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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Stimulus funds help wire rural homes for Internet (AP) : Technet

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Stimulus funds help wire rural homes for Internet (AP) : Technet

Stimulus funds help wire rural homes for Internet (AP)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 11:55 AM PST

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press John Curran, Associated Press – Sat Jan 29, 2:55 pm ET

EAST BURKE, Vt. – Up in rural northern Vermont, it took until the 1960s to run power lines to some towns — decades after the rest of America got turned on.

These days, it's the digital revolution that remains but a rumor in much of rural America.

Dial-up user Val Houde knows this as well as anybody. After moving here four years ago, the 51-year-old mother of four took a correspondence course for medical transcription, hoping to work from home. She plunked down $800, took the course, then found out the software wasn't compatible with dial-up Internet, the only kind available to her.

Selling items on eBay, watching videos, playing games online? Forget it. The connection from her home computer is so slow, her online life is one of delays, degraded quality and "buffering" warning messages. So she waits until the day a provider extends broadband to her house.

"I feel like these companies, they don't care about these little pockets of places," she said one night recently, showing a visitor her computer's slow Internet service. "And I know we're not the only ones."

For Houde and millions of other Americans laboring under slow or no Internet service, help is on the way.

Bolstered by billions in federal stimulus money, an effort to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas is under way, an ambitious 21st-century infrastructure project with parallels to the New Deal electrification of the nation's hinterlands in the 1930s and 1940s.

President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of Internet access in his State of the Union address last week.

"To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information — from high-speed rail to high-speed Internet," Obama said.

In the Depression, it was power to the people — for farm equipment and living-room lamps, cow-milking machines and kitchen appliances. Now, it's online access — to YouTube and digital downloads, to videoconferencing and Facebook, to eBay and Twitter.

"Rural areas all across the country are wrestling with this, somewhat desperately," said Paul Costello, executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development. "Young people who grow up with the media will not live where they can't be connected to digital culture. So most rural communities have been behind the eight ball."

Seventy years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt realized that if private industry wouldn't run power lines out to the farthest reaches of rural areas, it would take government money to help make it happen. In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was established to deliver electricity to the Tennessee Valley and beyond.

Now, money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is doing the same with broadband, which is typically defined as DSL (digital subscriber line), cable modem, fiber optic or fixed wireless.

The stimulus act set aside $7.2 billion for expansion of broadband access, believing it will spur economic growth, boost educational opportunities and create jobs. The money has jump-started what were existing efforts by states and telecom providers to bridge the digital divide of rural America.

In its national broadband plan issued last year, the Federal Communications Commission pinpointed schools' use of online resources as one of the key targets of the stimulus-funded expansion efforts.

"With broadband, students and teachers can expand instruction beyond the confines of the physical classroom and traditional school day," the plan says. "Broadband can also provide more customized learning opportunities for students to access high-quality, low-cost and personally relevant educational material."

Schools in many rural districts lack that now.

"We sorely need fiber-optic in our community," said Robert Brinkley, director of technology for the North Country Supervisory Union school district in Vermont.

The 13 schools in his district share a T-1 line whose bandwidth is so small that whenever a video field trip is planned for a class, all the other users on the system have to stop using e-mail first.

"The picture doesn't just get poor, we lose the connection. Whether it's NASA or the Cleveland Museum of Art, we'll lose the connection or it'll drop completely," said Brinkley.

A U.S. Commerce Department report last year showed that 65.9 percent of urban households subscribed to broadband in 2009, compared with 51 percent of rural households. There are several reasons for the rural shortfall, but lack of availability is the most often cited.

Consumers in rural states have been left behind, either because their homes are too far from one another, mountains make construction expensive or providers have lacked the capital to justify the investment:

• In Kansas, Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. got $100 million in stimulus loans and grants to extend broadband into unserved areas.

"Because of the economic climate that we live in — declining population, small farms being bought up by larger operators — the more technology and more access to information that those customers can have, the more likely they are to be able to stay in business," said Rhonda Goddard, the company's chief operating officer. "It's revolutionary out there, for them to have access to the information they need to keep their business running — access to the markets, being able to buy supplies and equipment from the region instead of just from their local market. It opens doors. It increases competitiveness. It props up business."

