It works by auto transmitting your phone’s location in the same way the iPhone currently does for the Maps application–by using the location of local cell phone tower or Wi-Fi signal. In this case, the catch is that the service employs Twitter to send the status updates, meaning you and a few other folks can monitor the signal privately, and check the location right on Google Maps.

Erica Sadun over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has come up with a useful mobile application/hack for the
iPhone. It’s called FindMe, and just like the name suggests, it’s a location-based service that helps you find your stolen or misplaced handset, and potentially whomever is in possession of it.

Another thing to note is that the installation is not for the faint of heart. You’ll need a jailbroken iPhone, minor knowledge of shell scripting, and some comfort with editing a few lines of code. You can find full instructions over at TUAW.

TweetPsych analyzes your old Twitter messages to figure out what's going on inside that head of yours.

The service works with any Twitter account, meaning you can use it on anyone else you know. As mentioned earlier, it only pulls from the last 1,000 or so tweets you’ve made, so the results will not be nearly as detailed if you’re a new Twitter user.

We’ve covered several utilities that have found fun and creative ways to analyze Twitter messages, but TweetPsych takes the cake. This one looks at your past 1,000 Twitter posts and gives you a “psychological” profile, including how much you talk about yourself, work, money, and “negative emotions.”

In other words, it’s a great way to reinforce the fact that you’re probably using Twitter for self-promotion, and/or as a way to kvetch. At least that was its analysis of my tweets.

(Credit:
CNET)

In an introductory blog post about the tool, creator Dan Zarrella says the it works by cross-referencing the words and phrases you use in your tweets to two different dictionaries that are sorted into various psychological profiles. It then scores you in each category based on the results of other TweetPsych users. This makes it less about psychology and more about your personal lexicon, but the results are still quite fun.

“YouTube has been blocked in China,” Google said in a statement. “We don’t know the reason for the blockage, and we’re working to restore access to our users in China.”

A year ago, China blocked YouTube in an apparent attempt to prevent the outside world from anti-government protesters clashing with police inside Tibet. China eventually unblocked YouTube.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the government began blocking the site slowly over the past 24 hours. Quoting a Google spokesman, the Journal reported that the company has not been given a reason for the ban.

The Chinese government has apparently moved to block YouTube once again.

A Chinese official was asked about the ban during a press conference on Tuesday and said the “Chinese government has taken up management of the network according to the laws,” the Journal reported.

In October, a California state appeals court in San Jose threw out a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. The appeals court said a jury should have been allowed to consider the evidence in the case, including a statistical analysis that found that younger Googlers typically received better performance ratings and higher bonuses. Google then appealed that ruling.

Reid, who joined Google in June 2002 as director of operations and director of engineering, helped to create the first firewall, and worked on the AltaVista Internet search engine and the alt.* hierarchy of newsgroups in Usenet.

In his lawsuit, Brian Reid alleges he was told he was not a “cultural fit” when he was being fired from his job in February 2004. He also claims that his colleagues referred to him as “old man” and “fuddy-duddy.”

The California Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will consider an age discrimination lawsuit filed against Google by a then-54-year-old manager who was fired six months before the company went public in 2004.

Google has declined to comment on the matter but says Reid was let go because the in-house graduate degree program department he had been assigned to was eliminated.

Idio, a cool service that takes your musical tastes and serves up blog articles about musicians it thinks you might like, has added a handy feature for people who want to actually listen to the artists they’re reading about. Its new built-in music player creates a track list of artists based on what you’re reading about. Prior to this player, the service had little embedded clips you could click to listen to, but the newer iteration is a full player with playlist and button navigation.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Reading about artists in Idio can now be accompanied by music related to what you're reading about. Neat.

In light of this posting, we’re going to go make some dough and rock out tonite. Joe Brown, from Wired, you are invited anytime.

Good, even decent pizza remains my white whale here in SF. And yes, we’ve tried all of them, cheap or fancy; A16, Delfina, Giorgios, Pizzetta 211, blah, blah, blah. All are mediocre to “acceptably pizza” at best.

(Credit: Lars Klove for NY Times)
If you grew up and/or spent much time on the east coast of the US you know that the pizza you get in the tri-state area is one of the greatest foods available on earth. Wired’s Joe Brown makes the joke that the only way to get good pizza here in SF is to jump on a flight to NYC, grab a cab, a pie and some aluminum foil and you are golden.

I buy the water argument to a point–that point is where I bring up Shaka Pizza on Maui. Shaka is owned by a couple of guys from the Jersey Shore and their pizza is damn-near east coast.

One of my pals from NJ is Anthony Mangieri, king of Una Pizza Napoletana on East 12th near 1st ave. I challenge you to find a more delicious pizza anywhere in the US. It’s just not going to happen. And I challenge you to find a more dedicated pizza-man than Anthony. He even taught me and the wife how to make pizza at home with flour he got us from Brooklyn. You can read more about his greatness in the NY Times.

