This Week in Review 8-21-09

GPush Brings Push GMail to the iPhone

The iPhone has had push email for a while now, but it appears GMail never actually supported it.

A new 99-cent application from Tiverias Apps called GPush (iTunes link) aims to change that. Calling GPush simple would be an understatement – this app literally has a one-track mind. The only thing it does is provide push notifications for new emails in Gmail. It doesn’t open emails, or send emails, it just lets you know when new ones arrive, as soon as they arrive, and no matter what you’re doing.

The application still has a few quirks, including randomly forgetting to notify you about new messages and notifying you about old messages, but we can only expect it to get better. (via Mashable)

Tr.im Goes Open Source and Hates on Bit.ly

First Tr.im shutdown, then they decided not to shutdown after Bit.ly offered to help them out. Now, Tr.im has decided to go open source. The oddest thing about this to me is how much hate Tr.im has for Bit.ly and Twitter. They insist that Bit.ly is only popular because Twitter endorsed it as it’s official URL shortener. According to Mashable:

Before Nambu got into its detailed plan to turn Tr.im into an open-source software, it went right into harsh criticism of Bit.ly and Twitter. Specifically, they revealed that Bit.ly made a $10,000 offer for Tr.im, which they rejected. They also called the 301works initiative a “Bit.ly public relations stunt.”

It’s funny they mention a “public relations stunt” when their dramatic shutdown announcment seems to have been a stunt as well. In any case, making their code available to a world of skilled developers could definitely result in some good things in the future. According to RWW, John Borthwick of Bit.ly had this to say:

“I think this is great, it means there will be a future for tr.im and having more services out there is a really good thing. [Tr.im's Eric Woodward] is short on the facts though and the facts are if you look at the clicks and encodes on bit.ly in a day, 15 million yesterday for example, 60% of them are from Twitter, less than 10% come from twitter.com. It’s about product iteration and adding features. [That's why Bit.ly is so popular, Borthwick argues.] Eric made a choice and bit.ly has made a different choice.” Borthwick also emphasized that Bit.ly has to invest substantial resources into scaling, something that the Tr.im community will need to take very seriously if it is to grow.

Flickr Takes Down Obama as Joker Photo

This controversial photo has been making the rounds online as well as in poster form across the city of Los Angeles. It definitely turns Obama’s message of hope on it’s side. Even more disturbing is that the version being posted around the city has the Time branding removed and the word “Socialism” added to the bottom. What I found interesting is that the creator of this photo, Firas Alkhateeb, only created it while messing around with a photoshop tutorial on how to “jokerize” any photo. He doesn’t really have much interest in politics at all.

Flickr recently took the photo down, citing “copyright infringment” issues. We can only wonder if there are other reasons behind it, though. Is this a censorship? Violation of 1st ammendment? We may never know for sure. Check out Sarah’s post on RWW for more details.

Facebook to Upgrade Your Inbox

According to TC (pics included), Facebook has started rolling out updates to user inboxes. The changes seem to be pushing for more of a newsfeed layout as you would expect to see in other parts of the site. Hopefully, these changes will help to deal with the insane amount of random messages and notifications I get on the regular.