Geek Gestalt

Update 6:08 p.m. PST: This story has been changed to add comment from Google, and to address streaming adult content on the iPhone.

LAS VEGAS--Apple might not want anything to do with it, but if one thing is clear, it's that porn on the iPhone is going to be huge.

While there don't seem to be any porn-related apps available for the iPhone, there is a plethora of adult entertainment available on the Web, and a growing amount of that content is being optimized for Apple's hit device.

At the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) here Friday, I had a chance to talk to two executives from Digital Playground, one of the world's leading porn producers, about the latest technological advances their company, and their competitors, are implementing, and it seems that the iPhone is a very big piece of the puzzle.

AEE is being put on at the same time as the Consumer Electronics Show, and many at the adult show are looking to CES for new technology to adapt their content for.

One major goal for Digital Playground is to make as much of its content available on the iPhone as possible, said the company's founder and director, a man who goes by the name of Joone. Essentially, the idea is to make the device an extension of the Web, so that when people buy memberships, they can watch movies on their computer, or on their iPhone, without having to distinguish between the available content.

The front door of the iPhone-optimized Digital Playground Web site. The company is one of the leaders in making adult content available for the iPhone.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

"We're trying to make it transparent," Joone said, "so that guy doesn't have to worry about whether to purchase something new, so he can say, 'I want to watch it on my iPhone, or I want to watch it on my computer.'"

Joone said these days the tools available to content producers make it extremely easy to port content produced originally for the Web to the iPhone. As a result, Digital Playground--and its competitors--are going to have to put much of their efforts in this area into figuring out how to give their customers the best possible, and simplest, user experience.

"Just click and watch," Joone said. "So it might not give the same kind of experience as on a computer, but you get to what you want pretty quickly."

To date, said Farley Cahen, Digital Playground's vice president of new media, the company has made about 300 full-length movies available for the iPhone, and that it has the first fully-optimized site for the platform.

What that means, he said, is that users can simply enter the normal Digital Playground URL into their iPhone instead of needing some special mobile URL. The site "sniffs" the device and automatically brings up the optimized site, Cahen explained.

"You can sort by performer, keyword, or movie title," Cahen said, "and over Wi-Fi, or 3G, it works really well."

Of course, Digital Playground isn't the only adult content producer making their movies available on the iPhone. A Google search for "iPhone porn" returns millions of results. But Digital Playground seems to be among the most committed to building an iPhone-optimized site suitable for large amounts of its content.

Down the line, he said, there are a series of advances coming to the company's iPhone library.

Photos: Adult Entertainment Expo crashes the CES party

One, he said, is the ability to parse a movie by scene, since, as he said, "a lot of adult content is consumed in scenes, rather than full-length."

For now, the point is, someone watching a Digital Playground movie on the iPhone would need to either watch it straight through, or fast-forward to his or her desired point.

Another innovation, he said, would be social aspects, like ratings and the ability to see which clips have been viewed the most times.

And so, combined with the company's DVD offerings, as well as its traditional Web content, the growing availability of Digital Playground movies for the iPhone means it can "allow our consumer to access our content in the highest quality however, wherever, and whenever they want."

Cahen said that Digital Playground wants the ability to make an iPhone application, which would make it even easier for its users to access its content. But Apple has made it clear: No porn apps.

I asked him if Google's Android phone might offer an alternative, given that Google is far more hands-off about what kinds of apps it is allowing on its smartphone than Apple, though it does have restrictions on the applications available through its official Android Market.

Cahen suggested that while Android seems to present Digital Playground and other adult content producers the option to create applications, he said he is not yet sold on the platform.

"They're a ways off from actually competing with the iPhone" on functionality, he said. "The general features of the iPhone far outweigh the (Android) features."

A Google spokesperson said, "Android Market is not the only source for Android applications. Any Web site can post applications for download which can be installed via the Android browser. However, we have built the Market to ensure quality applications and security for the user, and we recommend safe downloads through this service.

