Damon Brown

Apple StorePeople in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones or, evidently, have other people come to visit. According to CBS New York, an 83-year-old woman has sued Apple because she accidently ran into one of its glass store doors. The total amount is one million, but I suspect she’ll be paying more in public ridicule than any amount Apple could provide.

Broken Nose, Bruised Ego

Evelyn Paswall from Queens says she broke her nose on the door of the Long Island Apple Store. The Apple Stores have a famously post-modern design, with walls and floors made of a glass-like material.

Rob Reid, co-founder of Listen.com, the company that started music service Rhapsody, delivered one of the most popular talks at the TED conference I attended recently. Launched in the late ‘90s, Rhapsody, along with Napster and other services, revolutionized the music industry. At TED, Reid explained something he called Copyright Math, a way of explaining the sometimes inexplicable numbers cited by both the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America as arguments against piracy.

TED.com finally put the five-minute talk online late this morning and it already has more than 40,000 views. It received one of the few standing ovations at TED.

Three million Flip users cast aside when Cisco shut down its handycam division last year will get a helping hand from Givit, a private video sharing service that will provide support for FlipShare, the exclusive Flip camera sharing network.

Givit will connect into FlipShare, and eventually take over the soon-to-be-defunct FlipShare service next year.

Not to be overshadowed by Spotify and Turntable.FM, music streaming service Rdio has gotten a serious user interface overhaul. The update, available now, has easier music sharing, smoother music discovery, and is more interactive.

New and Improved

Tablet owners are disappointed in the Web surfing aspects of their devices because sites aren’t opening as fast as they expect them to, according to a study from Compuware APM, a Web optimization company.

The study, conducted by Equation Research and commissioned by Compuware APM, is based on interviews with 2,033 people from Jan. 5 to 16. It focused on people who owned a tablet and had used it to surf the Internet over the past six months. Compuware ARM says the results of the survey, which was conducted worldwide, can safely be projected onto the rest of the world with 95 percent accuracy.

The Justice Department has thrown a wet blanket on Apple’s iPad announcement week, warning Apple and the five biggest publishers that it will sue them for e-book pricing collusion. The threat has been on the horizon for months, but today’s news was the first formal statement from the government.

What Apple Did

Apple’s e-book controversy began in late 2009, when it finalized plans for the upcoming iBookstore. Here's how it unfolded:

The new iPad includes a higher-resolution display, 4G LTE capabilities and a bunch of expected features but Apple’s latest device comes up short in the excitement department.

The iPad hit many of the expected targets: a high-resolution retina display at 2048 x 1536; an A5 quad-core graphics processor; a higher-resolution camera equal to the iPhone 4S; and a fast LTE wireless connection through AT&T and Verizon. However, there wasn’t that “One more thing…” note at the end of the presentation that makes the new device absolutely necessary.

The now infamous flying robots got a ton of attention from their appearance at the exclusiveTED conference last week, but there was even more impressive technology shown there. Here is some of the best:

Cockroaches Show How Our Brain Works

Discussion of cockroach brainpower with Greg Gage, Photo: Ryan LashBy day, TED Fellow Greg Gage is a school teacher in Santiago, Chile. By night, he experiments with brains. Cockroach brains. In fact, he uses roach experiments to get his students interested in neurology and brain chemistry.

Apple has acquired Chomp, which is a two-year-old start-up whose main product is an in-depth app store search for both the Apple App Store and the Android Market.

Chomp helps users search for and discover new apps not only by name, but also by topic and by app function. For example, you can type in "puzzle games" or "chat apps" to discover apps you may not have previously known about.

The real question about the new Internet "Bill of Rights" from the White House is how exactly will these rights be enforced and interpreted?

The President’s effort is commendable and timely. Google and Apple privacy ethics have been making waves recently, most notably Apple apps uploading user’s address books and Google sneaking tracking software in Apple’s Safari browser, both without consent.

Google’s augmented reality glasses are said to look a lot like the Thump MP3 player glasses from Oakley.

If bad cell phone etiquette annoys you, then Google goggles might just put you over the edge. Within the blink of eye, tilt of the head, a wireless connection to the Internet, and a pair of Google Android-based goggles your know-it-all friend is guaranteed to drive you crazy with random facts over coffee or movie trivia (compliments of IMDB) at the Cineplex.

Microsoft now denies it will release Microsoft Office for the Apple iPad, despite a recent screenshot and report from The Daily.

A Microsoft spokesperson told the New York Times: "The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation. We have no further comment." She added that an image with The Daily's article depicting an Office product for iPad was "… not Microsoft's software," she said.