Give Retweets a Chance
Atebits support FAQ on Twitter’s new-style retweets and Tweetie’s support for them.  ★ 

Bart’s Blackboard
“I do not have power of attorney over first graders.”  ★ 

Dave Winer Says Stewart Alsop Is Right About the Droid
And I agree with Winer about the iPhone: call quality sucks. It doesn’t matter if it’s technically AT&T’s fault or Apple’s, since we don’t have a choice.  ★ 

CrunchPad Saga Ends Bizarrely
According to Mike Arrington, they got screwed by their hardware manufacturing partner at the last moment. No word from Popular Mechanics yet on whether they get to keep their product of the year award.  ★ 

Claim Chowder: Stewart Alsop in 1997 on Apple’s Acquisition of NeXT
Stewart Alsop in February 1997: Let’s get this straight right away: Apple Computer did the wrong thing. On December 20, Apple announced that it would spend $400 million to purchase Steve Jobs’s company, Next Software. The company said it would adopt Next’s NextStep operating system for future versions of the Macintosh computer. Most of the commentary I’ve seen about this decision is off the mark, especially the talk about Jobs coming back to save Apple. That is sheer nonsense. He won’t be anywhere near the company. Maybe the best claim chowder ever? (Thanks to DF reader Charles Bouldin.)