Apple Is Totally Seriou...

Welcome, kids, to TIL – Today I Learned. Today’s TIL is “Don’t post your correspondence with AppleCare representatives or Apple will totally tell the government on you.” David Boles had a nice Apple monitor that died on him. He had a little trouble transferring AppleCare coverage to his new monitor after it pooped out and so he posted some advice on his blog. Nothing major, just “don’t forget to connect your AppleCare accounts.” Very innocuous. But then, from out of the inky shadows, comes Apple like the Spanish Inquisition, informing him he’s breaking the law worse than Josey Wales: Hello, I am one of the policy representatives here at Apple. It came to our concern that our policy was broken. It is illegal to transmit information from voicemails, e-mails, transactions, etc, into public or private blogs and forums, vlogs, as well as documentation onto the internet, except for the proper authorities. We have been informed that a conversation with a member of our Agreement Administration team has been posted on a blogging website. We do view all e-mails that are sent to our departments for security reasons. “This transmission may be privileged and may contain confidential information intended only for the person(s) named above. Any other distribution, retransmission, copying, or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please delete this message from your system.” This is a very strict policy that we enforce, and that the government is under watch of. We do ask that you take down the posting of the conversation that you had which was posted on “http://goinside.com/2012/01/26/warning-check-your-applecare-support-profile/” . If no compliance is made, further action will have to be forced upon. You will have 24 hours to take the post down. Thank you. Apple Policy Restrictions I suspect that this email didn’t come from a native English-speaker (“If no compliance is made, further action will have to be forced upon”) and it’s laughable that anyone would hold that “This transmission” garbage up as proof that you can’t post an email. Heck, I just reposted it so now Apple will have to sic the government on me, too. Anyway, it’s a fun situation that I’m sure will be cleared up by nobody caring about it in a few days.

What NBC.com’s Su...

Brands receptive to live stream promotional opportunities, NBC says.

Reuters: Facebook IPO T...

The drip-drop of financial news about Facebook ‘s impending initial public offering is starting to turn into a downpour. The company is planning to file its initial prospectus on Wednesday morning, Reuters is reporting, with the intention of raising a conservative $5 billion. The report, through Reuters subsidiary International Financing Review, also answers the question of which bank will lead — Morgan Stanley. The others will include Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, which had appeared to be in the lead position last year after it helped Facebook raise a $1.5 billion late-stage round . However, issues around that funding may have contributed to Morgan Stanley getting the top spot. If everything goes as planned with the SEC’s review, Facebook will likely go public in May. The general IPO time-frame has already been widely reported. The most interesting part of this latest news, if you’re not a banker, is the relatively low amount that Facebook is seeking. Previous reports had put it seeking up to0 $10 billion. Considering the middling performance of other recent tech IPOs, Facebook appears to be wary of selling too much stock before it knows more about how the market feels. For now, the valuation and share price are still unknown, although shares on private secondary markets are currently selling at prices that would make it worth above $80 billion .

Steam Mobile Apps Gradu...

I know I say this a lot, but man that was fast. Valve’s new pair of Steam mobile apps have been in their respective marketplaces for less than a week, and already they have graduated from beta status. That means that you, Mr. or Mrs. Game Enthusiast, will be able to sign into your Steam account on your iOS or Android device right now and begin chatting your far-flung friends or ogling new deals. As noted when the apps first made their appearance, they provide most of the functionality you’d find in the standard PC/Mac client. Communication and robust game shopping experiences aside, the Steam apps also provide access to new Steam info as well as news pulled from syndcated sources like Kotaku, ShackNews and, RockPaperShotgun. Of course, you won’t actually be able to play the games on your mobile device — look to services like Onlive if that’s your goal — but at least you’ll never miss a Holiday Sale ever again. That is of course unless you’re trapped in an aunt’s remote cabin without an internet connection, in which case you’ll need to while away the time the old-fashioned way. [via The Verge ]

Peavey Builds An Auto-T...

Guitar-maker Peavey has teamed up with audio electronics experts Anteres to create an auto-tuning guitar. While these things aren’t new – Gibson has had robotic tuners for a while – this system is unique in that it senses and corrects the pitch of the strings regardless of tuning, which means you can do all sorts of interesting tricks with vibrato even in what would amount to be an untuned guitar. Peavy describes it thus: The Peavey AT-200 guitar with the Antares Solid-Tune™ intonation system constantly monitors the precise pitch of each individual string and electronically makes any corrections necessary to ensure that every note of every chord and riff is always in tune, regardless of variables like finger position or pressure. The guitar is physically no different from any other electric except for an upgradable module to handle tuning. While you probably still have to tune this guitar a little, once it is set up you can change quite a bit about it programmatically, reducing the need to fiddle with machine heads during your red hot solo.