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“I ask you to prepare because your world is about to change overnight.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“They have awoken a sleeping giant. If I'm misunderstood after yesterday then people are worse off than I thought.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“I will plant my flag on this, and I will fall on my sword if I have to!”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“I have no authority stemming from laws or decisions or anything else, I just have moral authority. I only have moral authority.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“If you love with violence and you hate with violence, there's nothing that can be questioned.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“I urge all my beautiful and loyal fans … to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“I'm a guy that's riddled with flaws and by taking my flaws out and putting it in the refiner's fire and letting the bellows of life heated up, I get the opportunity to pound on my flaws and try to perfect it.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“You want to call me crazy? Go to hell. Call me crazy all you want!”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“This march cannot be stopped by those agents, those rats who move in the dark.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“You need to listen to your parents. If people disobey their parents, they end up destroying the country.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“The rain has begun to fall in the perfect storm. It has begun.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“There's a new sheriff in town. And he has an army of assassins.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“Forget BMWs and iPads and jewelry. Do you want to know what the next luxury item is? Believe it or not, orange juice.”

• Charlie Sheen
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Glenn Beck

“His goal was to get on Twitter so he could reach out to his audience as fast as possible,”Rad said. Rad is unbelievably transparant about the whole process which involved giving advice on how to tweet, @reply and what a hashtag is. It seems like Sheen caught on pretty fast.

And while Sheen is in the Ad.ly network, which means that Ad.ly is mining his follower data to present to advertisers for tweets, he as of yet has not become a publisher, (“we have no plans right now”) which means sending out a lucrative tweet endorsement. Ad.ly tweet endorsements run anywhere from $1000-$20,000 depending on the celebrity Rad told me. For the less famous members of the Ad.ly network, like our own Erick Schonfeld, those numbers are less underwhelming.

While the idea of seeing an in a tweet stream is off putting for some (myself included), Rad sees more and more celebrity advertising, which he says makes up 30% of ads, coming online. He also sees himself as sort of a celebrity herder in the process, “What Twitter does and what Facebook does is allow celebrities to speak directly to their audience and bypass the layers of media, creates a distribution channel for a celebrity to talk directly to their audience.”

For the past day, Sheen has been tweeting out images of brands, in a sense giving free advertising to Pepsi’s Naked Juice and Direct TV.

When asked what he thought about Sheen specifically, Rad said,“I don’t really want to pass judgement on the guy, but I think it’s amazing how he’s using social media to get his message across.” As to what that message is, Rad did not exactly know, “He’s definitely stirred up a lot controversy.”

Image: Charlie Sheen

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But the production is not so much an updating as an attempt to find archetypal equivalents through the ages. The eloquently austere set by George Tsypin is a field of ancient Greek ruins. James F. Ingalls’ potent lighting represents the fiery rise and smoldering descent of a relentless sun on Hercules' last day of life. Dunya Ramicova’s costumes imply the modern-day America and the Middle East, Handel’s 18th century and Sophocles’ Athens.

The idea of war unites us in time and place, and this “Hercules” is about what events do to people. Although written as an oratorio, “Hercules” is essentially Baroque opera in that it contains mainly solo arias with just a handful of short choruses. And Sellars has made the production all the more theatrical through judicial cutting and by conflating Handel’s three acts into two so that it more closely follows the structure of Sophocles' play.

Shakespeare, too, has also clearly influenced Sellars’ approach to Handel. Sellars' productions of "Merchant of Venice” some years ago in Chicago and “Othello” more recently in New York both revolved around the revelation of tragedy as the result of the inability or unwillingness for open communication.

In “Hercules” at the Lyric we watch psychic venom work, drop by drop. Hercules has shut down his feelings and Handel gives him little to sing but makes his presence felt in every note of the three-hour opera. Eric Owens made him terrifying. How impressive this baritone has grown from the big galoot of a monster in Elliot Goldenthal’s “Grendel” at Los Angeles Opera five years ago to this silent, menacing vet whose inability to express what has happened to him destroys him and Dejanira.

