If you’ve checked the tech blogs lately, they’ve been buzzing about a next generation iphone that came to light after an Apple employee lost the prototype at a bar.  Tech blog, Gizmodo apparently bought the device for $10,000 to take it apart and break the news on it for the sake of a few advertising dollars and a spotlight for a few days on the other tech blogs.

It’s an issue of morality & integrity that I think is unfortunately lost on a lot of our culture.  Apparently Gizmodo is also on the bandwagon of moral degradation too.  But I am curious what would have happened if Gizmodo had just given the device back to Apple instead of knowingly purchase stolen property to exploit?

Now, I have a lot of respect for Apple over their decision to ban porn applications on their app store.  A decision that I think actually embodies the philosophy of Google’s to “not be evil” better than Google has done themselves.  In this they have proven a moral stronghold when they could have easily chosen otherwise.

Bridges torn down instead of built up.

I am not sure what would have actually happened if Gizmodo had just given the device back, but I am sure that bridges would have been been built instead of torn down.  Now you have Cupertino upset over the issue.  Not because their device was leaked, but because of the lack of respect that has been shown them on behalf of the tech blogs in the face of the massive security measures usually taken by Apple to keep things under wraps till a launch date or press conference.

I will admit I am an idealist.  I think a person or company should be respected in regards to information like this.

If the device had been given back, Apple would have taken notice.  I do not think that they would have been left out in the cold either when the device was actually launched.  Apple likes to do things differently which is well-known.  An uncommon company like them would have also probably been uncommonly grateful as well.

Meet the Press.

Gizmodo hasn’t always been the giant tech blog that it is today.  Now it sits in the ranks of TechCrunch, Engadget and Lifehacker with millions of page views every month.  But Gizmodo has made it clear that they are the same caliber of journalists that made us hate printed media, blood-sucking journalists that are out to exploit anyone and anything for the bottom line.  Of course that’s what makes the page views.  That’s what pulls in the advertising dollars.  That’s how you make a name for yourself.  Exploitation.

It’s also why Gizmodo has been deleted from my feedreader as of late as well as other blogs that have done the same thing.

There are a lot of news organizations out there.  There are some really good tech blogs that I still enjoy reading, ones that haven’t “sold out” to get ahead of the game through buying stolen property.  I hope Apple shows grace to you.  I hope forgiveness is a part of their language.  The fact that this was a knowingly unreleased product, any judge in their right mind would rule in their favor, regardless of whether a police report was filed or not.

A Month goes by, quickly, I might add.  A first time dad.  I was working at Olan Mills at the time.  I kept the external drive plugged in, thought, why not just use it as my “my documents” folder.  Everything is backed up to it.  It will keep my computer cleaner and save the extra step of backing up every time.

One night, returning home much intoxicated from one of my haunts about the town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence…. oh wait, that’s Edger Allen Poe’s story, not mine.

One night, returning home, we had just opened the door, when I heard something fall.  It sounded heavy.  One of our cats was sitting in the middle of the floor, poised, ready to strike, and beside him was my external hard drive.  Being the curious animal he was, he had jumped up on my desk and knocked the hard drive to the floor.  Since my computer and the hard drive were on, the hard drive began making clicking noises. I plugged it in.  Nothing but clicks.  Everything gone.  I gave it up as a total loss.  I got frustrated, loaded up a linux distro I had laying around and got the hard drive working, at least until I posted about it.

While backing everything up from the drive, it failed again. I was too frustrated to post again that the thing had failed… miserable and angry at the whole ordeal, I again gave it all up for loss.  I had small images that I had posted when he was born.  Those would have to do.  Family started asking questions about getting larger images. I told them what had happened.  Now it wasn’t just me, other people were ready to kill one of our cats.

I remembered something this morning when Animoto, sent out their newsletter.  I had made a video with them and used higher quality images to make it than I have on my blog.

I emailed them this morning if I could get a download of those images.

They emailed back wanting the exact url for the video I had put together.

I emailed it to them.

They emailed back with an individual url for every picture I had uploaded to the video.

I have since downloaded them all and backed them all up online.

Thank You Animoto.  I also really loved the slideshow I put together using your service.

1. Google Chrome isn’t recognized as a window in windows.  Let me give you an example.  If you have Google Chrome open and Firefox open, then right click on your Windows taskbar and click “Tile Windows Vertically”…. Firefox will do it, but Google Chrome doesn’t.  In fact Firefox will open full screen behind Google Chrome if those are the only two (supposed) windows open.
2. My image resize handles in my wordpress wsywig “write post” editor is gone.  Instead, I just get a big blue box over the area where my image is but no graphical resizing is possible.  I can however still drag the editor bar to resize the text area, but when formatting a post, I like to be able to drag the image around too.