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Two words: Machu Picchu. Awe inspiring. (@ Macchu Picchu)

The latest in Peruvian fashion. (@ Aeropuerto Internacional Mariscal Sucre)

Sky over California. I frittered away February in Patagonia now I'm happy to be home again.

Sunrise over the Santa Cruz mountains. (@ SFO)

I just unlocked the "Century Club" badge on @foursquare!

I just unlocked the "Century Club" badge on @foursquare!

Steve Jobs replied in his typically short and, unfortunately, somewhat vague response: We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps. Sent from my iPhone On the surface, our interpretation of this response is that the new in-app subscription rules simply don't apply to Software-as-a-Service. And, if you review the new guidelines and press materials that Apple has released, all the context is specifically related to publishers of content. Based on that interpretation, apps such as DropBox and even TinyGrab may not be subject to the new rules. Readability's rejection, however, shows there are some borderline cases where the line between publisher and service provider is a bit blurry. Hopefully, Apple will provide more clarity on this issue.

we believe that your new policy smacks of greed. Subscription apps like ours represent a tiny sliver of app sales that represent a tiny sliver of your revenue. You’ve achieved much of your success in hardware sales by cultivating an incredibly impressive app ecosystem. Every iPad or iPhone TV ad puts the apps developed by companies like ours front and center. It was a healthy and mutually beneficial dynamic: apps like ours get exposure and you get to show the world how these apps make your hardware shine. That’s why we’re a bit baffled here.

ever mind the fact that 30% is a ridiculous amount to ask us to fork over, considering that we already pay $99 a year for the privilege to develop apps for the Mac App Store and a further $99 a year to develop apps for the iOS store. Never mind that Apple also get a cut of any revenue that we generate from selling our apps through their stores, they now want in on our account and subscription service. However by doing this they’ve just prevented and locked us out of ever being able to introduce the TinyGrab app into the Mac App Store, as well as not being able to ship updates to the TinyGrab iPhone app. Here’s why… Remember that account system we sell via TinyGrab.com? Well if you’re a paying customer it actually unlocks features in the app which are closed off to free users. These are features like FTP uploads. Infringement Number 1: “Apps that unlock or enable additional features or functionality with mechanisms other than the App Store, except as approved in section 11.13, will be rejected”

Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.

Blogging has legs — it’s been growing now for more than a decade, but it’s not a “new thing” anymore. Underneath the data in the article there’s an interesting super-trend that the Times misses: people of all ages are becoming more and more comfortable publishing online. If you’re reading this blog you probably know the thrill of posting and getting feedback is addictive, and once you have a taste of that it’s hard to go back. You rode a bike before you drove a car, and both opened up your horizons in a way you hadn’t imagined before. That’s why blogging just won’t quit no matter how many times it’s declared dead.

Fourteen percent of online adults are making some effort to write regularly in public! That remains a phenomenal fact; if you’d predicted it a decade ago, as only a handful of visionaries did, you’d have been dismissed as a nut (or maybe a “cyber-utopian”). So the actual story — which, to be fair, the Times’ article mostly hews to (it’s the headline and lead that skew it more sensationally) — is that blogging keeps growing, but it’s losing popularity among teens.

Famed rapper and PS3 hacker Geohot asked for donations on Friday to fund his defense against Sony and got all he needed by Monday. Geohot, aka George Hotz, firmly believes that he has done nothing wrong. When he and the hacker group known as fail0verflow posted the PS3 rootkey online, allowing saavy consumers to install any operating system on the game console, he was not breaking any laws because he paid for Sony's hardware and doesn't have to follow their EULA.

Today, Facebook chat is available to Hotmail customers worldwide, wherever Facebook is available.

The chipmaker yesterday added i3, mobile i5, and mobile Core i7 dual-core chips to the list of Sandy Bridge processors for sale. Many of the initial Sandy Bridge processors listed--and shipped--back in January were quad-core only.

Bundled packages of MacBook Pros reportedly being delivered to resellers and Apple Stores are set to be unwrapped for Steve Jobs' birthday, AppleInsider can confirm. Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive, turns 56 on February 24. And all signs from within the company suggest that it will use that day -- a Thursday as opposed to the traditional Tuesday -- to unveil the new notebooks, according to people familiar with the matter.

I desperately wanted to tell you that one or the other was demonstrably better. But I can't. Both dropped calls when I was driving, walking inside and outside my house and sitting still. Counting bars didn't help, because if I moved in any direction I got different (and often-conflicting) readings on both phones. So while I can't tell you which one is better, it's not for lack of trying.

See the results of our Macbreak Weekly poll updating live at:

What does Google need with (part of) your child’s security number? That’s what privacy advocates were asking, prompting Google to withdraw a requirement that parents entering their children in its popular “Doodle-4-Google” provide the last four digits of a child’s social security number.

Facebook has hired Alexandre Hohagen, the top Google executive in Latin America, to be its vice president for sales in the region, the company said in a press release issued in São Paolo last week. Mr. Hohagen had helped to establish Google’s Latin American offices some six years ago and later served as general manager of Google Brazil and then as vice president of Google Latin America.

Microsoft has pulled a software update for Samsung phones running its Windows Phone 7 OS after it caused problems with those devices, according to the company. "We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones," Microsoft said in a statement.