Google announced today that its Data Liberation Front will work to make sure customers can get the data they put into Google’s cloud back out again. That sounds good, I hope they stick to it!

Yesterday Gmail experienced a major outage. I couldn’t get to my mail for over an hour and a half, it was not pretty. Mary found that the Luther Seminary “corporate” Gmail was down as well. Yikes!

Within a few hours Google had posted a very informative mea culpa on their Gmail blog. It was remarkable in its directness (yes, we had a big problem, we apologize) and in its informativeness (here’s what went wrong, here’s what we learned).

I remember trying to convince the technical staff at the libraries, back when I ran that tech shop, that direct communication with our customers (our librarians and even patrons) after failures would be helpful. I was tired of messages that just said things like “catalog server down” and “catalog server back up”. We were depending on these services and I thought our customers deserved to know what had gone wrong and what we learned. It was like pulling teeth to even get such reports distributed on a timely basis internally, something we did eventually accomplish.

It is great to see a company as big as Google putting a priority on communicating with customers. This message was probably too technical for most and not detailed enough for the rest, but it does convey clearly that Google recognized the problem and was working to see it never recurs. That is a reassuring message for those of us depending on Gmail, and a great model for those of us that run mission critical services.

Yesterday Apple released its letter to the FCC answering questions about the app store. Among many claims I consider disingenuous at best (really, you never discuss apps with AT&T?) Apple did let a few facts about the app approval process into the light. Let’s do some math.

There are more than 40 full-time trained reviewers, and at least two different reviewers study each application so that the review process is applied uniformly. … We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week, and roughly 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. In little more than a year, we have reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates.

First of all, if each app is reviewed by two staff that means there are effectively twice as many apps being reviewed. 8500 * 2 / 40 staff / 5 days per week / 8 hours per day = a bit more than 10 apps/hour/staff. Each staff member is trying to review an app every six minutes. Every hour. Every day. That’s got to be a bit mind-numbing, to say the least.

And we know this is only going to get worse. Apple tells us that they are now reviewing 8,500 apps per week, but in the last year they’ve only reviewed 200,000 apps. 8500 * 52 weeks = 442,000 apps, though. This means that earlier in the year there were not as many apps, this hints at quite a strong growth curve, something we know from other reports and just from watching the app store is true. As I’ve said before, Apple just cannot sustain this effort.

I thing Apple will either have to loosen up on the app store or provide other ways to get apps onto devices. Alex and I are considering writing an app to help manage DFL convention registration from iPhones. We will have to waste Apple’s time getting this app approved even though it is unlikely to ever be used by more than a dozen volunteers. This makes little sense. Apple either has to let apps fly or it will be slowly strangling the iPhone. I doubt it will strangle the phone.

As a consultant working out of my home, I am always on the lookout for inexpensive ways to communicate and collaborate with teams. I’ve had a lot of good luck with Adobe ConnectNow for groups of two or three. Today I learned about tinychat, which seems even simpler than ConnectNow, allows more people to participate in a videochat, and still lets me share my screen (or a portion of it). Pretty nifty service for a free cloud app.

I just noticed another Apple iPhone App Store practice that seems insane: their rating system. Apple tries to rate items on a movie-like scale of 4+ (rated G), 9+ (kinda PG), 12+ (sorta PG-13), and 17+ (like R, but worse). Apps with a 17+ rating cannot be downloaded by iTunes accounts owned by anyone younger than 17. Even I, as the parent of one such young iPod owner, can’t give my child permission to download a 17+ item.

So far so good. But here comes the crazy part: Apple had rated RSS readers as 17+! Why? Presumably because they can access web content that is naughty. So now my son cannot, even if I give him permission to download an RSS reader.

What’s crazier? Apple’s own Safari browser on the iPod can access all the same content, but they have given that to my younger-than-17 son. In fact, I’d say a web browser can get to much naughtier content than most news readers.

