Walt Mossberg, that wrinkly goateed goblin hired by the Wall Street Journal for some reason, is known as the world’s most powerful Apple fanboy, at least to him. The latest Mosspuppet video, featuring Muppet Mossberg, includes a not-so-friendly Gizmodo shout-out.

This is maybe a little insidery for those who don’t read other tech journalism besides Giz (and really, why would you?), but Mossberg is known for playing up his close connection with Steve Jobs for product previews, being vastly inferior to the New York Times‘ David Pogue, and using the word “iPhone” more often than “Pre” in his supposed hands-on article about the Palm Pre. This video is a pretty spot-on skewering, though I’m no doubt swayed by my deep and unabashed love of all things Muppet.

The best part of the video? “I’m Walt Mossberg. Shut up!” Genius. [Fake Steve]

Unfortunately for Palm, Apple has both a new iPhone operating system and new iPhone hardware coming, likely available within a month, that could obviate many of these advantages.

AND

I’d note that the new iPhone to be unveiled next week will have lots of added features that could alter those calculations.

It’s not like everybody didn’t already know that new iPhone hardware was coming soon, but for Mossberg to say it in a review, it’s all but certain. One, he doesn’t just make things up. Two, he has that special relationship with Apple we talked about earlier that lets him get seated at Apple events early, with the VIPs. It’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about. [WSJ Pre Review via Dave Zatz's Observant Twitter - Image Credit]

And our own Palm Pre review

What the…?

Aaaaah, in reply to:

“Ah too much netbook, cell phone and mobile tech news coming! As Jessie Spano said, I’m soooo excited…I’m sooo scared!”

*relief*

[@waltmossberg in reply to @JoannaStern]

In the second part Kamen talks about how the arm’s control systems were developed, simplifying an 18-degrees of freedom movement space so that it could be controlled almost subconsciously by the user.
Part three is where Kamen talks about his not-for profit scheme to get young people interested in science through robots: “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology” (FIRST); “like sports, nobody ever walks around saying ‘I wanna be second’.”

Interesting stuff, as I said, and the Luke arm seems to have a pretty astounding future ahead of it. I can’t help thinking I would have asked a few more direct questions though. Is the arm dexterous enough for it to let a wearer/user use the toilet? When the Luke arm gets to that level of sophistication—and, more importantly, when its developer/users trust it enough to do intimate tasks like that with it—that’s the point at which I reckon the arm will stop being a science-technology showpiece and really make a difference in people’s lives. Over to you in the comments. [Kara.AllthingsD]

His review is behind WSJ’s curtain, so to summarise:

His major gripe with MobileMe is that unlike most Apple products he’s reviewed, it doesn’t “just work.” He cites changes made on computers taking “15 minutes, at best” to sync out to the web interface and iPhones, which is a big no-no for a service touting instant syncing across all of your devices. Other results from his test are equally disappointing:

• Web interface sluggish, and needs to be hard-refreshed to get changes to show up.
• Web-based storage is full of bugs when trying to connect with Windows machines
• Tons of incompatibilities bringing Mac contact groups and calendars into Outlook–things showing up as separate address books and calendars rather than groups or merging into the main calendar.
• Synched contacts loading slowly on iPhone, occasionally loading with no phone numbers and dropping custom ringtones (to play the Rocky theme when Pogue calls?)

In short, MobileMe is still full of substantial bugs and isn’t close to being ready for prime time, if you haven’t been able to tell already. Coming from Mossberg, though, means Apple needs to get serious about fixing this thing. So if you’re on the fence of whether to drop the US$100 on a subscription, it’s probably a good idea to wait a bit.

Here’s the report straight from Walt’s iSight.

[WSJ]

In Mossberg’s own battery tests, he got 4 hours and 27 minutes (short of 5 hours) of talk time, which is three hours less than his test on the original iPhone. Using 3G, he got 5 hours and 49 minutes, which is slightly better than Apple’s own claim. He couldn’t test any apps on his iPhone 3G, but did on his old iPhone—they worked pretty much as advertised. He concludes with pretty much what we’ve all known: it’s slightly more expensive on AT&T due to the higher price plan, but satisfies people who really need that 3G speed. What’s weird is that Mossberg didn’t test the GPS functionality at all, so we’re left wondering how that is. [All Things D]

The study, by Gerard J. Tellis–from the University of Southern California–and Joseph Johnson–from the University of Miami (well, hello there alma mater), points out that the average change in actual stock valuation is US$200 million down (a 5% drop) for bad reviews and US$500 million for good product reviews.

Abstract:
Product quality is probably under-valued by firms because there is little consensus about appropriate measures and methods to research quality. We suggest that published ratings of a product’s quality are a valid source of quality information with important strategic and financial impact. We test this thesis by an event analysis of abnormal returns to stock prices of firms whose new products are evaluated in the Wall Street Journal. Quality has a strong immediate effect on abnormal returns, which is substantially higher than that for other marketing events assessed in prior studies. Moreover, there are some important asymmetries in the effect. We discuss the research, managerial, investing, and policy implications.

When they say policy implications read “send Russian mafia thugs to Walt’s flat.” [SSRN via Business Week]