Apple form factor evolution

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Donationware app MacTracker is great for those times when you need to look back at the history of Apple's products or the stats of one particular machine. If you're interested in more of a visual history, however, this picture from art director and designer Edwin Tofslie should satisfy your cravings for pretty pictures. Tofslie collected images from most of the major design revisions Apple has made to many of their most significant products, including the Mac, Newton, iPod, Xserve and iPhone, as well as their displays, mice and even the AirPort Extreme stations. It's an interesting look back over the evolution of Apple's industrial design that seems to include all the major landmarks.

(Via TUAW.)

Web contracts can’t be changed without notice

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Cory Doctorow:
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a web "contract" -- that is, the ridiculous "terms of service" that you agree to just by looking at a web-page -- can't be changed without notice, something that's standard in most of these "agreements."

This is a rare, overdue moment of sanity from the legal system about web agreements, which are universally abusive and one-sided.

"How hard is it to send out an e-mail letting people know about [any changes]?" she said.

According to the court documents, Douglas signed a contract for service with America Online. The business was then acquired by Talk America, which continued to provide telephone service to AOL's former customers. However, Talk America changed the contract AOL had with its customers and posted those changes on its Web site without notifying the customers first.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Humans Hold Their Own At Poker, For Now

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Score one for humanity. After four grueling sessions of human vs. computer poker, the human players managed to outlast and outwit the bot. It was by no means an easy task, as the computer performed strongly on day one. But, by the second day, the human players seemed to have a pretty good feel for the way the machine played the game, giving them the leg up. Assuming that computer, dubbed Polaris, represents the vanguard of AI poker, it would seem that it'll still going to be a long time before computers can compete at the top level, as they can do in chess. This particular match offered the computer optimal conditions, as it faced an opponent heads up in limit poker; in a no-limit game with a full table of opponents (conditions that would make it even harder to calculate proper strategy), its performance would have likely been significantly worse.

(Via Techdirt.)

Application usage changes in the past week

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About a week ago there were only about 200 of my Facebook friends who were sharing feeds on Google Reader. Today about 900 are, out of about 3,600 total. You know what changed.


This app has already helped me find some great new feeds. It’s interesting to see what you all are reading and sharing through Google Reader.


That app has gotten a lot better in the past week too, so I wonder what the numbers will be a week from now?


By the way, I’ve removed some apps from my Facebook Profile to make my profile even more useful to you.


What makes Facebook more useful than other social networks? The application platform and you have to look no further than the Google Reader Shared Items Application to see why.


UPDATE: hmmm, now I know why Microsoft was rumored to be buying Facebook. Turns out there’s already more than 17,000 employees on Facebook (that’s out of 70,000 employees).


(Via Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger.)