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The chief executive of Amazon.com says his company's handling of last week's George Orwell e-book recall was 'stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles'.

According to an exclusive AppleInsider report, Apple’s chief executive is said to have cemented the sought-after Apple tablet in the company’s 2010 roadmap with a first quarter launch. The 10-inch touch-based device carries Jobs’ personal seal of approval and touts the App Store machine. Most Apple sites are describing the gizmo as an oversized iPod touch priced between [...]

Condobolin sends in an update to the Australian government's ongoing efforts to implement ISP-level filtering. One of the hurdles they had to overcome was to build a system that would allow them to filter content without impairing other internet usage. A trial of the system has just concluded, and the results are positive — at least, for the government. Quoting: 'More than half of the Internet service providers (ISPs) taking part in the Federal Government's ISP filtering trial have reported minimal speed disruptions or technology problems. Of the nine participating ISPs, iPrimus, Netforce, Webshield, Nelson Bay Online and OMNIconnect told ARN they had seen no slowdowns in Internet speeds or problems with the filtering solutions in place. Of the remaining four ISPs, Tech2U and Highway1 were unable to respond by time of publication while Unwired and Optus refused to comment. ... 'From a technical perspective we're more than confident that if the government decided to roll out a man

RIM chief's aggressive style may be just what firm needs, even now

Fuji unveils the FinePix F70EXR, the first model in the long-zoom compact segment with a Fujinon 10x wide angle optical zoom lens.

levicivita writes 'From the down-but-not-out NYT comes an article (warning: login may be required) about user backlash against Kindle's embedded DRM: 'Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's '1984' were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices. Though copies of the books were sold by a bookseller that did not have legal rights to the novel, Mr. Bezos wrote on a company forum that Amazon's ''solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.'' Bezos's post is here.' of this story at Slashdot.

Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, scientists describe how to convert a camera-enabled cell phone into a fluorescent microscope capable of detecting and counting tuberculosis bacteria in a saliva sample. Bioengineer Daniel Fletcher discusses the technology's potential.

. Operator hints it could challenge O2's exclusive deal with Apple. Growth in emerging markets offsets slide in European revenuesVodafone has added to speculation that O2's exclusive deal to supply the iphone in the UK may soon be up for grabs by suggesting that it would like to offer Apple's smartphone to more of its own customers.Andy Halford, chief financial officer of the world's largest mobile phone operator, told reporters this morning that Vodafone was keen to supply the iPhone across more of its empire. It currently sells the device in 11 countries but not in the key European markets of Germany, where it is stocked exclusively by T-Mobile, or the UK.'It's a good product and we would love to have it in the portfolio in more countries,' said Halford, speaking after Vodafone published first-quarter results that showed the continuing impact of the recession and intense competition in its core European markets.There has been intense speculation in recent weeks that T-Mobile, Orange

BuzzSkyline writes 'It's possible to produce energy by simply mixing fresh and salty water. Although chemists and physicists have long known about the untapped energy available where fresh water rivers pour into salty oceans — it's equivalent to 'each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high' — the technology for exploiting the effect has been lacking. An Italian physicist seems to have solved the problem with the experimental demonstration of a 'salination cell' that creates power given nothing more than input sources of salty and fresh water. The reearcher believes that this renewable, environmentally friendly energy source could be deployed in coastal areas and could provide another addition to the green-tech roster. A paper describing the technology is due to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.' of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes 'In the aftermath of microsoft's recent decision to contribute 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community, Christopher Smart of Linux Magazine talked to Linus Torvalds and asked if the code was something he would be happy to include, even though it's from microsoft. 'Oh, I'm a big believer in 'technology over politics.' I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing etc. issues,' says Torvalds. 'I may make jokes about microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.' Smart asked Torvalds if Microsoft was contributing the code to benefit the Linux community or Microsoft. 'I agree that it's driven by selfish reasons, but that's how all open source code gets written! We all 'scratch our ow