• In Colorado, mountains and vast stretches between farms and ranches on the plains have made it difficult for companies to justify spending millions of dollars to lay fiber optic cable to connect far-flung residents.

There, a public-private partnership won $100 million in stimulus money to try to expand high-speed Internet access to all Colorado school districts and to libraries and key institutions across the state. Some of the money will go to laying fiber and erecting new microwave towers to deliver broadband — at least — into areas that need them.

• In Texas, where 96 percent of households have broadband, $8 million in stimulus money is funding a five-year effort that includes mapping, data collection and technical assistance in hopes of reaching the 285,550 now-unserved households. Dave Osborn, CEO of Valley Telephone Cooperative Inc., said his company serves an area of roughly 1,700 square miles in south Texas with a population of 30,000. Stimulus money is key, he says.

"It takes a whole lot of money to serve this (population)," Osborn said. "At the end of the day, there's no way I can spend $14,000 on a line and bill a customer $16 a month. We couldn't do it without (the federal dollars)."

Obama said the broadband goals far exceed convenience.

"This isn't just about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls," the president said. "It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It's about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It's about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a hand-held device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor."

In some parts of rural America, the issue isn't just making broadband available. It's convincing holdouts that there's a benefit to it.

A survey released Jan. 13 by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association — a trade association for rural telecoms — found that the overall broadband subscriber "take rate" for its member companies is only 55 percent, up from 38 percent a year ago.

"It's kind of one of those `If you build it, will they come?' things," said CEO Shirley Bloomfield. "It's one thing when you put in phone service. You may only have five customers at first, but you knew people would sign up.

"Now, you put out the broadband ... and you're doing a proposition of `Do you get enough customers to make it worth your while?'"

In Vermont, the rugged landscape of the Green Mountains, combined with the spread-out locations of the state's 620,000 people, has blocked or impeded building before — the infrastructure for telephone, transportation and electricity infrastructure, among other things.

The last towns to get electricity were the hamlets of Granby and Victory, in 1963, following years of fundraising, including a "Holiday in the Hills" weekend in 1959 in which residents showed visitors how to get by using oil lamps and wood cookstoves.

Even now, utility crews have to use draught horses to haul poles and cables to places that trucks can't go.

"It's not as easy as some of the other big flat states in the Midwest, where you put the plow down and you just head on out, because they're in sandy soil they can bury their cable in," said Kurt Gruendling, vice president of marketing and business development for Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom.

"In Vermont, in particular, we say we're `topographically challenged.' We have a lot of nooks and crannies," said Deborah Shannon, director of broadband outreach and coordination for the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

Former Gov. Jim Douglas and various providers had pledged to get broadband to all corners of Vermont by the end of 2010, but a combination of factors — including the market's collapse in 2008 — prevented that.

Enter the stimulus.

Vermont Telephone is getting $116 million in grants and loans to extend wireless broadband to anchor institutions and unserved homes and businesses in Vermont and parts of neighboring New York and New Hampshire.

The Vermont Telecommunications Authority, in conjunction with Internet service provider Sovernet Communications, is using $33.4 million in stimulus funds to build a 773-mile fiber-optic backbone that will make up the so-called "middle mile" of service, allowing schools, state buildings and community centers to hook up to the main trunk. The "last mile" is from there to the home.

"Without the stimulus, the private sector would not have been able to do this and the state would not have been able to develop its plans to push higher-capacity fiber connections out into our most rural areas," Shannon said.

Meanwhile, Valerie Houde waits.

"I know there are a lot of people out there, like us, who would greatly benefit from having broadband, and with the money the state got for expanding service, it seems something should change, finally, as long as the money goes where it's supposed to and not into politicians' and corporate executives' pockets," she said.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Tsai in Colorado and Danny Robbins in Dallas contributed to this report.

Macworld shines without superstar Apple (AFP)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 09:10 AM PST

by Glenn Chapman Glenn Chapman – Sat Jan 29, 12:10 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – From star-gazing iPad applications to crystal-encrusted iPhone cases, a universe of products spun off of Apple gadgets flourished at Macworld Expo despite the absence of the sun around which they revolve.

