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iPad, Kindle Fire are not post-PC, says IDC analyst

Are we in a post-PC era as the late Steve Jobs famously claimed? Not really, says IDC.

This ivory-tower debate resurfaced this week when market researcher Canalys said Apple had become the world's largest PC supplier in the fourth quarter with about 17 percent of the worldwide market.

So, how did reigning PC king Hewlett-Packard suddenly drop to a distant No. 2 with only 12.7 percent? The iPad, of course. Apple shipped more than 15 million of those in the quarter, dwarfing any other so-called "client PC" device.

"We're going through the biggest shift … Read more

Going dark means crazy day for anti-SOPA site owners

With sites like Reddit, BoingBoing, PostSecret, and I Can Has Cheezburger blacked out today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, you might think this would be a peaceful, relaxed Wednesday for the people who run them. You'd be wrong.

All across the Internet, sites like those and many others stood up to register their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. But for some of those who have gotten the most attention for their activism, today has actually been crazier than usual, despite not having to constantly update their publications all day.

"Today … Read more

HuffPo's Twitter account hacked

The Huffington Post's Twitter account was hacked this morning by someone who replaced the news site's usual story teases with racist and homophobic messages.

Around 11 a.m. PT, messages saying that "cloverfdch is a F#@%ing god! Hacked :)" and "New York Post rules!!!" joined the usual tweets with links to celebrity stories and animal photo galleries.

Huffington Post representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment this morning but were apparently aware of the intrusion; the posts in question were quickly deleted from the site's Twitter page, although they still … Read more

Awwwk-ward: Google Chrome pay-for-post promo misfires

A Google effort to promote its Chrome browser misfired with the appearance of some blog posts that fly in the face of Google's own attempts to discourage low-quality Web content.

The campaign, spotted yesterday by Aaron Wall at SEOBook, is apparent in several blog posts from late December bearing the label, "This post is sponsored by Google Chrome." But there appears to be some backtracking now that the campaign is under scrutiny, and Google itself is disclaiming responsibility while trying to prevent anything similar from happening again.

The theme of the posts is evident in their titles: &… Read more

PostSecret shuts down iPhone app due to abusive posts

PostSecret, the popular blog and new-media project that's long given people a place to share their deepest, darkest thoughts, today announced it has shut down its young iPhone app due to malicious postings.

PostSecret founder Frank Warren, who receives hundreds of postcards and letters from strangers every week and posts about 20 of them on his blog on Sundays, said he's "pained" by the close of the PostSecret app, which launched in September. But its demise is due in part to its success.

"Although today--the first day after the death of the app--is painful, it … Read more

Space post office postmarks letters from orbit

China's main Space Post Office is actually on the ground in Beijing, but they're happy to route letters through the galaxy's only true "satellite" branch in orbit so you can bag a one-of-a-kind postmark.

Yes, thanks to cuts to NASA's funding, it seems the Chinese have now rocketed ahead of us in the postal space gimmick department. The idea is for space nuts to send e-mails to a computer aboard the Chinese spacecraft Tiangong-1, currently in orbit, which routes the message back to the main Space Post Office to be printed out, stuffed into a commemorative envelope with a special postmark, and sent on to its addressee.

The orbital philatelic experiment is meant to boost business for China's postal service, which has been suffering as people move online. Makes you wonder why the U.S. Postal Service didn't set up shop at Cape Canaveral years ago.… Read more

Apple to build more iCloud apps

Based on a recent job posting on Apple's corporate Web site, Apple is looking to expand its iCloud offerings with new and innovative applications to better utilize the server-based technologies it offers iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users.

The post, originally uncovered by AppleInsider, shows that Apple is looking for "proactive, creative-minded engineers to build the next generation of cocoa-based client applications that integrate tightly with a set of cloud based services."

The responsibilities of the position are to develop new and existing applications for iCloud services, help define and implement user interfaces, and build products that … Read more

Twitter-by-post breeds analog 'Fail Whales'

On the way to our digital world, a strange thing happened--analog became cool again. How else can you explain something like Twitter-by-post?

The idea is simple, the execution not so much. Freelance writer Giles Turnbull decided to take his tweets offline by responding to his Twitter feed using physical postcards. He laid out the mechanics of the experiment--done with the help of about 15 "volunteers" from among his Twitter followers--in The Morning News:… Read more

Update all the social sites

HootSuite for iOS lets you sign in to your Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare accounts from a single application window. While the app may not be versatile enough for the most active social media personalities, it is a convenient option for frequent users of these three social networks.

The first thing you should know about HootSuite for iOS is that it's nowhere near as powerful as its browser-based sibling. While the desktop version lets you sign in to and post from no fewer than nine different networks, the iOS app is limited to the three mentioned above. That said, the … Read more