Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google?

Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $US1mm each, plus a commitment from Microsoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic.

Given the increasing power that Google wields, it’s an interesting thought. But that upfront bill that wouldn’t get past Microsoft’s stock holders, let alone the US government’s anti-competition watchdogs. Nice pot-stirring though, Mark. [Mark Cuban via The Register]

“Hack Days” are intended to celebrate creativity as developers race to create Web apps in less than 24 hours. And past events have had performances from Beck and Girl Talk. But hiring go-go dancers isn’t exactly going to attract more women to the male-dominated industry.

It’s not much worse than some of the booth babe demonstrations I’ve seen, though. And don’t tell anyone, but I’m a fan of those gals. [Yahoo Developer Blog via Simonwillison.net]

Sorry
I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologise to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

English musician, Keith Richards, was spotted wearing some post-industrial ornamentation in and around the region where a douchier man might stick a Bluetooth earpiece. There’s just no way that’s what this is. If you look closely, you can see right through it. But it got me to thinking: Not only would Keef not have a Bluetooth earpiece, he probably doesn’t even have a phone. When you’re that awesome, people just take calls for you. [BluetoothDouchebag.com via CrunchGear]

People cruising through Yahoo on Firefox are being told to “Get the New Safer IE8″. Rather than naively assuming this to be the result of some kind of actual testing, TechCrunch points out that it could be part of Yahoo’s new coziness with Microsoft. The kicker: Last year, when a Yahoo under different management had a severe Microsoft allergy, it told IE users to switch to Firefox. [TechCrunch]

Kodak called its first Flip-class camera the Zi6, begging the question: Where are Zis 1 through 5? Now that it is being ripped for calling the follow-up Zi8 (hello, 7 shoulda been next), it is petitioning the world for help naming its products. If only other companies did this. Ever try to memorise Canon’s camcorder line? Or JVC’s for that matter? And what about Sony, who called its very first Walkman the TPS-L2 because “chicks dig alphanumerics”? [BBGadgets]

Gene Munster, the analyst known exclusively for Apple banter, says a new improved Apple TV is on its way, one that has an iTunes TV subscription service of $US30 to $US40 per month that lets the user see all the shows in the library. Quite possibly, this new device would receive a TV signal (perhaps through CableCard) and have DVR capability too. That first part is possible enough, but that latter half, the more interesting half, seems totally unlikely. DVR means a new UI and reliance on cable companies or OTA antennas, and I just
don’t see it. Certainly not in the middle of tablet fever.
But hey, I’m not an “analyst”. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Today, students were scheduled to gather in NYC to protest Nokia’s involvement in Iran’s cellular infrastructure, something that has apparently been the subject of a bunch of noise in Washington too. As others have pointed out, all governments require some form of tracking and wiretap access to wireless networks, and Nokia-Siemens is one of only a few companies in the world who build this gear. So yes, as problematic as it is that oppressive regimes (and even not so oppressive ones) snoop on their populace, Nokia’s role here seems to be the
same as a car company’s role in a drunk-driving
incident. [MobileCrunch and TG Daily]

Well, push describes a lot of things. Push is simply an action. Versus, say, pulling. Maybe that’s horribly abstract, so try this: If information shows up on your phone or neural implant or messaging program without you (or your wares) asking for it—that’s push. The info is pushed to you, versus you pulling it from the source. There are tons of ways push can be (and is) used.

Email’s a pretty good starting point for grasping the difference between push and the other stuff. You probably know good ol’ POP3—you log into your mail server and pull down new messages. Maybe it’s on a frequent schedule, so it feels automatic, even instant, but you’re still reaching out to the mail server every time to check and see if there’s new mail to download.

IMAP is a little fancier than POP, where all of your folders and email are the same on all of your computers, phones and other gadgets, and any change you make on one shows up on the other, since it’s all happening on a remote server somewhere. But with the standard setup, it’s still the same deal—your mail program has to log in, see what’s new, and pull it down. IMAP does have a pretty neat trick though, an optional feature called IMAP IDLE, that does push pretty well—it’s what the Palm Pre uses for Gmail, for instance. Essentially, with IMAP IDLE, the mail server can tell whatever mail app that you’ve got new messages waiting, without you (or your app) hammering the refresh button over and over. When the app knows there’s new messages, it connects and pulls them down, so it gives you just about the speed of push, without matching the precise mechanism.

While different systems do things differently (obvs), what true push services have in common is that they generally insert a middleman between you and the information source.

RIM’s setup for the BlackBerry is probably the most sophisticated. When your BlackBerry registers with the carrier (which has to support BlackBerry), the details are handed to RIM’s network operating centre, so the NOC knows where to send your mail. The NOC watches your mail server, keeps tabs on the phone’s location, and pushes email through to your phone whenever you get new stuff.

What makes it push is that your phone’s not actually polling a server for new messages to pull—it only receives them when they hit your inbox, and are then pushed to your phone by RIM’s servers. This means you save a lot of battery life that’d be wasted by making the phone constantly hit the servers for updates. The flipside is that when RIM’s servers blow up, you don’t get email, since it’s all routed through their system—hence the other panic that grips dudes in suits once every few months lately.

The other biggie is Microsoft, who has Direct Push, part of Exchange’s ActiveSync. It’s architected a little bit differently, so it doesn’t need the precise kind of data about where your phone is that RIM’s NOCs do: The phone or whatever you’ve got sends an HTTPS with a long lifespan to the Exchange server—if new mail arrives before it dies, the Exchange tells your device there’s new stuff, so it should start a sync. After it syncs, the device sends out another long HTTPS request, starting it all over again.