Attendance was on track to hit 25,000 by the time the annual gathering of Apple faithful ends on Saturday.

The crowd was down from the 40,000 to 50,000 people seen in years when Apple took part and chief executive Steve Jobs starred in presentations that included unveiling hot new gadgets like the iPhone.

Apple pulled out of the show in 2010, but engineers from Cupertino, California-based company still make pilgrimages to Macworld to see what fans and entrepreneurs are making of their products.

"The energy is still really high," said Anna-Maria Pardini, who works for Hewlett-Packard tending to its relationship with Apple.

"The nature of the show has definitely changed," she continued, noting she has attended Macworld Expos for more than a decade. "Eleven years ago there was no iTunes, no iPhone, and until recently there was no iPad.

"You've seen Apple expanding and changing markets, and changing the way we do things," she continued. "It is like never stepping into the same river twice."

Computer titan Hewlett-Packard (HP) makes hundreds of monitors, printers, hubs and other products compatible with Macintosh computers.

Interest was high in HP technology that let people wirelessly connect with printers from Apple gadgets.

Offerings on the crowded expo floor ranged from data storage devices and computer security services to applications for playing or working on Apple devices.

SouthernStars.com showed off Sky Safari software that essentially turns iPads into windows into the night sky.

A freshly-launched Sky Wire cable lets people use iPhones to command telescopes to automatically find celestial objects.

The array of iPhone cases included Luxmo designs coated with Swarovski crystals glued by hand in tiger, parrot, skull, frog and other patterns. Prices ranged from $300 to $350.

Rhinestone covered Luxmo iPhone cases priced at $75 dollars were available for fashionable but frugal technophiles.

"Apple people enjoy making a statement," said David Fung of Luxmo.

US+U claimed to have the most functional iPad case, with a cuff on the back as a handle so people could hold tablets single-handed in a fashion similar to paint palettes.

A Waterproof Dry Case was crafted to vacuum seal smartphones in plastic while letting users still plug in headsets to listen to music.

"You could be in a sandstorm or out in the water and not have to worry about it," Jordan Messick of US-based Dry Corp told AFP. "If nothing else survives, at least your iPhone is going to."

A Boom application that beefed up sound coming from Macintosh or iPad speakers was among ten products awarded "Best of Macworld" honors on Friday.

Another winner was Ten One Design, a startup that invented Fling joysticks that stick onto faces of iPads with suction cups to provide videogame console style controls.

"Once you get your thumbs on it, you will feel the difference," said Ten One chief executive Peter Skinner. "What we really love about Fling is they are transparent, so you can see your enemies coming from all directions."

The company behind Invisible Shield film that protects touchscreen gadgets from scratching took a best-of award for a Zaggmate aluminum iPad case with a wireless Bluetooth-enabled keypad.

"Zaggmate converts iPad into a netbook of sorts," said Jason Melville of Zagg, adding that the company name is an acronym for 'Zealous About Great Gadgets."

He closed a co-worker's iPad into the case and dropped it to the floor to make a point about the 99-dollar Zaggmate's ability to protect tablets.

Banners reminded people to mark their calendars for next year's Macworld event in a clear sign that the independently run event was continuing undaunted without Apple.

"Angry Birds Rio" Game to be Released in March [VIDEO] (Mashable)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 04:55 AM PST

Charlie White Charlie White – Sat Jan 29, 7:55 am ET

Angry Birds fans, it's confirmed, a new edition of the blockbuster smartphone and console game is coming in March, and it'll be called Angry Birds Rio.

Interspersed with characters from Rio, the upcoming animated feature from 20th Century Fox, Angry Birds Rio will revolve around the kidnapping of those annoyed avians.

As you can see in the video above, they're hustled off to Rio de Janeiro via helicopter for an unscheduled vacation in a dark cave. Once they escape their cages, they find hundreds of others suffering the same fate, triggering a 45-level battle between the birds and their evil captors.

