Waxman: "It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.
For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.
War profiteering
While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.
To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.
The president's Democrat opponents are keeping up the pressure over war profiteering in Iraq.
Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious.
"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
In the run-up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth seven billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company, which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president.
Unusually only Halliburton got to bid - and won.
Missing billions
The search for the missing billions also led the programme to a house in Acton in West London where Hazem Shalaan lived until he was appointed to the new Iraqi government as minister of defence in 2004.
Judge Radhi al Radhi: "I believe these people are criminals."
He and his associates siphoned an estimated $1.2 billion out of the ministry.
They bought old military equipment from Poland but claimed for top class weapons.
Meanwhile they diverted money into their own accounts.
Judge Radhi al-Radhi of Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity investigated.
Developers who are building apps that use PayPal to handle payments usually require the application to send a request to the PayPal service. The URL’s used in these requests are all on the paypal.com domain name, and there is a test environment setup on a URL at www.sandbox.paypal.com. In Google App Engine apps, requests to either of these URL’s returns a generic ‘download’ error with no specific details.
A number of developers complained in a Google App Engine forum discussing the issue (also on Hacker News), where they also found a way to bypass the restriction by using a third-party proxy (like TinyURL). Then, early this morning, a Google employee named Marzia Niccolai wrote a comment, saying that the error was caused by their anti-phishing protections:
Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem. There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain restrictions will be removed in the next few days.
Normally something like this wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. But there’s too much bad blood between Google and eBay not to question this, and Google’s anti-phishing blacklist does not, of course, list the paypal.com domain as a phishing site.
Most developers who have commented on this so far strongly believe that this was a deliberate block by Google. So far, we can only take Google at their word that blocking Paypal was an accident because of the way their anti-phishing rules work. But with so many phishing sites involving Paypal, you would think that when implementing their rules they would at least check that the real Paypal site still works. Besides, the Google.com phishing test shows that Paypal is considered a safe site.
Why would it be different for App Engine? To make things more suspicious, that phishing test tool was launched last month.
We have emailed Google for a comment and will be updating this post as news comes in.
Update: In the post we mentioned that some developers were using a third-party server and/or domain to proxy requests to PayPal. It turns out that even those proxy requests no longer work (they did at some point), leaving one of the developers on that thread to conclude ‘I guess they are blocking PayPal at their (Google’s) gateway..’.
The latest version of Google Trends is now live! If you've used it in the past, you know that Google Trends can be used to see how popular certain search terms are across geographic regions, cities, and languages. With our latest update, you can now see numbers on the graph download to a spreadsheet. (Note: Both these functions are available after you've signed in to your Google Account.)
Let's walk through an example of how these nifty new features come into play. With the hot summer months rapidly approaching in many parts of the world, many of us turn to the frosty treat of ice cream to cool off. But have you ever wondered which flavor people search for more frequently: vanilla or chocolate?
First, let's take a look at the searches for vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream separately. Here's what vanilla looks like on its own:
You'll notice a number at the top of the graph as well as on the y-axis of the graph itself. These numbers don't refer to exact search-volume figures. Instead, in the same way that a map might “scale” to a certain size, Google Trends scales the first term you've entered so that its average search volume is 1.00 in the chosen time period. So in the example above, 1.00 is the average search volume of vanilla ice cream from 2004 to present. We can then see a spike in mid-2006 which crosses the 3.00 line, indicating that search traffic is approximately 3 times the average for all years. Read more about how we scale the data.
Here's what chocolate looks like on its own:
Let's look at how vanilla compares with chocolate. Keep in mind that when you compare multiple terms, they'll all be scaled relative to the first term you've entered.
As the numbers on the top of the graph indicate, vanilla ice cream has about 30 percent less search traffic than chocolate ice cream (and it's no surprise that both flavors are more popular during the summer months!) You can also see that the data has been ranked by vanilla, because it was the first search term we entered. However, you can use the drop-down menu beneath the graph to change the ranking to chocolate instead.