For Digital Playground, making content available on mobile platforms isn't just altruism. In fact, Cahen said, the company has a tremendous conversion rate for people who visit its iPhone site.

As a result, the company is going to continue to work on new developments for the platform, and Cahen said the biggest innovation that it will have down the line is likely to be streaming porn.

However, some other producers, such as Pornhub, already offer streaming adult content.

For companies like Digital Playground, streaming may well be a holy grail. Cahen said he sees a huge demand for live streaming video of porn stars doing their business, even including their preparations for work.

During his keynote address at CES Thursday, Ford CEO Alan Mulally--along with several other Ford executives--emphasized that the car giant is interested in being a leader in in-car connectivity.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

LAS VEGAS--Ford on Thursday announced a series of innovations aimed at giving drivers more a higher degree of Internet connectivity as well as a slew of tools devoted to helping them get to where they're going in the most efficient way possible.

The car giant's new initiatives were unveiled as part of CEO Alan Mullaly's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show here. And while some of the technology Mulally and a series of subordinates discussed was part of Ford's previously announced and available Sync partnership with Microsoft, much was all-new.

Mulally began his talk by touting the fact that Ford is nearing 1 million Sync-equipped cars on the road. Then he set the tone for the keynote by explaining that the company's major technological goal for the near future of its vehicles is to load them with as much connectivity as possible, all in a bid to bridge the gap between drivers' homes and their ultimate destinations.

One surprise early in the address was the unexpected arrival on-stage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who gave his own keynote talk Wednesday evening here.

Ballmer was really just window dressing, though, for an hour-long advertisement for the latest elements of the Sync program and the ways Ford hopes to bring a never-offline state of existence to the owners of its vehicles.

Highlighting the Sync partnership between Ford and Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, joined Mulally on stage during the keynote. Click on image for more photos.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

"We are a car company," Mulally said, "but we are learning to act like an electronics company."

Connectivity was definitely the watch-word Thursday as each Ford executive to speak talked about a different piece of the puzzle that the company is working on to make sure its customers are always-on.

First up was Derrick Kuzak, Ford's group vice president for global product development. He explained that the company's goal is based on three things: beamed-in connectivity, such as from satellite; brought-in connectivity, such as from drivers' own cell phones; and built-in connectivity, such as dash displays.

And all together, Kuzak said, Ford wants to build a platform for drivers that emphasizes speed, scale and affordability.

Kuzak talked about one innovation the company has been working on at its Virtual Test Track Environment, or Virttex, called MyKey. This, he said, is a technology designed to promote safe driving habits for teenagers by allowing parents to program an ignition key to limit a car's top speed, as well as the volume of its sound system.

Another advance Ford is promising is the ability to synchronize applications from mobile devices like Apple's iPhone with the car. That would mean, apparently, being able to run applications like Pandora, via the iPhone, by using control buttons on the car's steering wheel. Similarly, it should be possible for drivers to get access and manipulate their Facebook or MySpace accounts using voice commands.

Later in the keynote, Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electrical and electronics systems engineering, explained how the company plans to incorporate human machine interfacing (HMI) into its cars. The first application of that, he said, would be something called SmartGauge.

So, for example, a driver of a Ford with this feature would find him or herself coached by the system on how to get maximum fuel efficiency out of their hybrid vehicle.

This, of course, is essentially hypermiling, but with an educational assist from the vehicle itself.

Buczkowski also unveiled a futuristic prototype of a car dash that is packed with smart digital features, as well as an avatar companion known as the Emotive Voice Activation (EVA) system.

EVA, Buczkowski explained, would allow drivers to speak voice commands and basically interact with the car, getting intelligent directions--including those between point A and B that are most fuel efficient--as well as recommendations for music appropriate for any given situation and much more.

Much of what was on display Thursday seemed like it wouldn't be ready any time soon. But on the other hand, it was a fascinating glimpse of what is surely just around the corner, not just for Fords but for all vehicles.

