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You may remember that Mark Webbink, former general counsel at Red Hat, is retiring at the end of this month. In order to maintain his level of mischief and fun, he has kicked off a new blog. I was worried about missing out on Mark's sense of humor and insight to the industry, but it looks like I worried in vain.

Already he has confirmed and extended my suspicions that IBM is desperately trying to hem in Red Hat (on both the application server side with Novell (bonne chance!) and the operating system side with Sun). He's also … Read more

I was fortunate to keynote this year's Ubuntu Live conference. I rarely give the same presentation twice, as I figure people are paying to hear something new. In UL's case, I spent a long time thinking through lessons I've learned from my time with Novell/SUSE and my interactions with Red Hat, and tried to come up with ways that Ubuntu could be successful yet leverage what makes it different.

In many ways, I find myself agreeing with Stephen O'Grady's Ubuntu Live keynote. Not surprising, since I think highly of Stephen. Stephen suggests that community defines the Ubuntu experience, and should be one of its primary differentiators:

To take the pebble, then, Ubuntu needs to reframe the debate. To do that, it must turn the conversation from basic operating system shootouts to the operating experience. A conversation that, in my opinion, favors Ubuntu.… Read more

I received a sad piece of news today in my email: Mark Webbink is retiring from Red Hat, effective at the end of August. (I post this news with his permission.) Mark was Red Hat's first general counsel (starting back in 2000), and lent fire, intelligence, and a sense of humor to the company both publicly and privately.

He will be missed.

Mark is leaving on his own terms, and very amicably. (I was at Red Hat last week, and there is clearly no ill will between him and the company - quite the opposite.) In fact, he'll continue to represent Red Hat as special counsel on a range of matters. (Perhaps when apt historical references are required, he'll be the 'go to' guy. :-)… Read more

If indie cinema hero Wes Anderson--of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums fame--directed a quirky courtroom drama, there's a chance that it might bear some resemblance to what could unfold at Wednesday's impending showdown between social-networking sites Facebook and ConnectU.

The backstory of the legal squabble, after all, in which the three founders of college-centric start-up ConnectU have accused Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code, reads like classic Anderson.

It's a melange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from … Read more

Canon will release new firmware for its high-end EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR by the end of the month, including a fix to an autofocus problem, but a prominent camera tester said the update didn't fix the problems he's been having.

The new firmware improves images viewed on the 3-inch LCD by applying a stronger sharpness setting; corrects a "rare" problem in which a selection dial wouldn't respond; fixes Italian and Chinese menu errors; and most prominently, "improves the consistency" of autofocus in some conditions.

Specifically, version 1.0.9 of the firmware &… Read more

It turns out that BMW is not the only automaker to have toyed with the idea of retractable car doors. Thanks to this video evidence, we now know that Lincoln sponsored an even more elaborate car door mechanism in the 1990s. The mule for the concept was a 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII, from which the B-pillar was removed. Instead of a front-hinged door, the coupe features a retractable panel (complete with an electric window) that slides underneath the car body to allow access. The whole process takes less than 5 seconds from start to finish.

According to auction specialist Ron Susser, &… Read more

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is suing an antipiracy CD software company claiming that the technology provided was flawed. In November 2005, researcher Mark Russinovich discovered hidden files left behind on computers when certain Sony copy-protected CDs were played. The subsequent consumer complaints and government investigations, says Sony, cost the entertainment company millions of dollars in losses.

Now Sony BMG has filed a complaint against The Amergence Group, formerly SunnComm International, a company that produced the piracy-protection system known as MediaMax CD. According to the Associated Press, Sony BMG is seeking $12 million in damages for unfair business practices and for … Read more

Digital Music News posted a short piece yesterday on a forthcoming venture called RCRD LBL.

First reported by the New York Post, RCRD LBL is a planned venture by Engadget founder Peter Rojas and Downtown Records founder Peter Deutsch. High-quality brands, both. The idea is simple: users will get exclusive music for free, and the company (and artists) will earn money by selling advertisements and sponsorships. Rumored artists include Radiohead singer Thom Yorke; Gnarls Barkely, the creators of 2006's catchiest single Gnarls Barkley; and DJ Mark Ronson, who's perhaps best known for his cover versions of popular songs, … Read more

Hundreds of Web developers, designers, and ordinary geeks gathered this weekend to build usable applications for Apple's iPhone. The barcamp.org event was hosted at Adobe Town Hall and featured dozens of sponsors. The hack-a-thon began on Saturday morning, and wrapped up late Sunday afternoon when each team had a chance to present its app.

Some teams included a group of Yahoo! developers, and others included complete strangers who had just met the day before. I give credit to all teams who participated, but here are the 10 most memorable creations:

10. iPhoneVote This application was the first one presented at the hack-a-thon, and it was used as a voting system for the event. You would tilt your iPhone in portrait mode to vote yay, and tilt it horizontally to give a negative vote. There was a laptop set up in the front of the room, and it was updated in real time. Unfortunately, I don't think the app reset each time a new team would present, so the votes just tallied up into the 80s. Even though it wasn't used for its official purpose, it was a great burst of hope for future apps like this, and boosted the morale of the developers in the room.

9. AppMarks If you have an iPhone, make AppMarks your Safari home page. The interface models the iPhone front door, but instead, each icon links to a Web app or HTML bookmark. I mentioned AppMarks in this blog post a few days ago. AppMarks is cool, but I want to see more functionality. If the AppMarks people want users to add AppMarks as their home page, they need to always be thinking of new features. There are other products, like Mojits, that are right on their heels.

8. PickleView The only sports application presented was called PickleView. Ryan Christianson from the Walt Disney Internet Group explained that in baseball, a pickle is a play in which a base runner is trapped between bases with fielders tossing the ball back and forth and usually ending with the runner being tagged out. Most will remember it well from the 1990s classic,The Sandlot.

Their iPhone app visualizes a box-score view of your favorite teams’s stats, and then displays a mock Twitter feed of PickleView's friends. I am not sure if that's how this app works, but the developers have a cool concept.… Read more