Google Trends is not only a fun tool; it also offers some practical uses as well. Suppose you own an ice cream shop and don't know which flavors to serve, or suppose you're responsible for stocking supermarkets across the country; Trends can help you explore the popularity and seasonality of your products. To conduct your own, more detailed analyses, you can now easily export Trends data to a .csv file (a common format to import/export data), which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. When you use the export function, you'll also have the choice of using either relative scaling (what we've shown here) or fixed scaling (scaled to a specific time range).
We hope you enjoy this new flavor of Google Trends. And of course, we want to know: which flavor of ice cream do you like best?
About a month ago, we announced that we certified a number of third-party ad servers, rich media ad agencies, and research firms to serve and track display ads on the Google content network. Today, we're adding Atlas and Tumri to our list of certified third parties.
Atlas and Tumri customers can now save time by managing their Google content network campaigns and their other online campaigns through the same application. They can take advantage of more efficient planning, management, and measurement around their ad buy.
Learn more about third-party ad tags on the Google content network.
Eliza Johnson and her family lived near the plant. Johnson, now 85, watched as first her husband and then her daughter came down with severe cancer. She helped care for them during their treatment and in the end helped to bury them. (Source: S.C. Spangler/Tribune-Review)
Nuclear power -- cheap, reliable... and safe? Not always.
Nuclear plants have had their success stories -- for example the plants that survived an earthquake in Japan largely unharmed. However, despite the fair share of success stories, there are also some grim cautionary tales of what to avoid in nuclear power and why safety precautions, regulations, and adopting modern designs are of an utmost importance to nuclear power plants and nuclear processing facilities.
One largely unnoticed example is gaining big national attention thanks to a hefty $27.5M USD settlement awarded to the 250 plaintiffs who suffered disease and death due to poor regulation and flaws in the technology. The story begins in Apollo and Parks Township in Armstrong county Pennsylvania, back in the late 1950s. The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., eager to profit at the booming trend to exploit nuclear energy, jumped at the chance of opening new facilities to process nuclear fuel. In 1959 they opened two new plants in the respective townships, which processed both uranium and plutonium fuels.
Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) took over the plants in 1967 and reaped the rewards of lucrative contracts during the Cold War. Afterward, Babcock & Wilcox Co bought out ARCO's stake, assuming responsibility for the plants in 1971. The plants continued to operate until 1983.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the damages the plants had inflicted on the surrounding communities just began to become apparent. Between 1990 and 1995 the buildings were destroyed and thousands of tons of radioactive materials were removed in a cleanup project. However, by then it was far too late for some of the County's citizens; the damage had already been done.
Those living near the plants stated that they had no idea the danger they were in, assuming the government would protect them. The employees were equally confident. Gary Walker, 67, who grew up in the area and went to work at Apollo plant in 1959, was among those exposed. Over the course of his 30 year career, he would later discover he was exposed multiple times to deadly uranium radiation.
Walker states, "Back then, they threw that stuff around like it was nothing. No one really knew what it could do to you. They never warned us. Early on, there was a taped line on the floor that divided the contaminated area from the side that wasn't contaminated. But it was in the air."
President Bush signed a transportation bill that will help fund a high speed maglev train between Disneyland and Las Vegas. The initial $45M investment will be used for environmental studies to evaluate construction impact on one portion of the proposed maglev route.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., showed support of the project and said the maglev train "will safely and efficiently move people between southern California and Las Vegas."
As more nations begin to roll out maglev train systems, critics in the U.S. grow increasingly frustrated over the lack of support of organized high speed trains in the United States.
With speeds up to 300 MPH, the maglev train will be able to transport passengers between the two locations, about 250 miles apart, in less than two hours. Most drivers who go from the Los Angeles or Anaheim area to Las Vegas are forced to take Interstate 15, but the highway routinely is clogged with gridlock during rush hour.
Congress must now choose the maglev system over other train projects under consideration by the government, including a diesel-electric train that was proposed after a 2005 funding mishap that delayed the Disneyland-Las Vegas line. Japan was the first nation to launch a diesel-hybrid train system, but the train was twice as expensive to build as a regular train.
