Shortly after Verizon announced that they will be carrying the BlackBerry Tour 9630, Sprint made an announcement of their own.  Sprint will be selling the BlackBerry Tour 9630 for $199 after a 2 year contract and $150 rebate.  That is the same cost as a Palm Pre.  What phone will it be?  BlackBerry Tour or Palm Pre?

[via Engadget]

For those of you The Simpsons fans out there, a Homer Simpson voice skin is now available to be built in to the TomTom Knight Rider GPS.  Homer Simpson isn’t best known for his intellect, but at least we know now that he can give good directions.  Some of his expressions on the GPS include “Take the third right.  We might find an ice cream truck!  Mmm… ice cream” and “Woo hoo, you have reached your destination.  And you can hold your head up high because you are a genius.  At the end of the road turn left, then taking the motorway.  Hahaha WooHoo!”  The voice skin runs for $12.95.

[via Engadget/Pocketlink]

Bill Gates has banned Apple products from his mansion and now Microsoft is penalizing employees who use the Palm and Research In Motion phones.  Microsoft will only be reimbursing data plans for phones that use the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system.

Big companies generally do not reimburse employees for mobile devices.  Even some of Microsoft’s subsidiaries pay for their own mobile plan, phone, and carrier.  That sucks for employees because most Windows Mobile powered phones are pretty boring and have limited functionalities.

One thing that Windows Mobile phones do have is the ability to download Skyfire.  Skyfire is a browser that has the ability to load Flash including videos on Hulu.

According to a Microsoft representative the data plan reimbursement plan is limited to only Windows Mobile devices. “This policy took effect as part of the broader cost saving measures announced earlier this year,” added the rep.

[via BusinessInsider]

Political blog The Huffington Post has named Eric Hippeau as the new CEO.  Hippeau was involved on the board of directors at The Huffington Post after SoftBank made an investment in the company.  Hippeau will be replacing Betsy Morgan as she is leaving the company.

Hippeau had worked at media companies over the last 25 years.  From 1993 to 2000, Hippeau was the CEO of Ziff Davis.  Hippeau is also on the board of directors for Yahoo!, Buzz Media, BuzzFeed, Thumbplay, and Associated Content.

[via BusinessInsider]

Google Operating System, an unofficial Google blog that tracks what the company is up to discovered a leaked image of a potential service that turned up on a localization service:

Notice what it says near “Translation help?”  This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text.  A Microblog is a blog with very short entries.  Twitter is the popular service associated with this format.

Twitter has a search engine where users can find real-time tweets, but it is limited to only the Twitter service.  The search engine is also only sorted by date and not by relevance.  Other Twitter search engines that focus on relevance are Tweefind and Twingly.

The L.A. times reported back in May that Google VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer has an interest in being able to offer micro-blogging in the Google search engine.  ”We are interested in being able to offer, for example, micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search. Particularly in Blog Search and possibly in Web Search, but we don’t have any particular plans to announce,” stated Mayer.

[via Google System]

Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield

Sheperd Johnson is a Flickr user that 1,200 uploaded graphic images of Guantanamo Bay prisoners as comments on the White House Flickr photo stream.  Yahoo! Flickr quickly removed the images and told Johnson that his images were gone forever.  They offered him $25 as compensation and blocked all of his messages.  Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield even called Johnson “a dick” for doing what he did.

Yahoo! VP of Customer Service Heather Champ told Johnson that his photos were deleted because he was considered a “spammer” for putting all the images as comments.  Johnson’s account was also deleted without a warning.  Champ also told Johnson that his images were way too graphic.

Johnson was doing this as a way to get attention over President Barack Obama’s support for a controversial bill that suppresses government torture pictures.  To compensate for the lost images, Champ offered Johnson a Flickr Pro account and a $25 gift card.

“She tried to shower me with platitudes like ‘Oh I know you are passionate about this issue,’” stated Johnson in an interview with Valleywag.  After dealing with Johnson, Champ uploaded a picture that indicated her day wasn’t going well.  Johnson commented on that picture stating “this is like watching a slow train wreck.”  Champ blocked him.

Johnson then decided to contact Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield, who had left Yahoo! last year.  After the jump is an e-mail conversation between Johnson and Butterfield.  The e-mail from Butterfield calls Johnson “a dick” among other things.

[via ValleyWag]

A few days ago, Apple announced that they had hit 11 million downloads of Safari 4 in less than 3 days.  That’s not a bad number, but Mozilla came up with a figure of their own that blew Apple out of the water.  Mozilla said that Firefox 3.0.11 was downloaded over 150 million times within 24 hours.

“I just read that Apple is reporting 11 million Safari 4 downloads in just three days. That’s pretty amazing. I’d like to follow up that report with one of my own,” wrote Mozilla Director of Community Development Asa Dotzler.  Both companies had probably included an automatic update that is made when opening their browsers.  The update is pushed on to users.

Firefox 3.0.11 was launched on June 11 and had mainly just a security and stability update.  On June 17 of last year, Mozilla had set a new Guinness World Record for the most downloaded browser in one day.

On Facebook, there are several groups revolving around Holocaust Denial.  Holocaust Denial is a conspiracy theory that the genocide of Jewish people during World War II did not occur or to the extent that history recognizes.  Holocaust Denial believers claim that the Holocaust was a hoax that was create as a Jewish conspiracy to advance their race at the expense of others.  Last week an individual that was a Holocaust Denial follower entered a Holocaust museum with a concealed weapon and shot the security guard, killing him.

This 88 year old man is James von Brunn and he was shot in the face when starting a shootout at the museum.  Two other security guards shot the man after he killed the first security guard.  Brunn is expected to survive.

Brian Cuban first noticed the Holocaust Denial groups on Facebook back in November 2008 and sent them a notice.  Facebook kept a firm position in allowing the groups to remain on their social network to facilitate open discussion based on free speech.

“It’s a difficult decision to make. We have a lot of internal debate and we bring in experts to talk about it,” Schnitt said. “Just being offensive or objectionable doesn’t get it taken off Facebook. We want it [the site] to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones,” stated Facebook representative Barry Schnitt in an interview with CNN.

After hearing about situations involving the shooting at the museum and several other incidents, I find myself thinking that Facebook is wrong for hosting a discussion that involves discrimination.

Facebook removed pictures of women breast-feeding if there was nipping showing within the last year because they said it was “indecent.”  Hosting a discussion that facilitates discrimination against Jewish people is also indecent.  Or what about the removal of the Ku Klux Klan groups on Facebook?  Why shut down the groups of one hate group, but not penalize others?

Going back to the removal of pictures with a nipple exploited, what about paintings?  There are several paintings that were created during the Renaissance period where the breasts of women were showing.  Is that considered “indecent.”  The way I see it, if I uploaded a picture of one of those artistic pieces it would be a lot more decent than a discussion a group is having about how Jewish people should be discriminated against.

Freedom of speech is one of the greatest laws our country has, but anytime it may contribute to acts of violence I strongly believe in censorship.  If Facebook is going to allow Holocaust Denial discussions to take place, they should be willing to monitor the groups closely around the clock and report the potential of any acts of violence that may take place as a result of discussions taking place on their social network.

Any time certain keywords like “kill” or “gun” in the groups, the FBI should be notified.  This way the FBI can determine whether the individuals making the threats do or do not have any intentions in carrying them out.