Today the House of Commons told us half of what we knew from reading the revelations made by The Daily Telegraph more than one month ago!

But the most outrageous details were hidden by the thick black strokes of a censor’s pen.

Parliamentary authorities posted details online of four years worth of legislators’ claims but thousands of pages were obscured amid concerns over privacy and security.

It was too little and too late.

The Telegraph will publish some of the uncensored documents in full on Friday.

As BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum says:
Now the Commons has released the official data on MPs’ expenses, much of the focus will actually be on what they still haven’t released – the information which has been blacked out or “redacted”.

And The Guardian launched a tool asking readers for help to review the files:

Step 1: Find a document
Step 2: Decide what kind of thing it is and whether it’s interesting
Step 3: Copy out any individual entries
Step 4: Make any specific observations about why a claim deserves further scrutiny

This is today’s front page of the first issue of the new LA LIBRE BEGIQUE.

The editors explains (in French) in this video the main changes.

This final hybrid version is a mix of different projects: a first one done by Lucy Lacava, and a second one done by Javier Errea.

See here some pages from our model

And these are from the final remake of today.

You can see the full issue in this pdf version.

Just two and no cash.

Apple restricts the iPhone sales to two phones per customer and requires credit or debit card payment on those phones to discourage unauthorized resellers and maintain enough stock for the holidays.

As you can see on the Web site, you can buy the iPhone in the UK for $800 USD (twice what the price is in the USA).

“iPhoneAnywhere picks up the iPhone in the US for you, installs the necessary software, pops in a non-AT&T sim for testing then ships the iPhone straight to your doorstep!”

So … where are the experts who said that the iPhone was going to be a failure?

More than 1.4 million iPhones were sold in the three months that ended Sept. 29, topping Steve Jobs’ forecast of 730,000.

About 270,000 were sold in the first two days after the product’s June 29 debut.

Imagine the sales as soon as the iPhone is available outside the USA.

The UK is next in a few days.

Wait and see how the British go crazy.

These guys couldn’t wait!

And Steve Jobs has announced that the iPhone will be open to these external developments.

Once again, iPhone fever.

(Via Jean-Luc Grellier)

Bloomberg’s lead in a great story about Apple:

Ten years ago this month, Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell said Steve Jobs should “shut down” Apple Inc. and return the money to shareholders.

Dell then had a market value of $4 billion to Apple’s $700 million.

Apple’s valuation has since soared to $150 billion, more than double that of its personal-computer rival.

Last month, Apple passed PC leader Hewlett-Packard Co. in market capitalization for the first time.

The San Jose Mercury News says:

Jobs erred by dismissing the gripes of people who bought iPhones early, many of whom are Apple loyalists who felt insulted they were being overlooked in the company’s zeal to sell to a broader audience.

They say that Mr. Jobs is very sorry.

Well, don’t be sorry; just send us a $200 voucher.

If not, he is going to be in trouble.

And not only in the stock market.

Apple’s stock price fell 5 percent yesterday after the announcement, and was down further today, closing at 135.01, down $1.75, or 1.3 percent.

You don’t play with your most loyal costumers.

Just look at the first reactions on the Web.

A massive outcry is out there.

Just listen to them.

Listen… and send us the money.

(Illustration for TIME by Hanoch Piven)

UPDATE:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was flooded with e-mails from angry customers after the company lopped $200 off the price of the iPhone just two months after its debut, on Thursday apologized to early buyers and offered them a $100 credit.

In an open letter on Apple’s Web site, Jobs said that even though price drops are a reality in the personal technology world, the company was going to make sure it took care of its existing customers, even as it pursued new users with the iPhone’s aggressive price reduction.

“We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers,” Jobs wrote.

“We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”

iPhone buyers will be eligible for a $100 credit good toward the purchase of any product at any Apple store or at Apple’s online store.

Jobs said more details will be released next week.

I told you.

Well, $100 is better than nothing.

What a historical marketing mistake!

From: Steve Jobs
Date: June 27, 2007 1:47:55 PM PDT
Subject: Town Hall Meeting Tomorrow

Team,

We’re launching the most revolutionary and exciting product in Apple’s
history this Friday. And given Apple’s legacy of breakthrough
products, that’s saying a lot.

I’d like to get together and share my thoughts about this amazing
moment for our company. So please join me for a company-wide
communications meeting tomorrow, Thursday, at 11:00 AM in Town Hall.

This meeting will also be broadcast to other Apple campus locations.
Please check XXXXXX for details.