The opera’s big role is Dejanira, the wife who doesn’t know where to turn. The magnificent British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote depicts the extensive range of modern desperation and our discontents. Unable to break Hercules' stonewalling, Coote’s breakdown ranks with theatrical performances of legend.

As Iole, the British soprano Lucy Crowe is a new star born, both for her searing expression of a prisoner’s pain and for the luminous light she shines on one of Handel’s most compassionate arias, “My breast with tender pity swells.” The countertenor David Daniels and the tenor Richard Croft recorded the roles of Lichas, Dejanira's confidant who recounts Hercules horrid death, and her son, Hyllus, a decade ago. They were excellent singers then. Now they are profound ones.

The Lyric chorus became the people prophetic. Harry Bickett conducted a performance true to the spirit of Handel’s time yet truer still to Sellars’ stress points.

Daley needs to put down his cake knife and head over to Civic Opera House. Better still, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel, who has promised to be an arts mayor, needs to persuade his former Chicagoan boss in the White House to see this “Hercules.”

An opera performance this great is plenty rare. But opera capable of inspiring moral action is for the ages. 

[For the record: an earlier version of this review identified Richard Croft as a baritone.]

RELATED:

Spring arts preview: Classical music

At last, Peter Sellars will play at the Met

Opera review: 'Nixon in China' at the Metropolitan Opera

– Mark Swed in Chicago

Photo: Peter Sellars' production of Handel's "Hercules" at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Credit: Heather Charles / Chicago Tribune

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Too often technology is blamed for making us fat and lazy. With so much convenience provided by our smart devices, the amount of time we need to be on our feet or moving around has decreased dramatically. But just because technology makes everything easier is no reason to shun it when it comes to your health. Put the Internet and your devices to work for you and you can reap the benefits of weight loss and better health.

Here are a few ways new technologies can help you get fit:

Console game systems - Video games were once vilified as a cause of childhood obesity, but with new consoles there's no reason a video game can't keep you active. Nintendo's Wii was the first to introduce full body motion, along with the Wii Fit Board that can track your weight, function as a step, and help you perfect a number of yoga poses. Microsoft and Playstation now have their own movement games as well. Whether you want to dance, perfect your balance, or have a computer generated fitness instructor lead you through a cardio workout, you'll never be without options for a fitness-packed video game experience.

The Internet - For a long time geography limited us from finding support for losing weight or getting fit. Now there are hundreds of websites and groups with the intent of fostering a safe, supportive community for those who don't want to go it alone. Even Weight Watchers has an online program for those who can't make it to an in-person session.

Smart phones - Your smart phone apps shouldn't be limited to Angry Birds, and there are some fantastic health & wellness apps that will help you reach your goals. If you need on-the-go calorie tracking, apps like Lose It will keep you within your calorie budget for the day. Looking for a good workout when you're traveling? Try an app like the Nike Training Club, which lets you choose from several fitness routines that can be done with minimal equipment and minimal space. Want to learn to run? The Couch-to-5K app will train you for your first 5K, even if you've never laced up running shoes.

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It was when I heard my 4-year-old daughter shout “You nasty pigs!” from the back seat of the car that I realized we might have a problem.

Only moments before, she had been happy and effusive with stories of play mates at preschool. But that was before she asked for my iPhone, so she could play our (yes, I said our) latest obsession: Angry Birds.

I became addicted to this app-based game from Rovio Mobile less than five seconds after I sent my first yellow tweeter flying through the air, colliding with an animated wall of glass, wood and pigs. What’s not to love? There’s that oversized slingshot that sends birds sailing. There are the fierce chirps of our feathered friends as they home in on one or more of their targets. There’s also the satisfying sound of glass breaking and wood splitting upon avian impact.

Then, of course, there are the pigs – targets because they made off with a nest full of birds’ eggs. Swine indeed!