And it's interesting to see such advanced technology coming from a company that has seemed in other ways to be anything but ahead of the times.

Still, with a company as large as Ford, there is bound to be some cutting edge thinking, and it was definitely on display Thursday.

LAS VEGAS--MindArk, the developer of the science fiction-based virtual world, Entropia Universe, has announced that it is spinning off the functional game side of its business into a separate company.

Known as First Planet Company, the new entity will be a stand-alone company that will run the actual virtual world, which it is calling Planet Calypso. MindArk will continue to operate the platform side of its business, focusing on tools that it can make available to partners looking for a custom virtual world.

In recent months, MindArk has put a lot of its energy in developing relationships with outside entities that want to build their own planets in Entropia Universe. To date, it has signed up five partners.

But as part of the spin-off arrangement, announced here at CES, First Planet Company will be treated as one of those partners.

Among others that have set up shop in the virtual world are a Chinese company that is investigating using the virtual world for cultural purposes and a firm that is looking at using Entropia Universe as a virtual theme park. And still another is looking at giving the game's players immersive environments based on hit Hollywood films.

LimeWire 5.0 allows users to share files with friends on any Jabber-compatible system, as well as to have search results incorporate files from the LimeWire store.

(Credit: Lime Wire)

LAS VEGAS--Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing.

With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a "personal sharing network."

The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want--and feel comfortable with--content from people they know.

Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire--which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month--will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.

In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users.

Essentially, the way the new feature works is that users will be able to decide whether to make files--photographs, for example--available to anyone on LimeWire, or just to people on their buddy lists. Similarly, users will be able to search for files from their friends. And this will take advantage of a sharing system that tens of millions of people already use, something that Lime Wire hopes will encourage many on the service to adopt the social elements.

Searle said he hopes that the social feature will allow users to trust the sources of the content they share across the system in a way that's not really possible when sharing with strangers.

NASA said Thursday that it has tested a balloon that ultimately will be able to carry one ton of research equipment to more than 100,000 feet.

(Credit: NASA)

NASA said Thursday it has performed a test of a prototype super pressure balloon that could carry as much as a ton of research equipment to heights of 110,000 feet or more for up to 100 days.

The balloon, which was launched on December 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, is 7 million cubic feet and is said to be the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully sealed balloon ever flown. When the project--which NASA is conducting in coordination with the National Science Foundation--is completed, the space agency should have a 22 million cubic foot balloon to work with.

NASA said that long-duration high-altitude balloon missions are far more cost-effective than satellites and that a chief benefit is that the instruments used can be easily retrieved and re-used.

The test flight made it to an altitude of 111,000 feet and has been at or near that height for 11 days so far.

"The flight tested the durability and functionality of the scientific balloon's unique pumpkin-shaped design and novel material," NASA said in a statement. "The material is a special lightweight polyethylene film, about the thickness of ordinary plastic food wrap."

'MacHeads,' a new movie about the Apple and Macintosh culture, will premiere Wednesday at MacWorld.

(Credit: MacHeads)

It's a long-established truism in technology journalism: That stories about Apple are pretty much guaranteed to do better than just about any other subject.

And why? It's certainly not because of the total size of the user base of Apple products. Rather, as has been very well chronicled in newspapers, magazines, online and in books, the passion felt by the community of Apple users far outstrips its size.

Now, with the release of MacHeads, you can add movies to the roster of media documenting the full fervor of the Mac faithful and their particular brand of do-it-yourself brand evangelism.

MacHeads, a 54-minute film by the Israeli director and producer team of Kobi and Ron Shely, has its world-premiere Wednesday with a screening at Macworld, a suitable place for a film about 25 years (or more) of Mac fanaticism, especially because much of it was filmed at Macworld 2007.

It's also a bit of an ironic location to launch a cinematic discussion of hard-core Mac fandom, given the recent announcement that Apple will end its participation in Macworld after this year, a development that could well spell the end for the last large-scale physical gathering of the very people the movie is about.