See you there,

Steve

(Via Engadget)

UPDATE: Read a summary of the meeting here.

Steve Jobs answers Walt Mossberg’s iPhone questions via email.

Some quotes:

“When you subtract the $200 cost of an iPod, which is included in the iPhone, the rest of the iPhone costs just $299.”

“Like all small keyboards, it takes three or four days to get used to.

iPhone users will quickly learn to trust its intelligence to correct their mistakes automatically.

So far, everyone who has used it loves it, and reports that they are typing as fast or faster than they did on their Treo or BlackBerry or other smart phone.”

Read and watch here, the Walt Mossberg review of the iPhone, which ends with this paragraph:

“Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can’t possibly meet them all. It isn’t for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting.

But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use.”

The battery will provide as much as eight hours of talk time, up from five, Steve Jobs said today.

That’s longer than the battery lives of rival devices, he said.

The iPhone also will offer six hours of Internet use, seven hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback.

The iPhone will become Apple’s third major business, along with the Macintosh computer and the iPod, which each ring up sales of about $10 billion a year.

This week’s edition of The Economist opens with a leaders story devoted to Apple and the four lessons to learn from the California company.

It shows how the launch of iPhone is going to be some of the most important news of the year.

The first paragraphs:

For a company that looked doomed a decade ago, it has been quite a comeback.

Today Apple is literally an iconic company.

Look at your iPod: the company name appears only in the small print.

Some of the power of its brand comes from the extraordinary story of a computer company rescued from near-collapse by its co-founder, Steve Jobs, who returned to Apple in 1997 after years of exile, reinvented it as a consumer-electronics firm and is now taking it into the billion-unit-a-year mobile-phone industry.

But mostly Apple’s zest comes from its reputation for inventiveness.

In polls of the world’s most innovative firms it consistently ranks first.

From its first computer in 1977 to the mouse-driven Macintosh in 1984, the iPod music-player in 2001 and now the iPhone, which goes on sale in America this month, Apple has prospered by keeping just ahead of the times.

And now the lessons:

FIRST

Innovation can come from without as well as within.

Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas Edison or Bell Laboratories, locking its engineers away to cook up new ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration.

In fact, its real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technologies from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and stylish design.

The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project.

It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls.

And it was designed to work closely with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved.

Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists.

SECOND

Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology.

Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers.

Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use.

The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organising music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go.

Similarly, the iPhone is not the first mobile phone to incorporate a music-player, web browser or e-mail software.

But most existing “smartphones” require you to be pretty smart to use them.

THIRD

Listening to customers is generally a good idea, but it is not the whole story.

For all the talk of “user-centric innovation” and allowing feedback from customers to dictate new product designs, a third lesson from Apple is that smart companies should sometimes ignore what the market says it wants today.

The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched in 2001, but Mr Jobs stuck by his instinct.

Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii.

Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far broader appeal.

FOURTH

 

The fourth lesson from Apple is to “fail wisely”.

 

The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple’s original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola.

 

Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again.

 

Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple.

The wider lesson is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe’s inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.

Steve Jobs will present the new APPLE hardware and software products next week as the keynote speaker at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).

Monday, June 11, at 10 a.m., PT.

Walter Mossberg interviews Steve Jobs about the future of three business topics (Macs, Music and Phones) and one hobby (TV).

Is the iPhone a wireless iPod? Or a phone that has an iPod in it?

It’s three things: the best iPod we’ve ever made.

An incredibly great cellphone — we’ve really revolutionized how to use a cellphone.

If it was nothing but a cellphone it’d be really successful.

Third thing is it’s the internet in your pocket for the first time.

If it was any of those three it’d be successful.

If it was just the internet in your pocket it’d sell better than the Sony Mylo…

The iPhone presented by Steve Jobs a few months ago was great, but wait until June 20 and you will get more iPhone than you and I had expected.

Read here some of the possible new specifications.

This story makes a lot of sense to me.

Steve Jobs has more surprises for all of us.

TWBA has won the Apple iPhone account, edging AT&T favorite BBDO.

TBWA has handled Apple’s iPod campaign and has a long history with Apple Computer.

Responsible for the ThinkDifferent campaign, TBWA’s latest effort was the Hello iPhone commercial that appeared during the Academy Awards.

Lee Clow, chair of TBWA, is a personal friend of Steve Jobs and was responsible for the 1984 ad.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, in this week’s annual shareholder meeting:

“A few of us have been using the iPhone a lot, and if you wanted it back, you would have to pry it from our dead hands.”