My 4-year-old daughter has since adopted my addiction – after watching me play furiously one day – and I wonder if I made the right decision in letting her play, too.

Until now, all of the app-based games that my husband and I have introduced her to have been strictly educational, good-natured and fun. She’s a master of Monkey Preschool Lunchbox and has fun searching for letters on Super Why!

But sending kamikaze birds slamming head-first into a bunch of green pig heads? Am I a terrible parent?

While other moms and dads are questioning whether they should be introducing their young children to tech-heavy gadgets such as iPhones and iPads at all – or questioning how much time they should be spending in front of these small screens if they already are playing with them – I’m wondering if I’m creating some sort of pig-hating preschooler in my otherwise mild-mannered, ballet-dancing daughter.

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BooksEmma Straub Jennifer Egan N+1 Steven Millhauser Tumblr Twitter
The Nicest Person on Twitter Discusses Her Short Story Collection Debut
12:06 pm Wednesday Mar 2, 2011 by Liz Colville

Brooklyn writer Emma Straub writes short stories — so short, at times, that you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Other People We Married, her first collection, is full of sharply limned observations about love, selfhood, parenthood, and loss. Straub often captures the essence of her characters, many of whom are New Yorkers at home or on the move, in less than a sentence. So it may come as no surprise that she loves Twitter, where she has found a significant following and another avenue to explore her less-is-more approach. But it’s unusual to find an author — much less anyone — who will profess her love of social media without some reservations.

Along with being an avid social media explorer, Straub is also an exemplary independent artist: she works at BookCourt in Cobble Hill, is one half of the design team M+E (the other half is her husband Michael Fusco), and is published by a small press that began as a website. We talked to Straub about her digital life, her craft, and living and writing in New York.

Other People We Married is published by FiveChapters Press, which began as an online magazine that publishes short stories — one story each week, serialized over the course of the week. Now FiveChapters has expanded by publishing your book, along with Jess Row’s Nobody Ever Gets Lost. How did you get involved with FiveChapters, and what does it mean to you to be involved with a publisher that was born on the Internet?

Dave Daley, the publisher of FiveChapters, first contacted me out of the blue about two years ago. He asked me if I would submit a story for the website, which I was delighted to do. It was about a year later than Dave approached me about doing a whole collection, and moving into print. As for working with a brand-new publisher, I think it’s probably much the same as any new venture. We’re still figuring out how it all works. The lovely part is that FiveChapters is only publishing two books at the moment, mine and Jess Row’s, so there are only two hopelessly needy people whining for their attention.

Bookslut recently called you one of the nicest people on Twitter, and rightly so. You seem to have wholeheartedly embraced the site. Lots of authors are on Twitter, but plenty aren’t. As an author and bookseller, what do you like about Twitter, and how do you use it without letting it invade your creative space?

Oh, god, I really do love it. Everyone else thinks I have a massive problem, but I just can’t get enough of it. I have met such phenomenal people through Twitter — many of them writers and booksellers — and truly could spend all day on it totally happily. I think what I enjoy about it is there is always a conversation happening, and there is usually something entertaining to eavesdrop on. As for keeping it out of my creative space, that’s much harder. When I’m writing, I try to turn off the Internet. It doesn’t always work. My willpower is abysmal.

You recently joined Tumblr. What inspired you to join the world of reblogs and endless scrolling?

You know the old saying–if all your friends jumped off into another social media platform, would you jump, too? I guess I would. I still don’t quite know how it works, though. I just posted my diary entry from a year ago today. Is that too weird? I thought I’d use it mostly to post pictures, but I don’t know how to do that yet.

Describe a typical workday (tweets and all!)

Breakfast, tea, Internet, office. Internet Internet Internet. Email email email. Open document. Work email work email work Twitter work Facebook work work work. Lunch. Repeat. Dinner. The Bachelor. Glamorous, no?