The U.S. national average gas price is now up to $4 a gallon, so unless you live in one of the few metropolitan areas that have a robust public transit system, you've likely already spent quite a whole lot of coin on fuel this year. Luckily, not only do we like saving people time here at Lifehacker, we're also rather partial to saving them money. Incorporate some of the following gas saving tips, tricks, and hacks into your daily routine and not only will you drive further for less money, you'll have a little extra for some summer fun. Read on for more. Photo by FutureAtlas.
Skip the gimmicks and question the myths
Let's start with what doesn't work. We've covered gas saving myths here before, but here's a refresher. The Environmental Protection Agency has tested hundreds of products and none of them have ever proven to improve fuel efficiency. Some even decrease it! If the fancy wing, the magic gas station fuel-boosting potion, or the magnets on your fuel line seem to be making your mileage go up you're likely driving downhill with a nice tailwind. There are strong opinions about how much gas air conditioning uses up, versus how much is wasted via drag with the windows kept open. In multiple studies it has shown to have no or minimal effect on fuel efficiency. Crank up the air conditioning and be comfortable. Tire inflation falls into the same category: having your tires overinflated or under inflated with cause more wear on your tires but won't alter your gas bill much (if at all). Photo by CarbonNYC.
Keep an eye on gas prices
Thanks to web sites like GasBuddy and GasPriceWatch, it's easy to keep a tabs on which stations have the best prices in your area. With frequent user-supplied updates, price indexing web sites can help you make the decision to fuel up right next door or on the way to work to save the most. GasBuddy has even been incorporated as a feature in Google Maps. However, do use common sense: you won't save any money, gas, or time by driving 12 miles across town to save $0.01 a gallon.
Steal a page from the Hypermiler's Notebook
If the fate of humanity was hanging on a last ditch effort to reach a distant star system, you'd want a Hypermiler as the pilot. Hypermilers are obsessed with squeezing the last inch out of every gallon of gasoline and filled with tips on fuel efficiency. While we can't condone the more dangerous hypermiling practices like drafting semi trucks, here are a handful of safe and helpful tips:
Use your cruise control. You'll never be able to maintain a perfect cruising speed as well as the cruise control.
Drive the speed limit. Unless you're driving across the entire country speeding won't save you more than a few minutes, will cost you more in gas, and increase the chance of being involved in an accident.
Stop using your brakes to slow down. If you know your highway exit is a mile away, don't drive 80 mph until the ramp and slam your brakes to slow down to the 30 mph that will get you safely off the expressway.
As typography geeks will be quick to point out, it's not the same typeface. Still, I doubt Google will mind the comparison terribly — mobile device Web browsing is widely touted as the Internet for the masses. And if you want to monopolize the infobahn, you'll have to reach out to country music fans eventually.
A new version of Firefox, the popular alternative Web browser, is getting close to releasing a third version. That's prompting people to take a close look at the business practices of Mozilla Corp., the maker of Firefox. Danny Sullivan, the longtime search-engine observer, is calling on Mozilla to let Firefox users pick the search engine built into their browser; Firefox 3 defaults to Google in its new release, as it has in the past. Sullivan has a point: Google, which has called for openness, risks seeming hypocritical. But he gets the business side of things all wrong.
85 percent of Mozilla's $67 million in revenues in 2006, the most recent year reported, came from Google, it's true. But Sullivan seems to think this is some kind of bribe, with Mozilla picking Google as the search engine because the company is showering the browser maker with cash.
Utter nonsense. Google pays Mozilla a cut of the revenue generated when Firefox users conduct Google searches. In Asia, Mozilla defaults to Yahoo, not Google, because Yahoo has a larger user and advertiser base in the region, making its searches more lucrative. It's all about the money, sure. But why shouldn't it be?
Mozilla could open up Firefox as Sullivan suggests. The end result would be a lot of annoyed users who have to go through an extra step as they pick their search engine, which would likely be Google anyway. Google doesn't need to bribe Mozilla; the superior economics of its business do the work for Google.
