Silicon Alley Insider on *that* Steve Jobs rumour

SAI spots an uncorroborated, anonymous post that says Jobs has had a heart attack. Publishes it, causing an immediate drop in Apple share prices. O noes! Uncorroborated, anonymous bollocks turns out to be bollocks!

Time for some retrospective justification:

We viewed it as significant, however, both for those who care about Apple and Steve and as a first meaningful test of “citizen journalism.”

Meaningful test my arse.

A small, vocal minority, however–including some members of the mainstream media–believe we should have waited to comment on the iReport story until we had heard back from Apple.

How about just checking whether there was any likelihood of the story being true? Charles Arthur:

First of all: what time would it be in California, where Jobs lives? Hmm, at 2pm on a Friday in London, it would be at least 8 hours behind – in other words, 6am. That at once gave a doubtful cast to two of the points in that “report”.

Who and where could the “insider” be? Not someone at Apple. While there might be people at 1 Infinite Loop who’d work until 3am or 4am, Jobs wouldn’t. He’s got a family and, well, a life. So he would have been at home. So the “insider” would be inside to what? The hospital? Paramedic dispatch? In which case they either wouldn’t know that it was a major heart attack, or what the symptoms were.

SAI commenter Mark Centz:

Whether journalists are just plain citizens or professionals, there is still the obligation to confirm facts wherever possible.

Girls Aloud horror porn – this case could be interesting

A civil servant is being prosecuted for writing horror porn about Girls Aloud.

The 35-year-old’s 12-page blog, headlined ‘Girls (Scream) Aloud’, allegedly describes the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of band members Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh.

The case is significant because the man is being prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, which is normally used against publishers of images. This time, though, it’s the written word that’s being investigated under the old “deprave and corrupt” criteria. As the Independent reports:

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said it was unusual to see a prosecution brought under which did not involve pornographic images in magazines or DVDs. She said: “The vast majority of prosecutions brought under the Obscene Publications Act have related to images; be they photographs, computer-generated images or videos. It is very unusual to be prosecuted for a case involving the written word.”

Somehow I doubt the story in question has any literary merit, but if the man is convicted it’s an important precedent. “Deprave and corrupt” is open to interpretation – I can think of a few passages from American Psycho (or come to think of it, the most recent Christopher Brookmyre novel) that could easily fit those criteria.

[I shudder to think what kind of traffic this post is going to get from Google...]

US VP debate rick-rolled

I know rickrolling is soooooo six months ago, but this still made me laugh (screengrab via Fark):

(Rickroll - click for bigger)

How Apple can make iPhone developers love it again

John Gruber hits the nail on the head:

Here is a complete list of what Apple must do to increase developers’ trust in the App Store system:

State the rules.
Follow the rules.

That’s it.