If you can't get enough of Angry Birds, between now and the release of Angry Birds Rio, the game's developer Rovio will release a pink-tinged Valentine's Day edition. The company's CEO Mikael Hed also announced an animated Angry Birds TV series to debut on an undetermined date.

Egyptians Find New Routes to the Web (PC World)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 01:30 PM PST

Nancy Gohring and Robert McMillan Nancy Gohring And Robert Mcmillan – Sat Jan 29, 4:30 pm ET

"When countries block, we evolve," an activist with the group We Rebuild wrote in a Twitter message Friday. That's just what many Egyptians have been doing this week, as groups like We Rebuild scramble to keep the country connected to the outside world, turning to landline telephones, fax machines and even ham radio to keep inform ation flowing in and out of the country. Although one Internet service provider -- Noor Group -- remains in operation, Egypt's government abruptly ordered the rest of the country's ISPs to shut down their services just after midnight local time Thursday. Mobile networks have also been turned off in some areas. The blackout appears designed to disrupt organization of the country's growing protest movement, which is calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "[B]asically, there are three ways of getting information out right now -- get access to the Noor ISP (which has about 8 percent of the market), use a land line to call someone, or use dial-up," Jillian York, a researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said via e-mail. Egyptians with dial-up modems get no Internet connection when they call into their local ISP, but calling an international number to reach a modem in another country gives them a connection to the outside world.

Rerouting to Dial-Up

We Rebuild is looking to expand those dial-up options. It has set up a dial-up phone number in Sweden and is compiling a list of other numbers Egyptians can call. It is distributing information about its activities on a Wiki page.

One of the dial-up numbers is run by a small ISP called the French Data Network, which said it was the first time it had set up such a service. Its modem has been providing a connection "every few minutes," said Benjamin Bayart, FDN's president, speaking in an online chat. The international dial-up numbers only work for people with access to a telephone modem and an international calling service, however. So although mobile networks have been suspended in some areas, people have posted instructions about how others can use their mobile phones as dial-up modems. The few Egyptians able to access the Internet through Noor, the one functioning ISP, are taking steps to ensure their online activities are not being logged. Shortly before Internet access was cut off, the Tor Project said it saw a big spike in Egyptian visitors looking to download its Web browsing software, which is designed to let people surf the Web anonymously. "We thought we were under denial-of-service attack," said Andrew Lewman, the project's executive director. The site was getting up to 3,000 requests per second, the vast majority of them from Egypt, he said. "Since then we've seen a quadrupling of Tor clients connecting from Noor over the past 24 hours," he said.

Help from Outside

Even with no Internet, people have found ways to get messages out on Twitter. On Friday someone had set up a Twitter account where they posted messages that they had received via telephone calls from Egypt. A typical message reads: "Live Phonecall: streets mostly quiet in Dokki, no police in sight. Lots of police trucks seen at Sheraton." Others are using fax machines to get information into Egypt about possible ways to communicate. They are distributing fax machine numbers for universities and embassies and asking people to send faxes to those numbers with instructions about how to use a mobile phone as a dial-up modem. Members of the hacker group Anonymous have also been getting in on the act. They are reportedly faxing some of the latest government cables from Wikileaks, which reveal human rights abuses under President Mubarak, to locations in the country, according to Fortune magazine. We Rebuild describes itself as "a decentralized cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free Internet without intrusive surveillance." It has set up an IRC for people who can help with ham radio transmissions from Egypt. They are trying to spread the word about the radio band they are monitoring so that people in Egypt know where to transmit.

Some ham enthusiasts are setting up an FTP site where people can record what they hear and post the recordings. So far, they say they've picked up Morse code messages. Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the National Association for Amateur Radio, said no one has picked up any voice transmissions from Egypt for the past couple of days. But it's possible that people in Egypt are transmitting over shorter-range frequencies that carry only 30 or 50 miles, he said.

One problem with ham radio is that most people who know how to use it in Egypt were probably trained by the military and may be opposed to the protests. Others may be wary of transmitting because they are worried about who might be listening.