Everywhere you look, a new iPhone price hike turns up. At $199, the phones themselves may be cheaper — but Apple and AT&T, the phone's exclusive carrier in the U.S., are charging users by other means. The iPhone data plan by itself is going up $10 to $30/mo. In a GigaOm interview, AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega reveals that the 200 text messages previously included will cost iPhone users an extra $5/mo. ($20/mo. for unlimited messages, which seem practically obligatory.) And then there's Apple's MobileMe subscription, without which the iPhone's new synching features won't work, at $99 a year, or just over $8 a month. Add it up, and iPhone users will be paying about $43 a month, or $1,038 over the two-year course of the AT&T contract they signed up for — all to get an iPhone at $199.
No wonder AT&T is taking so many steps to make life difficult for people who try to buy an iPhone without a contract. Some bloggers are fussing about the fact that AT&T will no longer offer a prepaid plan for those with poor credit. What about those solvent enough to deserve an iPhone 3G? After AT&T and Apple get done with them, I wonder what their credit rating will look like.
You know Twitter cofounder Biz Stone didn't do a very good job explaining what he's created to Fox Business reporter Liz Claman when, after Stone was finished Claman asked, "So, it just pops up on your cell phone — does it make a sound when it pops up?" That fine moment, about 2 minutes and 40 seconds in, and whole lot of describing Twitter messages as "poetry," in the full interview, embedded below.
Forget Googling. If we were campaign strategists, we'd be doing plenty of old-school dumpster diving and pretexting to make sure potential candidates hadn't, say, undergone shock therapy, developed a taste for hookers and blow, or conducted adulterous affairs with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Certainly explains why former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is a Republican Party adviser and possible McCain running mate, doesn't it? (Photo by AP/Charles Dharapak)
The Atlantic Monthly's Nicholas Carr is worried that his increasing reliance on the internet for research and other information has made him stupid:
...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
The author dives deep into many perceived effects of the internet on the way he thinks, bolstering his argument with anecdotes about other technologies, like the printing press, and their very real influence our thought processes.
Ultimately Carr concedes that, while the internet's influence will very likely have a profoundly positive effect on some aspects of our lives, it may have a dumbing-down effect in what we currently see as independent thought and intelligence. It's a little doomsday, but also a great read, so let's hear whether or not you feel Google's making you dumber in the comments.
This morning at 10AM Steve Jobs will take the stage at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference to unveil the iPhone 2.0 and its new App Store, along with any number of other untold goodies. Will the iPhone still be worth jailbreaking? Will better iPhone location-awareness really change your life? Only the Stevenote will tell. Unlike our brave brothers in gadgetry, we Lifehacker editors will not be packing into a small room with hundreds of sweaty nerds to hear the Jobsian edicts in person. We will, however, be sitting home in our pajamas appreciating all the work that tech reporter soldiers on the front lines will be doing. In pants. For your convenience, we'll be summing it up here as they go. Photo by Gizmodo.
Starting right now and going through Jobs' 10AM keynote on this very post, we'll be live blogging the live blogging from the likes of Gizmodo, Macworld, MacRumors, Ars Technica, Engadget, and TechCrunch, highlighting the good stuff, and giving the WWDC a little Lifehacker flavor. Get here at 10AM to watch hot live blogging action, (sort of) live.
9:51 AM: The troops are filing in, and we're struck with a twinge of jealousy. Do you all care enough about the blow-by-blow of these events for us to try to wrangle a press pass next time around? Or are there enough live blogs out there already?
9:58 AM: Of course no WWDC can happen without trashing Windows. Here's a Gizmodo photo of a guy in a "because Windows sucks" t-shirt. Whatever, ya smug ugly jerks.
10:05 AM: There are two iMacs on stage, Al Gore is there, and there is applause. We're biased, but Gizmodo has the best photos so far. There's also quite a lot of action at the Flickr WWDC08 tag. Let's get this party started.