Image via Vol. 1 Brooklyn

In a recent essay on the Paris Review website you talked about each of your New York apartments — the mice, the cockroaches, the cigar-scented hallways. How does New York inspire you as a writer? How much does where you live matter to your writing?

The house I live in now is the first where I’ve had my own office, and I love it more than I can say. It feels very important to be able to close a door, to have your own space. Before that, I always wrote in bed. Okay, fine, sometimes I still write in bed, like right this very moment. You caught me. And New York! I love New York. It’s home. I feel very lucky to have grown up here, and grateful to my parents for understanding that New York wasn’t too big or too scary, but just right. In recent years, I haven’t written very much about New York, but it’s all simmering there, toward the back of my brain.

Literary life in New York could be considered an alternative to an MFA, as Chad Harbach wrote in n + 1 recently. You’ve done both. What inspired you to go for an MFA? What are your plans now that you’re back in New York?

I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for my MFA, and it did a world of good for my writing. I think the key is this: you need total discipline and dedication to be a writer, which I already had, but you also need to know what the hell you’re doing, which I didn’t. Spending two years devoting myself entirely to reading and writing (in that order) made me much, much better at what I do. I would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, Madison, will you take me back? I love everyone there. It’s like heaven, with snow, and not very many restaurants. Lots of good hamburgers, though, which is very important.

My plans, now that I’m back in New York, include: figuring out how to make money, writing a dozen novels, spending most of my time with my husband and my cats. That’s all, really.

The stories in OPWM accomplish so much in so little space. In “Rosemary,” about a woman who hires a pet psychic behind her husband’s back when her cat goes missing, you describe the woman’s husband as “a lawyer” who “scoffed easily.” To me this was enough to feel like I knew exactly who this guy was and was married to him myself (no offense to lawyers). I’m wondering how you arrived at your style — how you knew you were going to be the kind of writer you are, and what part your MFA played in that.

Thank you! I think it’s the job of the short story to be concise, and to put as much as possible into a few words, so I take that as a compliment. As for arriving at my style, I think it developed over time. Imagine a musician — at first, you’re just copying John Coltrane, or Whitney Houston, or whoever, but eventually, all that wears away, and you’re just left with yourself.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on a novel about a movie star. It starts in the 1920s, and spans a number of decades. It’s wildly different than anything I’ve done before, which is great fun. That’s the kind of writer I want to be, someone like Jennifer Egan, or Steven Millhauser, where every book is truly a different animal than the last. I guess we’ll see!

Any advice to other young writers emerging in the age of the Internet?

Be friendly. Be kind. Say yes.

Other People We Married is available now from FiveChapters and many independentbooksellers.

Keep Moving, There’s Still Nothing to See Here

Posted by Neal McCluskey

In dribs and drabs the plot thickens in the quiet little saga surrounding the GAO's brutal and broken August report on for-profit colleges. The latest development is the near-silent transformation of the GAO office that produced the knee-capping report that was later quietly reissued with lots of new, for-profit-exonerating material.

I say “near-silent transformation” because word about it somehow got to the Coalition for Educational Success, a career college advocacy group.  Yesterday, CES issued a press release on the matter, and this morning I contacted GAO's public affairs office about it. To the GAO's credit, their public affairs folks quickly sent me a copy of a memo announcing the end of the Forensic Audits and Special Investigations (FSI) team. Sadly, it was clear that there would be no public announcement of the change, which is utterly consistent with the behind-your-back way GAO has handled every development in this story. Well, every development save the very public release of the original, fatally flawed report.

Especially concerning is the following passage in the memo, which suggests that the for-profit college report provided the ultimate impetus for giving the FSI a new identity. This despite the FSI having done investigations in numerous other areas:

Since the Forensic Audits and Special Investigations team was formed in 2005 the team's body of work has resulted in numerous accomplishments and benefits to the Congress and the public. To ensure good work continues and to bring greater management attention to the group and more seamlessly integrate its work with GAO's program teams as well as the audit and investigative sides of the unit, today I am announcing several changes. These enhancements will also ensure greater attention to the issues that led to the need to produce the errata to the for-profit schools report and by the subsequent inspection.