During earlier protests in Iran and Tunisia, the governments clamped down on specific websites, but access to the Internet was not severed in such a wholescale fashion. It is not unprecedented though. In a [blog post Friday written with a colleague, York from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society noted that in 2005 the government of Nepal cut off the Internet connection there, and in 2007 the Burmese government did the same in that country.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

Sudan Facebook group calls for protests (AFP)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 05:58 AM PST

Comcast takes control of NBC Universal (AP)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 07:52 PM PST

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – 1 hr 8 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – The nation's largest cable TV company, Comcast Corp., took control of NBC Universal after the government shackled its behavior in the coming years to protect online video services such as Netflix and Hulu.

The deal closed shortly before midnight EST on Friday.

The takeover gave the cable-hookup company 51 percent control of NBC Universal, which owns the nation's fourth-ranked broadcaster, NBC; the Universal Pictures movie studio and related theme parks; and a bevy of cable channels including Bravo, E! and USA.

The combination had raised fears that Comcast might abuse its control of NBC Universal to favor its most valuable customers: the 23 million who rely on it for cable TV service and the 17 million who pay for Internet connections.

But the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission imposed conditions that prevent Comcast from keeping to itself NBC Universal's popular shows such as "The Office" and movies including "Despicable Me" for the next several years.

NBC's "30 Rock" on Thursday night spoofed Comcast's impending takeover from General Electric Co. As a clock bell sounded, a neon "GE" atop an office building fizzled out and was replaced by a "K" inside a swoosh resembling Comcast's logo.

"Wow, out with GE, in with Kabletown," said Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon. "Seems like one of us should sing 'The Circle Game' right now."

Conditions imposed on Comcast were serious, though.

Regulators forced Comcast to make the full suite of NBC Universal content available as a single package to online competitors on terms comparable to those reached with more established rivals such as Dish Network Corp. and DirecTV.

NBC Universal is also expected to match new deals for smaller chunks of programming between other media firms and online video providers if it has comparable programming on hand. As an example, NBC Universal might have to make the Bravo channel's "The Real Housewives of New York City" available to Netflix Inc. if Viacom Inc. cuts a similar deal for MTV's "Jersey Shore."

The company also had to give up the decision-making power associated with its 32 percent share of Hulu, the online video service it co-owns with The Walt Disney Co., News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. Hulu is one of the services that makes viewing "30 Rock" possible online.

The rules highlight the new battleground for entertainment in the home between traditional power players such as Comcast, which has lost subscribers in the economic downturn, and companies such as Netflix, which added them with its cheap service and compatibility with a range of devices. Netflix ended the year with 20 million customers after adding 3.1 million during the fourth quarter, by far the most during any three-month period since its service launched in 1999.

In the deal, Comcast paid General Electric just under $6.2 billion in cash and contributed its pay TV channels such as E! Entertainment Television and The Golf Channel, worth $7.25 billion, to NBC Universal.

GE's stake in NBC Universal fell to 49 percent from 80 percent, but GE plans to diminish that to zero by being paid out from the venture over about seven years. Earlier this week, GE bought out the 20 percent stake held by France's Vivendi SA for $5.8 billion in order to complete the deal.

As part of Comcast's takeover, NBC Universal changed its corporate logo to NBCUniversal — without the space, the peacock or the globe silhouette. Officially, the company's name is still NBC Universal, but the space-less design is meant to represent the unity of its two main divisions.

Ahead of a town hall meeting with their new corporate bosses on Thursday, some 25,000 NBC Universal employees each received a certificate for 25 Comcast shares, worth $22.84 each on Friday; a family pass to one of the Universal theme parks; and other materials, including a "Big Idea Book" in which they were to record their own.

Expo Notes: Aquafadas digital comics authoring tool coming soon (Macworld)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 04:30 PM PST

Jackie Dove Jackie Dove – Sat Jan 29, 7:30 pm ET

Aquafadas, the developers of BannerZest and PulpMotion, has announced that it will soon release Comic Composer, the application used by its AveComics Productions to create digital comics. This authoring tool will be available for authors and publishers of digital strips.