What’s completely insane? Apple has rated some RSS readers 4+. Others 17+. Others are not rated at all. Every one of these apps does the exact same thing! Why the variety of ratings? You won’t find any explanation from Apple, they don’t explain their ratings.

Just another way Apple is hard at work killing the iPhone!

The FCC is going to try to keep Apple from killing the iPhone. The agency has asked Apple, AT&T, and Google to cooperate in an investigation of why Apple killed Google Voice for the iPhone and pulled Google Voice related apps out of the App Store. As I’ve said before, Apple has put itself into a terrible position by trying to police applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. By being the gatekeeper they have now put themselves into the position of having to be a fair gatekeeper and invited precisely the kind of scrutiny the FCC is now providing. I applaud the FCC to looking into this, Apple has been way too arbitrary in wielding its veto at the App Store.

I love logo, it is such an easy yet powerful language. I was disappointed today to see that N’s teacher was crossing out all the Logo-related assignments in his math homework. What a waste! I wondered how hard it would be to install Logo at a school these days. As I suspected, not hard at all!

There are a number of Logo interpreters written in Java, but my favorite to date is a Logo interpreter written in JavaScript. This should run in just about any modern browser. Joshua Bell, the author of this Logo, also links to Curly Logo written in JavaScript. That one may be more appropriate for kids since it takes the trouble to appear more fun to use. Plenty of Logo without any install. Now I just wish it were being used in N’s school.

Enjoy!

Well, they don’t think they are, but they are. As I’ve complained before, Apple just cannot effectively police iPhone apps. And yet they keep trying. I think their actions this week will be the beginning of the end for Apple policing iPhone apps, either that, or the beginning of the end for the iPhone itself.

Last week Google released Blackberry and Android apps for Google Voice. It felt bad enough that the iPhone was not on the list, but Google at least hinted an iPhone app was coming. This week we learn that Apple has rejected the GV app for the iPhone. Not only that, Apple has rescinded the acceptances of other GV enabling apps in the iPhone app store and kicked at least three apps out of the store.

Apple has to get out of the way of developers. Smaller developers have been complaining for many months about the arbitrary ways that Apple enforces its app store rules. Now major developers like Google are being caught in the net. This is music to the ears of competitors like RIM, Palm, and even Google. Apple must let the app store go free or it will kill its own platform, sending users off to jailbreak their phones. Even political activists are starting to take notice: free my phone!

I ran across a story about a cool iPhone apparatus that makes scanning documents with the iPhone simple. This is a neat idea, the iPhone can make a serviceable scanner in a library or at home, a great alternative to copying costs.

But even better was the service the creator of this apparatus had used to build and sell it. Called Ponoko, it is a website that lets you build almost anything you can imagine. You design it, you price it. Ponoko makes it, ships it, your customer assembles it.

I love sites like Jakprints where I can print almost anything and CafePress where I can design and sell t-shirts and other swag. Now I can come up with a crazy idea for a physical object and have that instantiated in the world. Cool.

David Pogue shares word of a deeply ironic action on the part of Amazon. They’ve quietly deleted copies of purchased books from Kindles across the world, crediting the owners for their purchase. The books were deleted because the publisher decided they didn’t really want those titles sold as ebooks. The books: 1984 and Animal Farm.

This is the trouble with the cloud, you don’t actually have anything, you are just accessing objects that others hold on your behalf. The Kindle is basically a cache for your most recent reading, the rest of which lives at Amazon awaiting your call. Deleting these books is just a simple clearing of the cache, nothing significant from a technical point of view. But it feels significant, doesn’t it? It feels invasive. It feels arbitrary. It will help Kindle owners realize how little control they have.

Episodes disappear overnight at Hulu. Videos come and go at YouTube. We are living in a sand mandala. Enjoy it while you can, it won’t be the same tomorrow.

UPDATE: It appears that the publisher of these ebooks had no rights to the titles. Amazon was right to take them off the store, but I still question taking them off Kindles in the field.