So why does the group need “greater management attention”? And what exactly are “the issues that led to the need to produce the errata” to the August report?

As a member of the public it sure would be nice to know the answers to these questions, especially since these are the guys who are supposed to be holding the rest of the federal government ”accountable.” For proprietary schools' employees and investors — the people who were most hurt by the dubious August report — these are thing they absolutely should know. But the GAO insists on telling us that nothing major went wrong while refusing to share information we'd need to confirm that. It's not only totally unsatisfactory, it only makes you even more suspicious.

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c'est au moment de l'hiver 2005 que microsoft sortit la initiateur des trois balcons de 7ème vie à démérite le continent : la Xbox Live. aujourd'hui renforcée d'un palet dur de 120 GO et d'une admet HDMI au goût de sa compte rendu elite, en conclusion que du Xbox live, élection par le influent foule pour sa arrangé d'utilisation, la Xbox 360 s'est écoulée à plus 30 briques d'exemplaires dès son publicité en novembre 2005 aux etats-unis. mais que nous entrepôt l'avenir ? La Xbox 720 vivre d'or et déjà en prétoires de exposé ? A quoi pourrait-elle tirait ? Distinguez toutes les infos dans la chapitre blog. la Xbox Unlimited est indiscutablement tel des 3 télétypes de inaccoutumé filiation à gauler le plus les neurones de designers du Web, confirmation en est du superbe métier de taichiem (que vous savez distinguer sur la page gallerie) et Red Dead Redemption Xbox 360. Au Moment Oùcomme vous le savez dans la suite quelques jours, la Xbox 360 Bourgeois sera disponible dès le 24 août sous nos latitudes. aujourd'hui, ce sont nos amis les brocanteurs qui fortifient le carte de la console, agitée pour la résultat de 499 euros, bien que irréfragables la montrent jà en optionprécommande à se défiler de prixsh:197471. Commémorons que ce modèle deluxe retenir un port HDMI pour les téléviseurs haute-définition de ce fait qu'un palet dur de 120 Go. d'ailleurs, les ornements fai mêmement mis en contrat séparément. Le refrain dur 120 Go sera vendu 178,99 euros, 13,99 euros la champ et tout compte fait 43,99 euros la clef télégramme noire. Les joueurs fai dans la peau des grivetons d'élites des « traitements obscures » bon arrière-train les ordres ennemies réplique la baroud froide. On sonderait des points tels que cuba, l'oural ou toujours l'arctique, en vivant par les jungles du viêtnam.

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Instapaper is already a killer iPhone app: just click a bookmarklet in your desktop browser, and a cleaned-up, highly-readable version of the current page is sent to your phone to read later. Imagine what Instapaper can do for the iPad, a device that — unlike the iPhone — is built for heavy-duty reading. Instapaper's developer, Marco Arment, has done more than imagine: he might have Instapaper for iPad ready to go by iPad launch day next week!

In a blog post about the process of getting Instapaper ready for the big screen, Arment explains his motivation for creating an iPad specific version of the app: “I saw the pixel-doubled version of my app in the simulator. It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards. I don't think I'll want to run any pixel-doubled apps on my iPad in practice.”

So, instead of an ugly pixel-doubled version, we're getting a sexy reader that's iPad optimized and based on Apple's own design practices. When it came to dealing with the split-screen landscape view, Arment borrowed a page from the iPad version of Apple Mail. Despite some of the design restrictions of the device, and the fact that developers don't actually have iPads to test on, the screenshots look great.

Arment says an iPad without Instapaper isn't a device he wants to own, and I agree. In fact, Instapaper is really making me wish I had pre-ordered Apple's new device for myself.

About us: TBI Research is an industry research firm based in New York founded by former head of Merrill Lynch's Global Internet research practice, Henry Blodget.