10:09 AM: Jobs is onstage, says he's going to talk about the iPhone this AM. Record number of WWDC attendees this year at 5,200. [via]
10:10 AM: Jobs: "Then after lunch, developers are going to get a peek at OS X Snow Leopard (that's right, it's official)." Yay, 10.6! So it will be called Snow Leopard, the WWDC will preview whatever it's got in store, and it won't be released today. [via]
10:12 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 1 of 3, Enterprise: Microsoft Exchange support out of the box, push email/contacts/calendars, auto-discovery (huh? —oh, of Exchange servers), global address book, and remote wipe. [via]
10:14 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 1 of 3, Enterprise: "Customers have demanded Microsoft Exchange, so they've built it in out of the box for 2.0 software: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery of Exchange severs, global address lookup, and remote wipe security feature. All built in to iPhone 2.0 software. They've added secure VPN services from Cisco and other network service demanded by the Enterprise market. Everything that Apple was told enterprise users want, they've built in." [via]
10:17 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 2 of 3, SDK: This we're excited about. I can haz App Store? Reload. Reload.
10:18 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 2 of 3, SDK: "Talking about the APIs — Cocoa Touch, Media, Core Services, Core OS. Core OS makes use of the same kernel as Mac OS X. Core Services includes everything from a complete database layer to core location, for easily building location-based functionality into applications. Also a very fast implementation of OpenGL." [via] So life-changing location awareness will be easy for developers to build.
10:21 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 2 of 3, SDK continued: "The iPhone's OS X shares a lot of things in common with regular OS X, including stuff like Bonjour and SQLite (a light database). Other stuff like hardware accelerated OpenGL ES and positional audio are in there as well. Cocoa Touch APIs let people access the touch and accelerometer features." [Gizmodo]
Giz still rockin' the photo shoot:
10:23 AM: Life is good for iPhone developers. "Xcode, Interface Builder and iPhone Simulator are the apps you to code, debug and test the programs you want to run on iPhone. There's also Instruments, which lets you 'measure and optimize your application to get the absolute best performance from it.'" [via]
10:25 AM: iPhone 2.0, Part 2 of 3, SDK continued: Holy location-awareness, they're making an app called Nearby Friends on stage, which uses contacts and Core Location to filter down to with contacts within 10 miles. That's hot. [via]
10:31 AM: They're demo'ing Super Monkey Ball (hello accelerometer) and I'm trying to think of ways to make this "productive."
10:33 AM: Super Monkey Ball will be available in the App Store for $9.99. Engadget says the graphics are "unbelievable compared to anything we've seen on a cellphone before, DS-quality graphics." Next up is a demo of an Ebay iPhone app, Auctions, which was built in 5 weeks. Why not just use the Ebay web site? Gizmodo says "a native app looks fast and more customized for the screen than Safari. You can search (he's searching for Wii Fit), add stuff to your watch list, or even bid for new items. The standard iPhone animations are there, sliding left and right whenever you access an item. There's even a photo view with a touch strip that you can browse through pictures belonging to auctions."
10:38 AM: Next up is a social networking app called Loopt, which will be FREE in the App Store at launch. It does all the socially networky things you'd expect, except with easy phonecall access and location features (directions, etc.)
10:39 AM: More iPhone SDK demo's: Now Typepad's mobile blogging application is up, which is the blogging tool, but on your phone. (Is it just me or is the prospect of tapping out blog posts, even on the iPhone, kinda crazy?) Second thought—nice way to blog an iPhone photo straight from your phone. WordPress native app to come "soon, somewhere around the end of the week or early next week."
10:43 AM: The Associated Press has an iPhone app, too—"It's basically like a news fetching program that knows where you are so it can fetch local newspapers to your phone. Stories are saved on your phone to read offline, and you can flip through photos like Fergie dancing or Chris Rock on the defendant's chair using the iPhone's touch screen. There's even video." [via]
10:44 AM: The TypePad app as well as Loopt will be FREE in the App Store. We're 2 out of 4 on the free apps in the "store" now, promising.
10:46 AM: Two more games getting demo'd now: Mac game maker Pangea software is showing off Enigmo, a "physics-based puzzle game" and Cromag Ralley, a 3-D caveman racing game. "Think Mario Kart with neanderthals," says Gizmodo. Here's Cromag and Enigmo if you want to try 'em on your Mac right now. (Thanks, Jason.) Both games will be $9.99 in the App Store.
10:49 AM: If only there was a working piano on my iPhone. Oh, wait.
