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Creative Commies. Xeni Jardin: Following up on yesterday's Boing Boing post about Bill Gates describing free culture advocates as a "modern-day sort of communists," reader Jaime whipped up this bit of Soviet Constructivist goodness. Further the cause, comrade! Link to full-size. Update: More propaganda here. [Boing Boing] 1:37:49 PM

Apple sued for iTunes monopoly practices. Cory Doctorow: An iTunes user is suing Apple under US anti-trust laws for locking non-iPod players out of playing back iTunes music. "Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice," the lawsuit states... "Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the lawsuit said. Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to. link (Thanks, Tom!) [Boing Boing] 1:37:37 PM

Is Podcasting the Next New Big Thing?. Discussion of podcasting and especially a list of things that will be needed: "First of all, the types of media will need to be expanded... Second, the user needs to have more choices for playback and data storage on different devices... Third, we¡¦ll need some options for authentication so that content can be personalized... Fourth, for some types of content, there is a need for ecommerce and epayment capabilities." Note: I've covered podcasting quite a bit lately; see the full coverage here. Note that by clicking on [Research] you can always get more information - try it here! By Mitchell Weisburgh, PILOTed, January 6, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 1:20:51 PM

Bill Gates is Coming to Your Living Room, Whether You Like It or Not. After having his presentation crash at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, Bill Gates gives a lengthy interview to CNet in which he discusses convergence and the new Media Centre PCs. XBox, Microsoft's gaming platform, plays a large role in this discussion. And it occurs to me that the major purpose of XBox isn't to complete with Sony and Sega but rather to establish a 'trusted platform', where the content vendor (of music, video, games, or text) has control over the hardware. Asked about ever-expanding intellectual property legislation near the end of the interview, Gates comments, "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises." Well now, perhaps we communists need a flag, then. By Michael Kanellos, CNet News.Com, January 5, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 1:20:13 PM

SanDisk Flip Up SD Card with USB SanDisk is showing off their new SD card with a built-in USB plug. We showed another similar one recently and I have to say, I think both designs are awesome. SanDisk's might be a little more robust, but it does have a moving part, so who knows. Either way, it's very slick¡Xalmost makes me wish everything I owned used SD. SanDisk Demonstrates Highly Innovative SD Memory Card with Built-in USB Connectivity [LivingRoom] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 1:15:24 PM

Bill Gates Keynote Gets The Blue Screen Of Death No news isn't always good news, and Bill Gates didn't have much to say at last night's keynote address: nothing new about the XBox, and he pushed his lovefest with TiVo and the slowly-developing plans for digital media transfers between storage and players. Best of all: The presentation was marred by several technical glitches, including a Windows XP Media Center slide show that couldn't be launched and an Xbox game demonstration that abruptly ended with a blue-screen memory error. Gates Touts TiVo Deal at CES [ZDNet] - Choire2 (choire@choiresicha.com) [Gizmodo] 1:10:35 PM

Samsung Speech-to-Text Phone Since I was cursed with stubby fingers, texting's always been a pain. So you can be sure I'll be scrambling to land one of the first SCH-a890s, equipped with voice-recognition technology. Still, I guess I shouldn't get too excited--so-called QuickPhrase only recognizes a list of pre-programmed sayings, like "Will call you later." But I'm guessing it won't take long for them to offer firmware upgrades that greatly expand the number of phrases. I give it 6 months before the SCH-a890 can understand such SMS standbys as "Sorry, baby, but I was out drinking with Rob and lost my house keys." If I had a nickel for every time I've sent that note... Speed, speech key in new Samsung handsets [InfoSync World] - tetsuo24 [Gizmodo] 1:09:57 PM

Bits and Bytes: Video on Demand, iPhone While Joel's getting settled at CES¡Xand I should remind Joel right now that the Vegas Strip hookers are actually not an official part of CES¡Xlet's catch up on bits of the morning news: ¡P What Apple won't ever, ever give you: the iPhone. ¡P What you can actually get for your Apple products: iPod gadgets, including iBoom, iBoost, and the memorably named iTop Button Relocator. ¡P Gadgets enter the age of design before tech. [Splitting the Adam] ¡P Video on demand inches closer to usefulness: Cinema Now makes deal with MSN TV. ¡P Free(ish) Crackberry through Orbitz. [Hotel Chatter.] ¡P Holographic disk storage: fantasy hologram girlfriend not included. [Tom's Hardware] - Choire2 (choire@choiresicha.com) [Gizmodo] 1:09:37 PM

Motorola and Burton's Bluetooth Helmet and Beanies Here are Motorola's new Bluetooth helmet and beanie (tuques), co-designed with snowboard gear maker Burton. They work with the new Bluetooth jacket. Moto also unveiled a new line of Bluetooth headphone and audio dongles, allowing you to dump audio from any device with a miniJack to wireless headphones. (Thanks, David!) Press Release [Motorola] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 1:08:50 PM