Our flagship product is The Internet Analyst, a subscription-based research service that provides primary research and analysis of key trends in the digital media and ecommerce industries.

Our team of analysts have significant experience covering digital media and are constantly calling industry contacts, digging through reports and news feeds, and conducting additional proprietary research to provide you with the most up-to-date analysis and intelligence on the digital media industry.

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Its all about the iTunes Money!

Okay, we’ve all heard the news that Apple has opened a multi-patent (20 of them) lawsuit against mobile handset maker HTC. HTC is a mobile computing and cellular handset maker and subcontractor that makes quite a few handsets that run Android and Windows Mobile. They either make them and sell them themselves, or they’re subcontracted out by Google, Microsoft and various mobile carriers to design handsets. The company also creates custom skins and interfaces for Android and Windows Mobile that can better fit the overall design of the different handsets.The company is based in Taiwan and has been around since 1997.

Now, looking at the list of patents that aren’t in legalese or engineer-ese, some are quite laughable at best. It seems Apple invented and holds patents for ‘Object Oriented Operating Systems’, Touch Based Gestures that Unlock Mobile Communication Devices’, and even ‘Programming a CPU to Interact With an Operating System for Battery Saving Measures’. Further reading also indicated that Apple claims invention of ‘Multi-Touch’, ‘Phone CPU Undervolting’, ‘Large On-Screen Fisher Price Colored Icons’, and even ‘Applications and the Online Mobile Only Store That Sells Them’. So they’re suing HTC to stop Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile sales because they touch things too.

Pretty laughable to say the least. A few of the patents are even from 1995! If memory serves me correctly; Xerox invented the object oriented operating system with interactive icons back in the early and mid 1970s. And a company called Palm was working on a touch and gesture mobile device in 1995 and it was called the Palm. And Apple in the early and mid 80s tried suing Microsoft for copying its ‘Object Oriented Operating System’. Apple lost that one and software patents have been of dubiousness since then. Heck, Windows Mobile had touch screen and touch gesture capability before the first iPhone was a rumor and HTC and Toshiba made the handsets.

It is somewhat surprising that Apple received some of the patents in question, such as the patent on “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor”. When you really look at it (and show it to a licensed electrician), the patent basically is talking about saving power by supplying less voltage to a circuit and switching circuits on and off to do so. That’s obviously been done before (prior art), but its a given by the laws of nature (power = current * voltage). If that’s patentable, the concept of die shrinks and Moore’s Law should be patentable, overclocking and underclocking would be patentable, and a whole host of other things made possible by laws of nature, physics, and thermodynamics should be patentable as well.

I’m no patent lawyer and looking through the technical details of a good portion of these patents made my head hurt. I know my computer history very well, know the ins and outs of various operating systems from the last 20 years, and I know my way around all sorts of hardware.

So what’s really going on here? Why go after just HTC? They just make the handsets and a few modifications to the Android and Windows Mobile operating systems. There’s lots of other mobile handsets and a couple of other touch screen operating systems.

I think I know what’s going on here and it has nothing to do about patents.

It has everything to do with the iTunes revenue stream and walled garden that Apple has created. Its all about the money!

Let’s put technical and patent talk away now. When Apple released and made the iTunes Store, they created a massive revenue stream that included music, movies, tv shows, and apps for all their mobile devices (iPod, iPhone, and all things iTouchy). While Apple’s markup on their hardware sales (40% in most cases) is the highest in the industry, its all the deals they made with the entertainment industry to make content available to thier mobile portfolio that’s got Apple rolling in dough. And allowing developers to create applications for their mobile things also had Apple making dump trucks worth of cash from the cut they were taking in sales.

So to put it simply, anything associated with iTunes, including keeping all the hardware tied to it, is making Apple loads and piles of money. Follow me? Good.