In a way, however, the end of Macworld as we've known it plays right into the hands of the Shely brothers, as one of the chief arguments their film makes is that the newest generation of Mac users depends much more on the Internet for community than Macworld itself or the users-group meetings that have taken place in any number of cities around the world for so many years.

Either way, though, one thing is made abundantly clear in MacHeads: As long as there are Mac users, new or old, on working computers or museum pieces, the so-called cult of Mac will stay alive and well.

As a movie, I found MacHeads to be rather uneven. It struck me as haphazardly edited, and it struck me that the filmmakers were never completely clear with themselves whether their movie was about Mac users, their passion, Apple, the computers themselves or the transformation of a small, yet unbelievably vocal community.

Probably, that's because it's about all of the above. But where MacHeads succeeds in amply demonstrating the extent of the feeling the faithful have for their beloved Macs, it suffers from an obvious lack of clarity.

Still, it's kind of fun listening to the so-called MacHeads opening up to the world about their obsession. It's also not at all unfamiliar. I myself am writing this on a Mac, and between my wife and I, we have five Macs, two iPods and two iPhones. And she would probably recount proudly that she nearly dumped me early in our relationship when I told her that I was considering buying a PC for my next computer.

In the film, this distaste for all things Windows takes many forms, some funny and others even more funny.

Early in the movie, for example, the well-known sex author and blogger Violet Blue, says, with only the slightest hint of irony, "I've never knowingly slept with a Windows user. Ever. Ever. That would never, ever happen."

Later, DigiBarn computer museum co-founder Bruce Damer talks about Apple taking on IBM and PCs as "the force fighting against the beige banality."

While the Mac--in its many iterations--is the technological focus of the devotion of the MacHeads, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is clearly the human form.

And together, Jobs and the products his company makes comprise a church of sorts, with thousands, if not millions, of followers.

"If you go online and look up the definition of a cult," Shawn King, the executive producer and host of Your Mac Life, says in the film, "Mac users are a cult. You know, complete fealty to one leader."

Fealty and devotion often have a physical component, and for some Mac fans, that's a tattoo. MacHeads, then, features at least two cases of users with Apple logos emblazoned on their legs.

But some Mac users clearly think of their computers as an extension of themselves--a sentiment that some might laugh at, but which others will understand fully.

"Only Mac people really put stickers all over their laptops," digital media strategist Deborah Schultz says in the movie, "and I think it's indicative that this is kind of something that is close to me like my clothing and it's an identification."

These days, with Apple flying high on the strength of the massive success of the iPhone, the iPod and the Mac line, it's easy to forget that in the mid-90s, the company was on the verge of failure. And for the 25 million or so Mac users at the time, events at the time like Macworld were a place to come and share their hopes and fears about their future computing.

"You have to be an optimist to be a Mac user," said former MacAddict columnist Joseph Holmes in the film, "because there were those tough times when we thought, you know, maybe I'll have to use a Windows system. Maybe there won't be a Mac in a couple of years. It was kind of tough."

Or, as fellow Mac fan Debroah Shadovitz put it, "We would have entered the dark ages if Apple went away. We couldn't let that happen."

As is the basis for endless business school case studies today, of course, Jobs returned from the Siberian exile of forced life away from Apple, and brought the company back to glory, first with the iMac and then with the company's next--and maybe biggest--game changer, the iPod.

Oddly, MacHeads hardly covers the iPod, and its importance in making Apple what it is today. I think that's because the whole point of the film is to focus on the passion of a niche group of tech users, and the iPod has been such a mainstream hit that it is the dominant portable music player today, hardly the kind of device that establishes the us against them mentality that many of the Mac fans in the film evince.

Yet, the movie feels like it has a hole without a discussion of the iPod, and I think that's evidence of the lack of clarity I talked about earlier--the indecisiveness as to what the film is really about.

Because this is well-covered ground, there is little in MacHeads that would surprise anyone who is familiar with the cult of Mac. Yet, because that community is so visible and outspoken, the movie is bound to have an audience--at least of the already converted. Whether it will appeal to those outside the fold is less likely, to me, at least.

No matter, though. Apple's fan base alone is large enough to give the Shely brothers a sizable potential audience, even if many of those people really just want to see how their kind is portrayed on film.

After all, in the end, what makes the cult of Mac powerful, and interesting, is the people.

"It's the community that you want to talk about," says Shawn King in the film. "Don't love Apple, love the community."

Bandai's iPhone version of I Love Katamari is one of the most popular games on the mobile platform. This March, iPhone game developers will gather in San Francisco to promote the platform.

(Credit: Bandai)

While there are more than 10,000 applications for the iPhone, many of the most popular ones are games. A quick glance at the top 25 paid applications reveals that 18 are games; games comprise 14 of the top 25 free iPhone apps as well. And those ratios are likely to hold for the foreseeable future.

That's most likely what led the organizer of the Virtual Goods summit to announce on Tuesday the first iPhone game conference, dubbed the iGames Summit, slated for March 19 in San Francisco.

"The market for iPhone games is exploding, and we're organizing our first event focused on this vibrant market," organizer Charles Hudson wrote in an e-mail announcing the event. "Our half-day event will bring together leading iPhone game developers, investors, and industry executives to share their collective wisdom on what's working today and where this exciting industry is heading."

On the event's still-rudimentary Web site, several leading iPhone developers are listed as having already committed to participating in the summit. Among them are Tapulous, which published the mega-hit Tap Tap Revenge, a sort of Guitar Hero for the iPhone; Zynga, a leading developer of games for sites like Facebook and MySpace; and SGN, another leading iPhone game developer.

What, exactly, will take place at the summit remains unclear, but the announcement of such an event makes sense, given the success of the platform, the number of people making games for it, and the adaptability of the iPhone--with its accelerometer, touch screen and rabid user base--for games.

Updated at 5:28 p.m. to include additional data and analyst perspective.

Though the retail economy suffered what appears to be one of the bleakest holiday seasons in recent memory, it looks as though the video games industry bucked that disastrous trend.

That's one conclusion that can be drawn from holiday Xbox 360 sales numbers released by Microsoft Monday, in which the company reported that its console business had the most successful holiday season in its history.

All told, Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360, said Microsoft boosted the Xbox's worldwide sales lead over Sony's PlayStation 3 to 8 million units, explaining that, based on internal data, the Xbox has now sold 28 million units globally, compared with the PS3's 20 million.

A big part of the success of the Xbox 360 during the holiday season likely comes from the September drop in price of the console to $199, the lowest-price next-generation console.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft said its holiday data came from internal sales numbers and weekly sales data available in some regions, like Europe, as well as past years in which December console sales are typically twice that of November, which in turn are typically twice that of October.

In November, Microsoft sold 836,000 Xboxes in the United States, suggesting that if Greenberg is right, the company moved about 1.67 million of the consoles in December.

No official North American video game sales numbers are available yet for December. They are expected to be released on January 15 by industry analyst the NPD Group.

To be sure, it can be confusing comparing North American sales numbers with global figures, especially when the numbers are simultaneously based on different kinds of sources.

But there does appear to be ample evidence that the video game industry is proving more resilient to the economic crisis, if not outright recession-proof, than other industries, and data provided by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo seem to be at the heart of it.

Nintendo, for example, sold 2.04 million Wiis in November, and while reports of shortages of the console seem less prevalent than in 2007, it is likely it did extremely well during the holidays. While nonscientific, of course, if Greenberg's formula is correct, Nintendo would have sold about 4 million Wiis in December.

For its part, Sony said recently that sales of the PlayStation 3 between January 1, 2008, and November 30, 2008, were up 60 percent from the same period a year earlier, though the company has not yet released any kind of figures for December.

