Hasta La Gadget!

MacHeist, an annual Mac software promotion, is nearing the end of its NanoBundle sale. At the last minute, the bundle just added our favorite Twitter app Tweetie.

Other apps in the MacHeist NanoBundle include Flow, an FTP app, Tales of Monkey Island, a five-episode adventure game, and RipIt, a DVD ripping utility, among others. With the retail prices of the eight apps added together, the collection is worth $280 but will cost you $20 as a bundle. A percentage of your purchase goes toward charity.

The standout app to us, of course, is Tweetie, a hugely popular Twitter app that’s normally priced at $20. What’s more, buying the NanoBundle will ensure you a free upgrade to Tweetie 2, due for launch in the next few months. MacHeist customers will also get access to Tweetie 2 beta next month.

Wired.com last year profiled MacHeist, an annual software sale that helps third-party Mac developers gain exposure. The promotion was originally conceived by software developer John Casasanta (above, left), entrepreneur Phillip Ryu and software developer Scott Meinzer. A team of roughly 30 people help create missions, videos and web puzzles to generate buzz for the software promotion.

Developers participating in the sale have the option to take a percentage of the bundle’s overall sales or to accept a flat payment.

“What MacHeist has accomplished is amazing,” Ambrosia president Andrew Welch told Wired.com in 2009. “They’ve created their own national [shopping] holiday for Mac users … like Black Friday.”

As its name implies, the NanoBundle is a mini sale leading to the bigger MacHeist event, which is scheduled for later this year. The NanoBundle sale ends Wednesday.

NanoBundle Page [MacHeist]

See Also:

• MacHeist’s League of Extraordinary Dropouts Reinvents Software …
• MacHeist Is a Bundle of Joy
• Macworld: MacHeist’s Shareware Sales Soar Once Again
• Slideshow: MacHeist Is a Bundle of Joy

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Austria’s Guger Technologies is billing the device as the world’s first commercial personal brain-machine speller.

The first rule of the iPhone developer program is: You do not talk about the iPhone developer program.

Before you create software for the iPhone, Apple demands that you sign away a laundry list of rights, including the ability to sell rejected apps through other channels, the ability to sue Apple for more than $50, and the ability to reverse-engineer or modify the iPhone or its SDK — and even the right to talk about your agreement with Apple.

The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (.pdf) spells out all these requirements and more. Previously secret, the agreement has been acquired and published with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Monday evening that it gained access to a March 2009 version of the agreement. EFF noticed that NASA had developed an iPhone app, so the cyber-rights foundation then used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the agreement from NASA. The space agency judged that the FOIA trumps the Apple agreement, so they turned the Apple document over to EFF.

The contents of the agreement are hardly surprising, The EFF’s Fred von Lohmann summed up the highlights:

• A ban on public statements, forbidding developers to speak about the agreement.
• Apps made with the iPhone software development kit can only be distributed through the App Store, meaning rejected apps can’t be served through the underground app store Cydia, for instance.
• Apple indemnifies itself against developer liability surpassing $50, meaning if developers get sued, Apple will be liable for no more than $50 in damages.
• No reverse engineering, or enabling others to reverse-engineer, the iPhone SDK.
• No messing with Apple products. That means no apps that enable modifying or hacking Apple products are allowed.
• Apple can “revoke digital certification of any of Your Applications at any time.” No surprise there: Your app can be pulled even if it’s already been approved, which we’ve already seen happen a number of times.

“If Apple’s mobile devices are the future of computing, you can expect that future to be one with more limits on innovation and competition … than the PC era that came before,” von Lohmann wrote. “It’s frustrating to see Apple, the original pioneer in generative computing, putting shackles on the market it (for now) leads.”

Though the agreement may appear one-sided, Apple’s nondisclosure agreement for developers was more strict when the App Store first opened. Apple imposed a nondisclosure agreement in 2008 forbidding developers to discuss developing for iPhone OS 2.0. Developers were turned off by the NDA, because it stifled them from discussing programming tips with one another. Apple later dropped this part of the nondisclosure agreement, saying its purpose was to protect its intellectual property.

iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (.pdf)

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Someone get a 404 sticker up there.

(Credit:
J. Jacir)

Fair warning: reading the title of today’s show should be an easy goal to achieve, but this morning’s 404 podcast preshow had us all so shaken up we skipped the entire intro altogether. Three grown men squealing about creepy crawlers is a pathetic sight to see, but luckily Mark Licea hops into the studio and gently ushers us back into adulthood. And while we’re on the subject of adults, don’t fast-forward through our story about a surprisingly coherent drunk e-mail we received from Molly Wood last night. Got a funny drunk text story? Leave us a voicemail at 1-866-404-CNET and tell us about it!

One week ago, Sarah Killen’s life painted a picture of the typical Twitter user: a couple of mundane posts a day about morning coffee, Oscar commentary, and her love for peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. All that changed last Friday when she became the first person to get “followed” by former “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien. Conan has more than a half million followers but never followed anyone back; so how did the Lovely Button catch his eye? And how many gummy dinosaurs do we have to eat before we get some love?

(Credit:

CC Curiouslee/Flickr)

We’ve all eaten our fair share of trashy food, but swallowing a whole USB key might be a little challenging. Florin Necula got into some trouble with the Secret Service, who suspected him of using card readers to steal money from ATM machines. When confronted about the crimes, Florin had no choice but to consume his Kingston USB flash drive that contained incriminating evidence against him. Even more miraculous is that the feds were able to extract the key from his body, intact and still readable! We have our suggestions for what he should have done with the stick, but maybe we’ll save that for Thursday.

Plenty of owl-related voice mails as well as a quick discussion on the future of 3D in the home on today’s episode of CNET’s The 404 Podcast. Thanks for listening!

EPISODE 533

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast