Props and more props to Ryan & Co. Not only did they manage to post the first-ever iPhone unboxing slide show; not only did they get an exclusive interview with Woz as he waited in line to buy his own (Woz! Waiting! In! Line!); not only did they get great shots of the victorious first customers that even sent Fake Steve into a tizzy. No, beyond all that, they’re even giving away an iPhone to one lucky reader. Nearly 4,000 comments/entries in just two hours. Way to go, dudes. Now, excuse me. I’m off to sob into my Treo.

Given my love of lists and my near-obsessive interest in good, basic word processing software, it was great to see this list of 10 free minimalist word processors from Web Worker Daily. The list, not surprisingly, is heavy on web-based tools like Google Docs and Zoho Writer, though it also mentions a few of my desktop faves, including DarkRoom and Writer. WWD even turned up one I hadn’t tried before, RoughDraft, which is a fairly decent outliner/notebook tool. Unfortunately, they left out one of my all-time favorites: Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS. Which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising; though Microsoft continues to make this chestnut freely available, I seem to be waging a solitary quest to have it added to the pantheon of classic word processors. And, yes, it remains a pale shadow of its late, lamented competitor, WordPerfect 5.1. Now a free version of that would indeed be one for the lists.

Caught a story on NPR the other day about Tuvalu’s ambassador to the UN. Turns out he — and the island nation he represents — are banking everything on stopping global warming. Noble cause, but one that’s not without some self-interest. Given that most of the habitable land on Tuvalu is less than 6 feet above sea level, rising oceans would have a pretty direct impact on the island. So, rather than putting all of their cash into stilts and rubber boots, they’ve sent a delegation to the UN, to plead their case before the world:

“The world has moved from a global threat once called the Cold War, to what now should be considered the Warming War,” [Afelee] Pita told the Security Council. “Our conflict is not with guns and missiles but with weapons from everyday lives — chimney stacks and exhaust pipes.”

No kidding. That’s definitely what it’s all about, Afelee (sorry; couldn’t resist). But what really got me going about the Tuvalu story wasn’t the country’s single-minded focus on climate change. Rather, it was the source of the funds that have enabled it to send a delegation to the UN in the first place: the .TV ccTLD. Turns out that, rather than being just an overpriced TLD designed to lure TV networks, crazed extroverts, transgender activists and domain squatters, .TV is actually a TLD with a mission (along with being an overpriced TLD designed to lure TV networks, crazed extroverts, transgender activists and domain squatters). While other country-level domain registrars are content to hawk their wares for personal enrichment, the Tuvaluans (Tuvalese? Tuvaluers?) have put their windfall to good use. Unfortunately, the cash is running out; apparently, all of the good .TV names have already been snapped up, and the squatters have a lock on the secondary market. So, Pita might be headed home soon. Hopefully, though, someone else will step in to fill his shoes. Maybe Nauru can give it a go — though I suspect that .NR somehow isn’t going to fill the coffers the way .TV did for its neighbor.

Valleywag is one of my guilty pleasures, nestled in my Google Reader stream, in a “Tech News” folder that includes more sober reads like TechCrunch, TechMeme, TechDirt and, well, you get the idea. While I’m not a fan of Gawker Media’s other gossip blogs (though I am devoted to Consumerist and Lifehacker), Valleywag, with its obsessive coverage of all things Calacanis, Brin and Arrington, is endlessly fascinating. And, while I’ve enjoyed Nick Denton’s reign at the helm, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens now that he’s handing the reins to Owen Thomas, late of Business 2.0. I have great hopes for Thomas, based on his history as a contributor to Suck. Though he may not have been one of Suck’s founding fathers, he was there early enough, and if cohort Ana Marie Cox’s influence on the Gawker empire is any indication, Thomas should be just what Dr. Nick ordered.

Thinking of Suck, I can’t help waxing nostalgic. The fact is, as Denton acknowledges, Suck really was “the legendary site that pioneered web snark.” Suck was the ur-blog, without which the entire Gawker ethos wouldn’t exist today. Sure, self-important, media-obsessed columnsists existed before Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman launched Suck in mid-1995. But Suck served it up daily, and took on the early giants of the Net. Back in the day, we’d check Suck first thing in the morning, and keep hitting reload until it was finally updated. When Suck was acquired by Wired in November 1995, I wrote a Suck-style takedown, which Suck then linked back to, taking me down in the process. I deserved it (and so did they). Here’s hoping for more takedowns, snark and self-absorbed arrogance from Thomas and Valleywag.

We’ve had diggs at CR before, but this is definitely a record: Our crash test videos were featured on Consumerist on Friday, and over the weekend, someone dugg the story. (They dugg directly to us, instead of going through Consumerist.) As of now, it’s got close to 3,000 diggs and is up on the front page. Thanks to everyone who dugg this, and props to Ben & co. for putting it up as well. (And so far our CDN server is holding up just fine under the increased load!)

Marc Andreessen has finally started a blog, and I have to say it’s high time. I’m not going to get into a whole exegesis of his writing style or choice of topics, though I may after he’s been at it for more than a week. For now, my main comment, other than Welcome! is that the choice of #eeeeee as the blog’s background color is something that only he and a handful of other folks could get away with. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re way, way too young!)

