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TV Networks Continuing to Resist Apple’s Effort to Slash iTunes Pricing

February 22, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

The New York Times reports that television networks are continuing to resist Apple’s push to lower episode pricing for their shows to $0.99, down from the current $1.99 price point for standard definition content. The networks reportedly con…

Apple’s iPad NYTimes Promo Video Shows Flash Again

February 22, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Flash content shown (left), Broken plug-in shown (right)
We’re planning on writing this one off as a web-blunder, but one reader points out that Apple seems to have reverted their iPad promotional video back to one which renders the NY…

Over 5000 ‘Overtly Sexual’ Apps Pulled from App Store (And Counting)

February 21, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Late last week, the news broke that Apple was removing “overtly sexual” applications from the App Store. The list of applications that have been removed have not only included novelty apps and adult themed slideshow apps, but also a number …

Apple iPad Pre-Orders to Begin February 25th? Speculation about Other Features?

February 20, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

AppAdvice claims that the iPad pre-orders could start as early as February 25th. The pre-orders are said to be for the U.S. Wi-Fi model initially. It’s really not much to go on, but Apple hasn’t given any indication about their launch plan…

Facebook’s Post-Humous Joe Stack Fan-Ban

February 20, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Facebook banned a fan page set up by a radio host supporting Joe Stack, who for some reason people don’t want to call a domestic terrorist, which he was. Assholes and crazies, “The South Will Rise Again” is still there.

The Google CEO and His Mistress: The Tell-All Blog

February 19, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Eric Schmidt has long campaigned for free-flowing information, and even against the very idea of secrecy. But we doubt the Google CEO loves disclosure so much he’ll approve of an indiscreet blog-cum-memoir by his sometime mistress.

Schmidt parted ways with Bohner last summer, but that hasn’t kept him out of what a tipster in his ex-girlfriend’s social circle called her “pet project:” a multimedia confessional autobiography, including a Google-hosted blog called “Recovery Girl 007″, and eventually a book.

On the blog, Bohner writes about Schmidt, dubbing him “Dr. Strangelove” and disclosing that he gave her a prototype iPhone. She also calls Steve Jobs a “stoned Jesuit preist” (more below). That aside, the intricate online memoir-in-progress primarily details Bohner’s recovery from cocaine and alcohol addiction via 12-step programs and yoga.

It’s not clear how Bohner is funding the project, which has seen the former CNBC correspondent hire an art director, webmaster and editor, all prominently credited here and at the bottom of this post in what might just be the most crowded masthead ever assembled for a personal Blogspot.

One gossip thinks Schmidt’s money is somehow behind the project, but we’re not so sure; barely a year ago, when he was still dating Bohner, the married billionare was showering her with little more than love and jewelry, despite an overture for him to put money into the documentary company where Bohner worked. Maybe Bohner’s hocked some of those gifts, or is simply relying on savings. It certainly doesn’t seem as though she’s become reentangled with Schmidt; our tipster wrote that the couple are “hitting it too occasionally for her liking” — which could well mean not at all.

What Bohner has so far detailed of her personal autobiography is certainly rattling stuff of the sort that would pull a caring lover’s heartstrings. She writes about snorting cocaine in Hyde Park, London; bingeing on tequila in Los Angeles; sipping brandy at age eight; quitting booze and then relapsing; shaking and heaving at a friend’s house when trying to go dry; and getting checked in to a detox center. (It is a “Colonel Stevenson” who introduces Bohner to brandy as a child in Southern Spain. That this same Colonel Stevenson appears on Bohner’s more public blog is, along with a pointer from our tipster, how we know the former Donald Trump ghostwriter is also responsible for the Recovery Girl 007 blog.)

We assume Bohner will also eventually give the backstory behind her criminal record. Using her birth day and year, gleaned from her blog, and a public records search, we found she’d been sentenced to just under three years (of probation?) in South Florida (where she now resides) for aggressive assault with a weapon, no intent to kill, in a 2005 Florida incident. In New Jersey she got three years probation for a crime we’ve not yet determined.