Apple has already shown displeasure at the various music labels and tv and movie studios for double dipping and selling and licensing the same content on not only iTunes, but also Amazon, Pandora, MySpace, YouTube, their own respective sites, and Hulu. And those various companies have acquiescenced to Apple in some cases, but have also complained about Apple’s wall garden mentality of iTunes and iDevices only. Many developers are also taking their apps and either developing them for Windows Mobile and Android as well or they’ve moved past the iDevice App Store because of Apple’s sporadic, draconian, and inept App Store policies.

Still doesn’t explain the whole patent thing, right? But I am giving you a direction to think in. By suing HTC, Apple hopes to put a big stop to handset development in the Android and WinMo spaces. And to send a shot across the bow of Microsoft and Google, however indirectly that may be. Suing Google and or Microsoft would be suicide for Apple. They’d get squashed.

There’s one company that hasn’t been mentioned in this dispute. But they have been mentioned in another dispute with Apple’s mobile iTouchy devices. Its Adobe and their Flash platform.

We all know what Flash is. Its the video technology behind YouTube and all those TV shows and movies you watch on Hulu or CBS’s or NBC’s website. Its the games you play like Bejeweled and Collapse. Or how’s about all those games you play on Facebook like Farmville and Mafia Wars? Many business websites use Flash for their front end (UPS and Fedex off the top of my head).

That’s a lot of content that’s available on the Flash platform, and Adobe has a massive developer network that has been creating and developing with Flash and its development suite for years. They’re very close to releasing Flash 10.1 for quite a bevy of mobile devices which include Windows Mobile, Android, Zune, Blackberry, Nokia (Symbian and Maemo) and a few others (which will use Flash Lite). That’s alot of movies, music, tv shows, apps, and games that will be available for free or through other paid services on quite a large number of mobile devices.

Well, all except Apple’s mobile iTouch devices that is.

See, there’s that whole iTunes wall garden compound of Apple’s that contains most of Apple’s revenue stream. And Apple is scared. For the first time in a number of years, Apple has some serious competition to the iTunes hardware, software, and content ecosystem. There’s the Android OS and it’s App Market. The Windows Mobile 7 Series, its Windows Mobile Marketplace, the Zune players and the Zune Marketplace (and the availability of Xbox Live content too). Nokia’s handsets and its Symbian and Maemo OSes with the Ovi Store. And pretty soon Adobe’s going to enter the fray with Flash content on all those devices and operating systems. Even a mobile version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser is on the way and all the respective application plug-ins that come with that framework.

That’s a lot of competition for Apple on the hardware, software, web, and content front. And a direct threat to the iTunes walled garden revenue stream. So what does Apple do? It takes a bunch of its patents, even the old pre-return of Steve Jobs, and files a patent lawsuit in the hopes to at least stall the development and release of all that competition. Its that plain and simple. Apple has $40 billion in the bank and no debt. A patent lawsuit as a stalling tactic is a drop in the bucket for them; money-wise at least anyways.

Remember the tepid reaction to the iPad when it was revealed? Apple was just as surprised to the tepid reaction people were tepid to the product reveal. From showing off a giant iPhone that still used AT&T’s 3G data network, to showing off the so called full featured internet functions (with 1/4 of the NY Times webpage missing due to not including Flash), to Steve Jobs calling Flash buggy and dying technology and Adobe’s developers as lazy, and not to mention all the missing print content publishers who won’t release their content because of Apple’s diehard insistence to be keymaster and gatekeeper to all things App Store and its content. Even the games shown off weren’t all that impressive.

But by filling a stalling patent lawsuit, Apple hopes to hold off this onslaught of hardware and content competition and find a way to shore up its own revenue generating ecosystem to avoid another tepid reaction when the next iPhone is revealed.

Steve Job’s comments about Adobe and its developers really got Adobe sharpening its swords for a fight. They rallied the troops and partnered up with most of the big mobile players. They’re unleashing the ‘lazy’ developers, the ‘buggy’ Flash platform, and all that cross device content to as many mobile systems as possible.