Apple’s weak-sauce substitute for multitasking works pretty similarly: The developer has something its wants to send an iPhone, when its application isn’t actually running, like an IM. It sends the notification to Apple’s push servers, which send the notification to the phone through a “persistent IP connection” the phone maintains with the servers. This connection, which is only maintained when push notifications are turned on, is needed to locate the phone, but still doesn’t draw as much power as constantly pinging the mail server.

Of course, those aren’t the only push systems around, and it’s only getting more and more important as stuff gets shifted to the cloud. We haven’t mentioned Android and Google Chrome, but both utilise push (or will) in different ways. Suffice it to say, Google Sync will soon be a major player in this game. But basically, all kinds of different data can be pushed—calendars, browser data, hell, even IM is a kind of push—and they all work more or less the same broad way.

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about pushing, shoving and pancake massacres to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

In an effort to scoop up some of those people who are tethered to their current webmail services by nothing except the sheer inconvenience of switching, Google has implemented easy migration tools for straggling Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL users. The service does their current POP3 import feature one better, grabbing contacts as well. The feature should roll out to everyone within a few days. [Gmail Blog]

Barnes broke up with her boyfriend in 2004, and in a fit of total jackassery, he not only created fake profiles of her but used them in chat rooms to tell creepy dudes to check them out. These profiles contained “some kind of open sexual solicitation,” and said creepy dudes soon started “peppering [Barnes'] office with e-mails, phone calls, and personal visits, all in the expectation of sex.” As Ars notes, it’s basically the modern equivalent of scrawling a phone number on a bathroom wall, only with a lot more initiative.

Because the profiles were fake, Barnes took the appropriate measures to have them officially removed from Yahoo!, by sending in her proper ID and explaining the situation. Yahoo! agreed, and promised to take the profiles down, and then…didn’t. Even after a Yahoo! rep personally assured her the profiles would be removed, no action was taken. So Barnes sued Yahoo!.

Publishers like Yahoo! (and Craigslist, and Facebook) have immunity from being prosecuted for the actions of its users, so they were ruled not guilty. But due to the media attention brought by the lawsuit, Yahoo! finally got off their arse and remedied the situation like they should have months earlier. The judge was particularly sympathetic to Barnes, advising her that she could refile the suit as a sort of “breach of contract” suit, alleging that when Yahoo! agreed to remove the offending material, they became contractually obligated to do so.

We personally agree with the judge’s decision; had he held Yahoo! responsible, it’s an awfully slippery slope. But sites like Yahoo! do have an obligation to their customers to take complaints like these more seriously. [Ars Technica, Court Decision (PDF)]

Or you could just be a Gizmodo editor: [Jeremy Johnstone/Flickr via Valleywag]

Yahoo Japan plans to install billboards equipped with cameras and facial analysis technology that identifies each person’s characteristics, such as age and sex. In addition to specially-targeted ads, they’re programmed to display content like news and weather. I wonder if in the future these things can detect other product preferences from our outward appearances. I just hope they don’t reveal anything embarrassing, like a need for incontinence pads. [Nikkei via Crunch Gear]

The Synergy functionality on the Palm Pre really kick-started this craze back in January, when Palm debuted the system of integrating all your web services into their native UI. This week, at the CTIA phone show in Vegas, it seems like everyone wants a piece of this action. Lets look at some of the contenders.

Yahoo Mobile Apps
Yahoo released a torrent of apps on the public this week, which aim to reinvent how you access their services on a mobile basis. Yahoo’s Mobile Apps and Portals allow you to:
• Look up your Yahoo contacts
• Check statuses of those contacts and look up your own
• Access yahoo mail and messenger
• Sign into your Oneconnect account for social media updates
• Import RSS feeds and Yahoo content modules for news, sports scores, weather and all that crap

All of this comes together in one place so you don’t have to launch 10 different mobile apps to manage this stuff. Good if you’re a heavy user of Yahoo services. This service is available via mobile browser, plus there’s a standalone app for the iPhone and a Yahoo Go app for the other major platforms (WinMo, Blackberry, Symbian, etc…) which gather all the services into a navigable UI.

3deep
3deep was one of the most impressive mobile apps at CTIA. The idea behind it is that you can manage your calendar, contacts, social media and mail all from a single app, with location-aware integration. It’s coming out for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian and Android in the coming weeks, if all goes according to plan. Some of the features include:
• The ability to track location, availablilty and presence—meaning it knows where you’re going, what your doing there, how long you’ll be there and who you want to meet with most
• “Tell Me When” functionality gives you alerts when selected contacts arrive at a specific location, when they’re available to talk/meet, or conversely, will send a shout out when you do the same
• Informatilon on whether it’s best to call, SMS, email or IM a selected contact
• Updates from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc….
• Calendar and mail management. Plus auto-integration from your computer and phone cals
• Open API so any developer can make their service compatible with 3deep

While a live demo wasn’t available, 3deep reiterated this app would be available as a free download sometime in the next couple weeks. This is some serious Stalker 2.0 right here. Facebook has nothing on 3deep.

HTC TouchFlo 3D
HTC’s updated (and upcoming) TouchFlo 3D continues to streamline its design so that it’s easier to get pertinent contact info from a single screen. Now using their new tabbed contact screen, you can quickly get up to speed with your friends, including the ability to:
• Check call, email and SMS history.
• Check updates and activity to social media services (Facebook, Skype, etc…)
• Easily send emails, text messages and place calls from the same screen.
• Check upcoming calendar events for a selected contact (if you have their shared cal)

TouchFlo 3D will be available on the Touch Pro 2 and Touch Diamond 2 when they launch in the second half of 2009.

The emerging trend is making sure you can communicate and collaborate with your contacts through a variety of mediums and services, all through one control panel. For the most part, it’s done with a degree of visual polish. This is good, because if Web 2.0 can’t move to the mobile space gracefully, we’re all in for some headaches.