Neil Mix

Apple says: we haven’t rejected it. AT&T says: we had no say in it. Google says: [redacted].

What? Are you kidding me? This, my friends, is what the old folks call smoke and mirrors. Google needs to speak up quickly and explain that redaction.

Here’s the problem: let’s say, hypothetically, that the FCC takes action based on these letters. We the public wouldn’t know all pertinent facts that resulted in such action. We would have no way to critique their judgement. But it’s our FCC. We own it, we have a right to know.

This whole thing stinks, badly. Big companies fighting big games over consumer territory. That’s bad enough, but now one of the parties would have the federal government as leverage in their favor. And they want to do it behind a veil of secrecy. Not good.

The FCC needs to stay away and let this sort itself out in the marketplace. And Google needs to speak up.

UPDATE: Google has since un-redacted the missing pages. Props to them for doing the right thing.

I’ve been published! A while back I wrote a chapter for the Apress book iPhone Cool Projects, and it’s “on the shelves” NOW. The chapter is about, of course, streaming audio on the iPhone. It’s a pretty neat book that consists of a chapter each for seven notable iPhone apps. The authors are a wicked smart crew, I’m not really sure how I got included. Check out the book!

The authoring process was interesting and fun, a great learning process, and more work than I expected. Every day I gain more respect for people who do a lot of writing, blogging or booking. Where do they find the time? And how the heck do they generate well-structured prose so quickly? It ain’t easy, believe me.

Anyway, if you’ve bought the book already, thanks! And if you buy it in the future, thanks! Hope it’s a good read for you.