Then there were Bohner’s landlord issues in New York City. After two civil filings from a building management company in late 2005 and early 2006, Bohner was forcibly evicted in May 2006, according to a public records search.

Despite repeated attempts, we were not able to elicit any quote or rebuttal from Bohner on her project or background.

On her website, Bohner writes about turning her life around with help from a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, where she worked, and from a popular Los Angeles yoga instructor, Keith Fox.

Schmidt has good reason to hope that turnaround sticks: On Bohner’s site, the former business journalist writes repeatedly about the men in her life; it’s not hard to imagine Bohner burning an ex who falls out of her good graces. In addition to Schmidt, Bohner’s dated author Michael Lewis (to whom she was briefly married) and Lazard executive Steve Langman.

Among the lovers on the Recovery Girl site is someone code-named Dr. Strangelove, who is often in Los Angeles. “Dr.” Eric Schmidt holds a Ph.D. as well as a home in Santa Barbara County. Dr. Strangelove and Eric Schmidt are one in the same, as the first of several excerpts below makes clear.

During a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands (emphasis added):

I haven’t thought about Dr. Strangelove in such a long time-I try to sweep all of that data completely under the Persian carpet. That’s a lie. I think about him every so often in these fleeting cinematic flashes…I have completely stopped sleeping. My friend Jason is so worried about it that he confiscates my Blackberry… I’ve been sleeping with my Blackberry just in case Strangelove might send an e-mail. If I was really smart I ditch the Blackberry for the iPhone he gave me – the prototype version. But I have yet to arrive. Stephen Jobs is not St. Stephen. He’s just a stoned Jesuit priest lost in his garden. Strangelove still has his stranglehold on me and nothing is new under the sun.

Later in the same post:

The dream is always the same… strolling through winding paths at a government insane asylum in northern Massachusetts.I’ve been committed-against my will. It is Strangelove, my genuinely caring, concerned boyfriend. He has convinced me, or, he has convinced me that I’ve convinced him, that I am suicidal. The dream always begins with me walking the grounds of the campus. I look for the cafeterias with the free food. I can’t find the line for the free bus back to Santa Monica. I keep pulling on the locked doors.

At the Buddhist temple in Thailand:

How did I get here? There was the phone call. There was the betrayal. Dr. Strangelove had lied about his involvement in it all. And then there were a couple of conversations that followed. And all I remember feeling was that I had to get out of L.A.

After detox in South Florida:

You see I wasn’t going to go back to Los Angeles. That part was clear. The L.A . experiment hadn’t worked. Game over. Case closed. The work thing had ended when I went to the monastery in Thailand. And the relationship was officially over; Dr. Strangelove was dead. Next chapter.

We’ll certainly be reading Bohner’s future installments closely. And we’re sure Schmidt will, too.

Mac Pro Audio Update Seen as Fixing Performance Issues

February 19, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Effect of Mac Pro Audio Update 1.0 on Aperture and Compressor tasks
(Times in minutes:seconds)
With last week’s release of a software update addressing heat and performance issues experienced by users of Apple’s Nehalem Mac Pro …

Hulu for iPad Likely to Be a Paid Subscription Service

February 19, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

Last week, a report that video site Hulu might be making its way to the iPad generated a significant amount of interest, with many users excited about the prospect of free access to television content on Apple’s forthcoming tablet device. MediaMemo …

Apple Now Blocking ‘Overtly Sexual’ Apps from App Store

February 19, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

iPhone developer ChilliFresh posted (via TechCrunch) that they received an email from Apple tonight indicating that their iPhone app Wobble iBoobs had been pulled from the App Store. The email revealed that Apple was now …

U.S. Trade Agency to Review Apple’s Patent Complaints Against Nokia

February 18, 2010 in Grapevine by 8ify.com - Tech Rumors

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has been kept busy with claims involving Apple recently, as the company has found itself involved in several high-profile disputes with major corporations over claims of patent infringement. Just a day a…