10:50 AM: That lovely picture is from a music-making iPhone app called Band, which also has other instruments, like a bass guitar. "Band includes a virtual piano, drums, 12-bar blues "instrument", and a bass. All of the instruments sound very impressive and what you play can be recorded." [via] They played a riff from John Lennon's "Imagine" to demo it. "All the instruments sound pretty great, and they can all be recorded and mixed together. It'll hit the App Store in a few weeks (probably not for free)," says Gizmodo.
10:53 AM: Oh look and MLB.com has an iPhone app called "At Bat" which will show today's games, stats, and other live game info like scores and who's on base. Meh. (Sorry baseball fans.)
10:55 AM: Two medical applications getting demo'ed now. "Modality is for medical students to view body parts and see where everything is. Much more fun than reading this crap in a book. The second medical app is from MIMvista, a company that's a 'leading developer of medical imaging data.' Mark Cain is coming up on stage, showing a CT scan and a PET scan (I've no idea what either one does, but I'm no Dr. House)." Gizmodo? I love you.
10:58 AM:mattmckee: "Anybody else not impressed by WWDC so far? I know we are only 45 min. in but come on Steve. Give us the good stuff." Hear, hear.
11:01 AM: Ok, last app, a game, it looks very pretty and graphic-y, it's not ready yet, and doesn't have a name? Whatever. Moving on.
11:04 AM: Exciting news for developers and all of us who want smart iPhone apps that can notify us of background events: "a push notification service available for all developers." Gizmodo explains: "Example: when you're running an IM app, you're actively connected to the server. When you're not running it, the notification service will maintain an IP connection with the server, which will push updates to various apps. Developers can push badges, which tells you how many alerts are waiting, custom alert sounds, and custom textual alerts (like the SMS alert currently)." Adam says, in Campfire, that this sounds very smart, but "a touch creepy, maybe!"
11:06 AM:
11:06 AM: Push notifications will be available in September, developers can play with it "soon."
11:07 AM: iPhone, part 3 of 3, new end user features. Ok, Mr. Jobs back onstage, talking new iPhone features. Oh cool—turning Calculator to landscape mode makes it scientific. We couldn't be bigger nerds.
11:09 AM: New iPhone stuff—contact search, iWork document support (read-only, not edit). PowerPoint now supported (Word and Excel already were.) Bulk delete/move and saving images from an email to your photo library. Many languages now available, including Asian languages. Japanese and Chinese has various input types.
11:11 AM: iPhone 2.0 software will be released in early July—FREE for all iPhone owners. $9.95 for iPod touch owners.
11:11 AM: Gizmodo: "The App Store icon will automatically tell you when there's an update for apps you've downloaded. Developers keep 70% of the revenues, and will be no charge for free apps. FairPlay DRM will wrap applications."
11:12 AM: Waittasecond, the new iPhone software in July? But what about right this SECOND!
11:15 AM: "Now something entirely new." MobileMe is "Exchange for the rest of us"—"with mobile me, we can all get push email, contacts, and calendars."
11:17 AM: This guy Phil Schiller just called ActiveSync "ActiveStink," probably because he has low self-esteem:
11:17 AM: Giz wonders if MobileMe is the new .Mac.
11:18 AM: Ok, MobileMe is starting to sound pretty jazzy. There will be web-based versions of all the MobileMe stuff at me.com, Adam informs me in Campfire.
11:19 AM: "What's really going to surprise people, we've built an incredible suite of web 2.0 apps using Ajax." [via]
11:19 AM: No, Me.com is not up. Will we actually get anything today?
11:20 AM: Gizmodo on MobileMe: "It works directly with email, calendar, and whatever native applications you've got on Mac and PC. On Mac, it works with iCal, Address Book and Mail. On the PC, it works with Microsoft Outlook." Oh dang, makin' a serious play for the Outlook crowd. "Photos also work over the air, just like mail, address book and calendar. You can upload photos into your mobileme albums (just like .Mac was before). iDisk is also on there (one of the two icons I couldn't see before), syncing your files and folders."