The Consumer Reports July issue update is live now, and we have some great stuff in there, if I do say so myself. It’s our annual digicam issue, and we’ve added a first-ever piece on DSLR lenses. We also looked at software, including the free stuff that comes with most digicams. Among commercial programs, I was pleased to see that a personal favorite, ACDSee, made the cut. We gave PS Elements “a slight edge,” but called ACDSee a “better value.” To find out more, you’ll have to pay (hey, gotta pay the rent). Speaking of ACDSee, I’m checking out the beta of the next version of the Pro version of the software and, while it’s not bad, I can’t see myself shelling out for it. I don’t shoot all that much RAW, and the basic version covers most of my photo management needs. (All of my comments, along with everything else on this site, is written in my capacity as a private citizen and should not be construed as a review, rating or endorsement by my employer.) Oh, and while I’m talking ACDSee, I just discovered that the software company is public, and has the ticker ASA. Don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but if it is, there’s definitely something cool about a photo software company having a ticker symbol that triggers memories of old film.

And, yes, the title of this post is a way lame pun, but I couldn’t resist.

I’ve stopped grumbling about paying more at the pump. Sure, I don’t like it, and I would rather be spending that money on other things. But I have to agree with Adam at TerraPass, who points out:

1. Gas prices should be higher, not lower.
2. No one is “gouging” consumers.
3. The problem is oil consumption, not oil companies.

This is pretty simple. You can’t simultaneously fight for low gas prices and fight climate change. These are opposing policy objectives.

He’s absolutely right. Time and again, American consumers have shown that the marketplace rules all. People will sacrifice almost anything for lower prices, and they’ll also bail on anything that’s too expensive. The fact that high gas prices haven’t reduced demand or caused a spike in hybrid sales shows that prices just aren’t high enough. If gas has to go to $5 a gallon for people to trade in their SUVs for hybrids or start carpooling, then that’s a price worth paying. I, for one, would be proud to pay a $1 per gallon gas tax if I knew it was going to fund alt-fuel research or, better yet, mass transit. For now, though, I’ll just have to hope that, by enriching the oil companies, I’m also helping to solve the problem we’ve all created.

When I was a kid, Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite scifi writers, right up there with Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. Sure, a lot of his writing was hokey and homespun—he was sort of scifi’s Sinclair Lewis, even if he aspired to be its Hemingway—but his novels and short stories were elegantly crafted and haunting, in a positive, pre-Stephen King sense. And it didn’t hurt that, back in the 60s and 70s, his politics were decidedly left-leaning. Or so it seemed. In recent years, Bradbury has challenged that assumption, first with his hammering of Michael Moore for “stealing” the title of Fahrenheit 451 for his film Fahrenheit 9/11 (guess Ray isn’t familiar with the concept of fair use), and now, for his revisionist take on 451 itself. According to an interview with LA Weekly (via BoingBoing), the book isn’t a warning about the dangers of censorship, as has long been assumed. Bradbury now insists that 451 is actually about television, and how that medium could someday obliterate all interest in books. While I have no doubt that this is at least part of the book’s subtext, I think Bradbury’s being somewhat disingenuous. After all, everyone from Truffaut to Bradbury’s own authorized Web site has treated the book as an anti-censorship parable, and the author never raised a peep (in fact, the listing for the book on Bradbury’s site still refers to it as a “classic novel of censorship and defiance”). And Bradbury, despite his anti-TV claims, has never had any problem cashing checks from producers of small-screen versions of his works (not to mention ghastly big-screen adaptations). So, I’ll take Bradbury’s comments in stride, as the ramblings of a genius in his twilight years, trying to reshape his legacy to suit his own agenda. Of course, if he follows up by saying that The Martian Chronicles isn’t about the conquest of the American west, all bets are off.

When I moved to Hong Kong in 1992, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was still a fresh wound. As the colony prepared to rejoin China, and Britain’s last governor tried, 150 years too late, to bring some small taste of democracy and local rule to the city, Tiananmen was seen by many as a harbinger of things to come. Those in the democracy movement saw it as all the more reason to keep up the fight, while those who had begun cozying up to the incoming rulers saw the massacre as an example of why it was so important to stay on Beijing’s good side. And every year on June 4th, thousands of residents gathered in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims of 1989. Today, though I’ve long since left Hong Kong, June 4th remains an important date for me, and I can’t mark the day without reflecting on how much—and how little—has changed since then. In the intervening years, China has become a major manufacturing power, and one of America’s largest trading partners. While it was almost fashionable for Western magnates and politicians to rail against China in the early 90s (both Bill Clinton and Rupert Murdoch did it), today it’s increasingly rare for anyone in a position of power to levy more than token criticisms against the Middle Kingdom. Inside China, the crackdown that began with Tiananmen continues, though in a much quieter fashion. With the growing wealth of the nation, and a decade-long campaign to appeal to the nationalism of China’s youth, today’s students are more likely to fight for greater access to the latest cellphones than for democracy. Companies like Google and Yahoo, which once held the potential to bring freedom of information to the Chinese masses, have largely given in to the will of the Beijing government and, in some cases, have actually helped the authorities crack down on dissidents. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Beijing has largely left the British system intact. Though the government quickly wiped away Chris Patten’s feeble last-minute attempts at democratic reforms, it has, for the most part, allowed the “one country, two systems” policy to remain in place. Tonight, as on every June 4th since 1990, protesters gathered by candlelight in Victoria Park. This year, the numbers reportedly approached 50,000, up from 44,000 last year (the numbers are still down from the record 82,000 who turned up for the 15th anniversary of the massacre in 2004). The fact that they are still able to mass, unimpeded by the Chinese government, remains a sign of hope. Though the spirit of Tiananmen may have been largely crushed on the mainland by consumerism and nationalist propaganda, something of it survives in Hong Kong. One can only hope that, someday, this spirit will cross the internal border at Lo Wu and reestablish itself on the Mainland.