“As you cook, some ingredients vaporize, and these volatilized particles can attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity,” Tisi says. “The next time you use the oven, these bits get caught up in the convection currents and deposited on the food, which adds flavor.” Over time, he says, more particles join the mix and mingle with the savory soot from burned wood or coal — the only fuels worth using — to create a flavor that you can’t grow in a garden: gestalt, if you will.

But what Anthony offers is more of an artisan product, not a typical slice. You would think that you could get a decent slice of east coast pizza in this town (or anywhere in CA) but it just doesn’t seem possible. One theory on the development of a great pizza is the water:

Anthony Mangieri at work at Una Pizza Napoletana.

This after the video game giant, the publisher of the monster-hit Guitar Hero III, issued a scathing response to a lawsuit brought against it by its former partner, iconic guitar manufacturer Gibson.

But usually, one side or the other in these cases has no real argument, and the courts tend to determine that awfully quickly.

To be sure, one would expect language like that from any company in Activision’s position. And one would expect a company in Gibson’s position to file suit. Because that’s how business gets done these days.

“By continuing to sell any version of the Guitar Hero game software and/or instrument controllers for use with the Guitar Hero game software…Activision is taking advantage of Gibson’s patented technology without properly compensating Gibson,” the guitar maker’s attorneys wrote. “Gibson requests that Activision obtain a license under (the patent) or halt sales of any version of Guitar Hero game software.”

According to the video game blog, Kotaku, Gibson filed suit against Activision, claiming that it owned a 9-year-old patent for “technology to simulate a musical performance.”

But as one commenter called VeritasVierge on the Kotaku story put it, “The problem for Gibson is the patent says that the guitar would have strings which the Guitar Hero controllers lack…The idea of recording music and replaying it via a guitar is just to broad an idea to patent.”

(Credit:
Activision)

In a March 11 filing for declaratory relief (Click for PDF), Activision noted that in a January 7, 2008 letter, Gibson attorneys argued that Guitar Hero infringed on Gibson’s patent.

I can almost hear the derisive laughter coming from the executive suite at Activision.

In a press release Thursday, Activision also went public with its assertion that Gibson has nothing on it.

But Activision later decided it didn’t need a license under Gibson’s patent and on March 10 wrote Gibson saying so.

Activision responded harshly Thursday to a patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by guitar maker Gibson.

In this case, it is probably too early to tell what the outcome will be.

“Gibson’s lawsuit is a transparent end run around an impartial court that Activision asked on March 11 to rule on patent assertions that Gibson knows have no merit,” Activision wrote in its release. “As Activision noted in its filing, Gibson waited three years to make its patent allegations, and only did so after it became clear that Activision was not interested in renewing its marketing and support agreement with Gibson. Activision continues to believe that Gibson’s claims are disingenuous and lack any justification.”

AOL also announced a new version of AIM for phones using the Windows Mobile operating system, including the Motorola Q, Samsung BlackJack, and some Palm Treo models. CNET Download.com editor Jessica Dolcourt reviewed the AIM for Windows Mobile phones beta in June.

AOL has upgraded its AIM Express software, an online Flash-based application that replicates many of the features of the regular downloadable software (add your own review here).

The software is an example of the growing utility and sophistication of Web-based applications. Instant messaging, though, is somewhat more amenable to the task: it doesn’t require the heavy processing burden of a spreadsheet, and not being able to work while offline isn’t a big deal given that the whole point of IM is to chat with contacts on the network. Moving applications online poses some compatibility issues with various browsers or with software foundations such as Flash, but it can sidestep myriad other compatibility issues such as operating-system compatibility.

Whatever the proprietary Neanderthals may think, it’s becoming clearer by the day that open source is, or will become, the natural state of software. “Nature” exerted her will yet again with the announcement that Electronic Art’s SimCity has been released as open source under the GPLv3 license. The game was written back in 1983 (actually, before then) and so much of the code is too old to be useful except for research purposes.

It’s like starting over from a familiar core, rebuilding the game into entirely new possibilities. On days like this I wish that I could code….

But there’s a lot of value in that, as Bill Simser notes:

There’s still a lot of craptastic code in there, but the heart of the software (the simulator) hasn’t changed. I know there will be efforts underway to port it to a better platform, replace the age old graphics with new ones, rewrite the graphic routines with modern-day counterparts, etc. The modern challenge for game programming is to deconstruct games like SimCity into reusable components for making other games! The code hopefully serves as a good example of how to use SWIG to integrate C++ classes into Python and Cairo, in a portable cross platform way that works on Linux and Windows.

“Our users spend hours updating and making changes to their profiles, uploading content, and building friend relationships,” a post on the MySpace developer blog explained. “With your help that data can now be available to MySpace users no matter where they go on the Internet.”

Data Availability’s formal launch partners are Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and News Corp.’s Photobucket, but with the release of the API, any third-party site can have access to it. Authentication is handled through the OAUTH open standard, and controls have been configured so that a high level of coding expertise is not required.

But MySpace’s project isn’t the only one of its kind: rival Facebook has extended its existing API to encompass data portability in the form of “Facebook Connect,” and Google has a new project called Friend Connect designed to bring social credentials to otherwise non-social Web sites.

MySpace's Data Availability logo.