"We've had a solid holiday season and have delivered consistent growth throughout this year. Two thousand eight was a pivotal year for PlayStation with the best software line up in the industry, a dramatic expansion of PlayStation Network including the launches of the video delivery service and the beta of the PlayStation Home," Ian Jackson, vice president of sales for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in a statement. "Early internal data points to an increase of more than 130 percent of PS3 hardware sales for the holiday season--since Black Friday--and we're also seeing a growth of nearly 40 percent in total PS3 hardware sales for the calendar year. We remain confident this momentum will continue into the new year."

But Sony said that the November sales drop was an anomaly due to "an abnormally strong month due to a price cut (with) the introduction of the 40GB PS3."

"From a hardware perspective, I think the clear (holiday) winner is Nintendo," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, "and Microsoft has also benefited by cutting the (Xbox) price in September."

Sebastian added that Sony must address the challenges it faces this year, among them that the price of the PS3 is significantly higher than its competitors, as well as the fact that the console's internal Blu-ray drive has not driven the kind of sales Sony had hoped.

In the early days of the next-generation console wars, it was generally assumed that it would be a three-way race between the Xbox, the PS3 and the Wii. But because of the massive popularity of the Wii, Sony and Microsoft no longer compare their consoles' performances to that of Nintendo's.

The rationale seems to be that the Xbox and PS3 are completely different types of machines than the Wii, given the former's reliance on high-quality graphics and superior performance and the latter's focus on more casual games intended to appeal to a broad audience.

Whether that is semantics is a question neither Sony nor Microsoft seem eager to answer. In fact, both frequently make the point that Wii owners often also own either an Xbox or a PS3, if not both.

Of course, that is music to Nintendo's ears, and its growing confidence is borne out by the tremendous sales of the Wii since its launch in November 2006.

And to many, the most remarkable thing about the Wii's success is that it continues unabated.

According to Nintendo, the Wii has sold 15.4 million units since its launch, with 8.02 million of those consoles selling between January 1, 2008, and November 30, 2008. That means more than half of all Wiis bought in the U.S. were sold in 2008.

For the Xbox, the biggest strategic move to date has been the lowering of the console's entry-level offering to $199, making it the cheapest next-gen console, lower even than the $249 Wii. By comparison, the most inexpensive PS3 costs $399.

Interestingly, though, a recent study conducted by Nielsen Media Research, the clear winner among all consoles when measured by minutes played is neither the Wii, the Xbox 360 nor the PS3. In fact, the study concluded, the venerable PlayStation 2, still the most successful console of all time, continues to dominate players' time, even now.

All told, fully 30.2 percent of console minutes played were on the PS2, according to the study, more than twice the third-place Wii's 13.5 percent. The Xbox 360 came in second, with 18.3 percent, while, in fifth place, with 7.7 percent, the PS3 was embarrassed by the fourth-place finish of the original Xbox.

It's not surprising that the PS2 would come in first in such a study, given that there are more than 100 million of the consoles in players' hands.

But the runner-up finish by the Xbox was a victory of sorts for Microsoft, and a vindication of the efforts it has put into its Xbox Live service.

In fact, Greenberg said Monday that Xbox Live grew to 17 million members by the end of 2008, from 14 million at the end of October.

And the service--which offers members thousands of downloadable games, as well as movies and TV shows--also saw its revenue jump 84 percent, Greenberg said.

To Sebastian, the biggest advantages that Microsoft and Nintendo have over Sony is that the video gaming market has shown a clear preference for the more casual play that the Wii and Xbox Live offer.

"Sony has not been able to capture much of that market," Sebastian said.

Next week, NPD will release its December U.S. sales data, and it is certain that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will all issue press releases touting the successes of their respective platforms.

But asked why it decided to release its global lifetime sales numbers Monday, rather than wait until next week, Greenberg said, "All this data is based on our own sales data. This is (information) we have available, so we'd rather share this data now, rather than sitting on (it)."