11:23 AM: Still on MobileMe at Me.com, Gizmodo says, "In Address Book, there's real-time search with narrowing down of entries as you're typing, as well as Google Maps. The Calendar looks a lot like iCal with its color coding and meeting blocks. Drag and drop works. Gallery (photos) has skimming like in iPhoto and .Mac, thumbnail rescaling, drag and drop, rotate, and sharing. iDisk is now all online, and you can use it to share files to people without emailing stuff around."
11:25 AM: Adam says, "WHY DON'T I SEE A NOTE TAB ON ME.COM??? Is there a reason Apple hates note-syncing?"
11:26 AM: Kevin and I are confused by Adam's outburst but then realize he's referring to screenshots, not the actual web site.
11:26 AM: Gizmodo reports, "Phil's going through a process of getting an email with a lunch invite, which then loads up Google Maps of the restaurant. He saved the contact of the restaurant on the phone. Now, he goes back to the computer and sees the same email, which got pushed to all his devices with the correct 'read' state. He also sees the contact that he created on the phone—the same one he just created—on the computer."
11:27 AM: Me.com will be $99/year, and MobileMe does indeed replace .Mac. There will be a 60 day free trial and 20GB of iDisk space gets included.
11:31 AM: Ok people, Jobs on stage, getting all misty-eyed about the iPhones first birthday. I smell something good coming our way....
11:32 AM: The new iPhone is official: 3G, thinner at the edges, full plastic back, solid metal buttons, same display, flush headphone jack (applause? for fixing a stupid idea?), improved audio, "feels better in your hand" whatever that means Steve.
11:35 AM: Doing side-by-side Edge vs. 3G comparisons: whatever they tested, 21 seconds on 3G, 59 seconds on Edge, same location, 3G 2.8x faster, 3G speeds are approaching Wi-Fi, took other 3G phones, iPhone faster than Nokia N95 and Treo.
11:40 AM: Adam says "I still haven't heard any MMS talk... WTF... really? There's nothing I hate more than getting an MMS message on my iPhone."
11:42 AM: Gizmodo reports: "GPS is built in. Location services 'is going to be a really big deal.' 'It's gonna explode.' They get location data from cell towers, Wi-Fi and GPS. Using GPS data, they can do tracking.jobs is showing someone driving down Lombard street—that really squiggly street in SF—and the dot for his location squiggles around as he's driving (it's a recorded video)."
11:45 AM: Pricing, finally!! $199 for 8GB iPhone. 16GB for $299. (Dammit if I'd waited a few months I would've gotten a better phone for cheaper.)
Ack! The computer ate my term paper! We've all been there at some point. You delete an important file, somehow it skips your Recycle Bin altogether, and for all practical purposes, it's disappeared into the ether. But before you hit the big red panic button, there's a very good chance that your file is still alive and kicking somewhere on your hard drive—you just need to know how to find it. With the right tools, finding and recovering that deleted file can be as simple as a few clicks of your mouse.
Part I: The Overview
Ok, so you've lost an important file. Don't panic. Take a breath, and let's see if we can find it. Before you go into full-on file recovery mode, make sure you double-check the folder you had saved it in and the Recycle Bin or Trash. Still nothing?
1. Stop What You're Doing
When your operating system deletes a file, all it really does is mark the space on your hard drive that your file occupies as free space. It's still there, but your computer is now perfectly happy to write new data on top of it—at which point the file recovery process becomes a lot more difficult. That means you should do as little computing as possible until you find the file you're looking for, since every time you save a new file—every time your computer writes information to your hard drive—your chances of recovering the file go down.
2. Find the Right File Recovery Program
Windows: You've a lot of really great freeware options for file recovery if you're running Windows. Notable apps include Undelete Plus (original post), PC Inspector File Recovery (original post), and Restoration (original post). Undelete Plus is the most user-friendly option of the bunch, with advanced filtering options that make it easy to find your needle of a file among the haystack of deleted garbage, but in my tests I found both Restoration and PC Inspector File Recovery to be more effective at recovering files. (Of course, your mileage may vary.) As an added bonus, the bare bones Restoration is portable, which makes it an excellent addition to your thumb drive.