I’ve been using my Motorola Droid for a week now and I’m amazed with everything I can do, how its done, and customize my handset to my liking. The screen is gorgeous and pretty soon I’ll be checking out a few Hulu shows, checking out a few upcoming video game trailers in HD Flash, and playing a few free games like Bejeweled and Collapse.

That type of freedom from all sorts of different sources and devices is what scares Apple most. They as a company have never truly competed outside of their walled compound. Its always been about only their hardware, their software, their content, and only the applications and content they allow in on their terms and conditions. Apple used to be the trendsetter, the innovator, the ‘Think Different’ crowd. Now they find themselves in a position they haven’t been in in years; playing catch up. They got complacent, greedy, and egotistical. And they’re going to pay for it.

The processor is an outdated 528MHz Qualcomm number, and the whole system is propped up, Motoblur and all, by 256MB of RAM. In terms of raw hardware specs, the Backflip is really no better than the Cliq, and more damningly, the G1. If you're the kind of person who snaps up phones from the bleeding edge, the Backflip isn't for you. Just buy a Droid.

The Software

Last I saw Motoblur, Motorola's social networking-centric Android skin, it was on the Motorola Devour, a similarly-placed Android phone on Verizon. I'm not a huge fan of the interface, but I get what it's going for, and who might like it—it makes sense for social networking hounds, even if it's a little clumsy sometimes.

But here's where it gets weird: The Backflip runs Motoblur atop Android 1.5, which means that at its core, its software is older than the G1's. And there's no way around it: This is a bad thing. New Google apps like Google Maps Navigation don't even show up in its App Market, 3rd party apps increasingly won't support it, and Android 1.6+ accoutrements like voice commands just aren't there. Add to that Motoblur's inherent slowness, and you've got a decidedly strained software experience.

This would be a dealbreaker—even for the smartphone noobies the Backflip is targeting—if not for one thing: Though they couldn't give me a timeframe, AT&T tells me that a software upgrade to 2.1 is coming—something which I couldn't confirm for the Devour, which shipped with a slightly more futureproof 1.6. On the one hand, this is reflective of a truly bizarre software and upgrade strategy on Motorola's part; on the other, it means that the Backflip could actually be a buyable phone, for the right user.

The Right User

If you've read through this review and you're feeling flat about the Backflip, that's fine. It's not for you! And honestly, it's not for me. There are objectively more capable phones on other carriers, and soon, probably, on AT&T as well. But if you're not even sure you need a smartphone, plan to spend most of your time texting or on Twitter or Facebook, don't really know about (or care to know about) the newest apps in the Android Market, and aren't bothered by quirks like Motorola's replacement of Google search with Yahoo search, don't count the Backflip out. Just keep in mind what we don't know for sure:

• When exactly to expect the software upgrade to Android 2.1
• That Motoblur on 2.1 will be significantly faster that Motoblur on 1.5 (The enhanced speed of 1.6 on the Devour could be attributed to its fast processor)
• That newer apps in generally will perform well on the Backflip's 528MHz processor
• That AT&T won't release another Android phone that'll instantly nullify the Backflip entirely.

These are some serious caveats for a new phone, to the point that even my tempered recommendation comes with a separate recommendation to wait and see—what Motoblur has in store for Android 2.1, what AT&T has in store for Android, and what retailers have in store for the Backflip's price. To us, the gadget nerds, the phone is basically unbuyable. But Android's future is as much about Backflips as about Nexus Ones—not because the Backflip is comparable to the Google Phone, but because it's not. As an agent from Android's budget future, the AT&T's firstborn gets a lot right.

It's more functional than the messaging/feature phones it's attacking

The backwards folding mechanism is surprisingly functional

Android 2.1 to come

Spacious keyboard

Launch price too high, though it will probably fall

The rear trackpad: great when the phone's unfolded, but useless when it's closed

Ships with Android 1.5

Resistive screen

Underwhelming hardware specs

Send an email to John Herrman, the author of this post, at jherrman@gizmodo.com.

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