Updated January4 at 3:04 p.m.: This story has been changed to correct the number of members of the Wikimedia Foundation's board.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is "absolutely" not out of a job at the Wikimedia Foundation, according to the foundation's director of communications.

On Saturday, Valleywag editor Owen Thomas reported that Wales was "out of a job," writing, "Imagine an online encylopedia anyone can edit -- and no one can run. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's...cofounder, is no longer a board member of the site's nonprofit foundation. Who's in charge here?"

It was reported Saturday that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is no longer on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. But the director of the board said the report was not true.

(Credit: Wikimedia Foundation)

The Valleywag report didn't cite any sources saying that Wales was no longer on the foundation's board, though it did point out that Wales' seat on the board--along with those of two others--had expired on December 31, 2008.

But in an e-mail to CNET News, Sue Gardner, the director of the foundation, wrote, "(t)here's nothing to it. Jimmy is a much-valued board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I expect he will hold that role permanently: I know of no reason for anyone to speculate otherwise."

In addition, Jay Walsh, the foundation's director of communications, said that Wales is "absolutely" still a member of the board and that he, along with the two other members, had been "unanimously" confirmed for another term on the board.

Wales' official position is Community Founder Trustee. According to Walsh, the Wikimedia Foundation's board decided that rather than make Wales' appointment infinite, or indefinite, it would allow his seat to come up for re-appointment at the end of each term, giving Wales a way to bow out if he needed to do so for any reason.

"I don't foresee any (time) in the near future where he wouldn't continue in that position he holds," Walsh said.

Indeed, in an e-mail sent on December 28, 2008, to the Wikimedia Foundation's e-mail list, board chair Michael Snow wrote, among other things, "We...had a unanimous vote to re-appoint Jimmy Wales to his position as Community Founder Trustee."

Wales did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Valleywag's Thomas.

Last April, the foundation re-organized its board, formalizing Wales' position as the Community Founder Trustee, and setting forth its current structure, in which the board is intended to be comprised of 10 members, including Wales, three community-elected seats, four "specific expertise" seats, and two chapter seats.

As of right now, the board has just seven members and is still looking for three more, said Walsh.

Following on the success of their hit do-it-yourself magazine, the people behind Make will now bring their efforts to public television.

On Saturday, Make: Television will debut, a partnership between the magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television. All episodes will also be available for DRM-free download in HD, on YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, and Blip.tv.

"Make: is the DIY series for a new generation," a release about the new show began. "It celebrates 'makers'--the inventors, artists, geeks, and just plain everyday folks who mix new and old technology to create new-fangled marvels. The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode inspires millions to think, create and, well, make."

The show will focus on the same kind of activities and people that have filled the pages of Make magazine. Among those featured in the first episode, for example, are Cyclecide, a group that travels the country putting on a bicycle rodeo; the maker of a cat-feeder built from an old VCR; and the man behind the "laser harp," a musical instrument played by strumming laser strings.

For some time, Make has been producing video content that has been available online. But now, for the first time, it is creating all-new content that is intended for television.

Make is also behind Maker Faire, a two-day DIY festival that takes place each year in both San Mateo, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

The launch of the show comes at a difficult time for media, what with layoffs across the industry and a weakening environment for advertising. But Make senior editor Philip Torrone said that things are going well for the magazine and that it is doing as well as it ever has.

One explanation for that would seem to be that as the economy falters and people struggle to make ends meet, Make helps them learn to do things on their own, without spending a lot on pre-produced goods. And, because it fosters a do-it-yourself ethos, the magazine--and its related media--is attractive to those interested in becoming more self-reliant.

Whether the TV series will be a success is unknown. But the fact that Twin Cities Public Television and American Public Television have decided that now is a good time to launch the show is a sign that people, there at least, believe that the time is right to promote DIY to a larger audience.