UPDATE: Per several readers advice, you may also want to check out Recuva (original post), another freeware Windows file recovery tool.
Mac: If you're on a Mac and aren't afraid to lay down a few bucks in the name of data recovery, the $99 Data Rescue II is the go-to application for file recovery with a friendly graphical interface.
All Platforms: If you're not afraid to crack open a terminal window or command prompt, the free, cross-platform command-line tool PhotoRec (original post) is a crack shot at recovering photos (as the name implies) as well as virtually any other file type from your removable media or hard drives.
3. Recover Your Files
Once you've picked a tool, it's time to scan your hard drive for your lost file or files. This process varies depending on the app you're using, but it's basically the same for all of them: Just point the program at the hard drive or folder that was holding your missing file and start your scan. Once the scan is complete, you're going to see a big list of jumbled file names. Often most of these files are nothing more than system files that your operating system has created in the course of basic operation, and you won't need to worry about them. You're just looking for the file type and name that matches what you've lost.
Once you find what you're looking for, saving it is a matter of right-clicking the file and choosing where to save it.
Went through steps one through three and still aren't having any luck? It might be worth trying again with a different application, since there can be a lot of variation between apps. If you're still not having any luck, part two discusses a few other ways you can try addressing more specific problems when your data goes missing.
Part 2: More Specific Problems
Above you got a basic overview for recovering deleted files from your computer. Now we'll take a closer look at some more specific problems, methods of data recovery, and tools that may be of help in your quest for your elusive lost data.
Recover Files from a Wiped or Unbootable Hard Drive
Finally, if none of these options can even read your hard drive, you still might be able to get it working for just long enough with a few tricks of the data recovery trade, like putting the busted hard drive in the freezer.
Recover Lost Photos
If you need to resurrect photos from a damaged flash memory card from your digital camera, you'll be happy to know that most of the applications listed in part one above will do the trick—you just need plug in your camera or insert the card into your computer's card reader before running your data recovery application of choice. That said, you can find other applications, like Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery (original post), that are focused specifically on image recovery that you may want to add to your data recovery toolbox.
Recover Lost Word Documents
If your lost dissertation was saved as a Word document, you've got a few more interesting options for getting to your lost or deleted documents—read more about them here and here.
Recover Data from Scratched or Corrupted CDs and DVDs
If your munged data is sitting on optical media like a CD or DVD, the recovery process can be slightly different. Freeware application CD Recovery Toolbox (original post) is made specifically to read the portions of a CD that are readable in an effort to rescue as much data as possible from a damaged disc. If that doesn't work, you may want to give a look at the 30-day trial of shareware application CDCheck, as recommended by a reader. Then again, if scratches are the issue, you may be able to get away with simply fixing your scratched CD or DVD yourself.
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9:58 AM: Of course no WWDC can happen without trashing Windows. Here's a 
Windows: You've a lot of really great freeware options for file recovery if you're running Windows. Notable apps include 
All Platforms: If you're not afraid to crack open a terminal window or command prompt, the free, cross-platform command-line tool 
Once you've picked a tool, it's time to scan your hard drive for your lost file or files. This process varies depending on the app you're using, but it's basically the same for all of them: Just point the program at the hard drive or folder that was holding your missing file and start your scan. Once the scan is complete, you're going to see a big list of jumbled file names. Often most of these files are nothing more than system files that your operating system has created in the course of basic operation, and you won't need to worry about them. You're just looking for the file type and name that matches what you've lost. 
So you didn't just accidentally delete a file or two and empty your Recycle Bin prematurely—instead you've got a whole hard drive worth of missing data. You can still use many of the applications mentioned above to recover files from these drives as long as you have or can get the hard drive into a bootable computer. For more details, check out how to 
If you need to resurrect photos from a damaged flash memory card from your digital camera, you'll be happy to know that most of the applications listed in part one above will do the trick—you just need plug in your camera or insert the card into your computer's card reader before running your data recovery application of choice. That said, you can find other applications, like 
If your munged data is sitting on optical media like a CD or DVD, the recovery process can be slightly different. Freeware application