made a strategic investment in Square. So in other words, Visa made Square add encryption to its dongle.

This must be a bummer for Square, because it has to design and build new dongles all over again. Moreover, we assume that the chips that will be needed to encrypt credit card data will be more costly than what the current dongle has, which should be costly -- Square gives away the dongles and makes money from a commission on each transaction.

Just to be clear: even without encrypting credit card data, Square is by all accounts fully compliant with all industry regulations. So it's not like there's this huge gaping security hole with Square. But their new big and  important partner evidently feels that they have to beef up their security.

Now You Should Read: Why Square Will Need To Ditch The Dongle →

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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See Also:

• Visa Invests Big Money In Square, Even Though Square Probably Wants To Kill Visa
• PayPal Buys Another Startup To Beat Google, Apple And Square In The Mobile Payments Race
• Square COO Explains Why The Web Is Dead

Turns Out Square Isn't Secure Enough For Its Big Fancy New Partner, VISA (V, PAY)

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Comment on Facebook Turns to A Little Solar For Its Data Center by Al Brown

Its just good PR, not good economic sense.

Comment on Facebook Turns to A Little Solar For Its Data Center by Al Brown

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Congress Turns On Google

One of the truisms of business is that you can't beat the United States government.

Over the years, many companies thought that they could, from US Steel to Microsoft.  They all lost. 

So these days, companies make sure that they maintain full-scale lobbying operations in Washington, DC and that their senior people are active in fund-raising efforts for both parties. 

Google has long imagined that since it "did no evil," the normal rules didn't apply to them.  This conceit has now run into a new reality.  The National Journal reports:

Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX), cochairmen of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus and longtime members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, don’t agree on much. But after Google was caught last month collecting Social Security information from children who took part in its annual doodling contest, the lawmakers set aside their differences. In a scathing joint statement, they called the action “unacceptable.”

The rebuke was just the latest in a series from lawmakers in both parties, and it highlights a deeper problem for the online giant: Its star is falling fast in Washington. Long the darling of the technology community, Google had carefully cultivated an image of corporate responsibility with its “Don’t Be Evil” motto and its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But in recent years, the company has distanced itself not only from the motto but also the principles behind it, say experts who monitor its business practices.

And members of Congress are noticing. In recent months, they’ve criticized Google for its proposed acquisition of an online travel-reservations company; a privacy breach involving the collection of unsecured wireless data; and its short-lived effort to circumvent tough new Internet regulations. “There is an awareness that Google just isn’t exactly the warm, fuzzy, cuddly, little start-up that everybody loved [and] that we thought it was,” said John Simpson, director of the Inside Google project for Consumer Watchdog, a Los Angeles-based non­profit and fierce critic of the company. “It’s such an all-pervasive force in everyone’s lives that it’s coming under scrutiny—and deservedly so.”

Google, of course, is not naive.  They maintain a vast lobbying operation in Washington and a number of their senior executives are fund-raisers and bundlers for President Obama.  (A "bundler" is someone who raises a bundle of money from friends and business associates).  At a recent dinner meeting in San Francisco, called the "Tech Bundlers Ball" by one Washington veteran, Google was well-represented.

So it seems unlikely, to say the least, that the Obama Administration will allow its Justice Department to do anything like what the Clinton Justice Department did to Microsoft back in the late 1990s.  But the problem for Google is that Congressional investigations mean subpoenas and subpoenas find trouble.  Trouble for Google.

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• Politics In 60 Seconds: What You Need To Know Right Now
• The Next US Ambassador To China Should Be Shuffling Back To Seattle
• Huckabee Is (Still) The Front-Runner In Iowa

Congress Turns On Google

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