With Comic Composer, you can create digital comics for a variety of platforms, including the iPhone, iPad, the Web, and other smart phones. The software facilitates creation of animated paths, various pan, zoom, and transition effects, and lets you isolate parts of a page to create animations and transitions between them.

Comic Composer supports rectangular and polygonal cut-outs, giving you a full preview of the animations being created. You have a choice of export formats: You can use the company's Ave format, an advanced digital publishing format that supports video, sound, and localization. You can also distribute your creation on the AveComics platform. When you're finished with your comic, you can export an animated version to facebook or to your blog.

The new program, which is an Adobe Air app, will be released in March and is compatible with with Mac OS X 10.4 or higher. The price has yet to be determined.

AveComics has a catalog of approximately 1000 graphic novels, comics, and mangas.

Expo Notes: How developers on the floor feel about the Mac App Store (Macworld)

Posted: 29 Jan 2011 03:48 PM PST

Lex Friedman, David Chartier Lex Friedman, David Chartier – Sat Jan 29, 6:48 pm ET

The Mac App Store may already feel like an old friend, but in fact, it's only been around a scant three weeks. That's still enough time for various Mac software developers around the Macworld 2011 conference floor to form some firm opinions about the store and its impact on their business.

Developers already in the Mac App Store

Folks whose apps are already in the store sound quite pleased. The Mac App Store is another form of advertising, said Greg Scown, co-founder of Smile. Smile's PDFpen, PDFpenPro, and DiscLabel are all available in the store. Of course, Smile's flagship TextExpander hasn't yet made its way into the store—though not for lack of trying. Scown noted that the app is "in review" with the App Store's moderators, and that Smile has gone "a few rounds" thus far, trying to get the app approved. Scown said that he has every reason to believe that, eventually, TextExpander will too appear in the Mac App Store. On the whole, Smile's feelings on the store are easy to sum up: "We're thrilled," he said.

Jim Teece of Envision, makers of Art Authority for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, is really happy to be in the Mac App Store, calling it "absolutely brilliant." He told Macworld that Envision has sold more copies of Art Authority through the Mac App Store in several weeks than in the past year. His booth on the floor has been steadily busy for the whole show, and he's sent every interested customer straight to the Mac App Store, not even bothering to mention the company's Website.

We also spoke with Christoph Teschner, software architect at Algoriddim, which makes Djay for the Mac and iPad. Though he wouldn't talk Mac App Store numbers or even a comparison to pre-store sales, he said Algoriddim is really happy to be in the store.

Those who aren̢۪t in the store yet

Other developers on the show floor aren't in the Mac App Store at all yet, though they want to be. BusyMac's BusyCal isn't in the store, but should be there by next month, according to co-founder John Chaffee. In fact, he said that the version of BusyCal being demoed on the show floor actually was the Mac App Store build, which just hasn't been submitted to Apple for review.

e3 Software said that it would love for Direct Mail to appear on the Mac App Store, but that the software's been in review since mid-November 2010. Developer frustrations about slow, silent review periods seem to have been ported over directly from the iOS App Store.

Nuance Senior Vice President and General Manager, Peter S. Mahoney, said that he'd love to see Dragon Dictate (née MacSpeech Dictate) in the Mac App Store—especially considering how well the Dragon Dictation app has performed on the iOS App Store—but the company can't submit the app "as we know it today." That's because the app uses private APIs, which Apple doesn't allow for Mac App Store apps. Mahoney acknowledged that the store is an important tool for reaching a certain sector of Apple consumers, who will now only buy software if they can find it on the Mac App Store.

Paul Kafasis, CEO of Rogue Amoeba, said that his company faces a similar challenge. Because most of the company's commercial software requires either root access, private APIs, or both, Apple won't allow them in the Mac App Store. Rogue Amoeba would thus need to create what Kafasis called "neutered" versions of its apps—limited in feature set—to get allowed into the store.

Bottom line

So, three weeks in, it seems that the developers whose apps are well-suited to the Mac App Store are either thrilled to be there or eager to get there. For developers whose apps for whatever reason can̢۪t get into the store, there̢۪s definitely some unhappiness about a missed opportunity.
at 9:17 PM

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