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Apple’s 2009 execution was nothing short of spectacular, given the sour economy and CEO Steve Jobs’ medical leave. Apple executives handled both circumstances, which might have sunk another company, with finesse and subtle but direct aggressiveness. I had a difficult time narrowing the did-good list to just 10 items. I’ll post a did-wrong list later today or just after midnight tomorrow. For now, I present the list of 10 things Apple did right in 2009 — in no order of importance. They’re all important. Apple:

1. Kept Mac prices high. While Windows PC competitors slashed computer prices — and so their margins and profits — Apple held above-$1,000 pricing firm for iMac, Macbook Pro and Mac Pro. The higher pricing surely didn’t seem to hurt Mac sales, which were strong all year. Meanwhile, low-cost netbooks sapped Windows PC margins and profits. Apple did right by lowering prices at the high end, which simply opened up more sales over $1,000, where Apple has more than 90-percent revenue share for computers sold at U.S. retail, according to NPD.

2. Told everyone: “There’s an app for that.” The recession gave many companies reason to cutback advertising budgets. But Apple kept the marketing strong, across different media types, including online, print and television. By far, iPhone advertising dominated the lot, with increasing emphasis on the applications. It was a smart move, considering that the 3GS model was an evolutionary product lacking compelling new features.

3. Appropriately priced Snow Leopard. Apple reaps high margins from software. Given the economy, Apple could have easily justified the usual $129 pricing for Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard). Instead, Apple offered the software for $29 — or $49 for a five-user Family Pack — to Leopard users (not that there is anything really stopping older Mac OS X users from upgrading). Some vocal Mac blogs have called the pricing appropriate, as signaled by the “Leopard” in the name; Apple added few new features, so lower pricing was justified. 

That’s a rather inane way of thinking. Improved Exchange support is a huge new feature improvement. I’ve criticized the Mac OS X user interface as being tired, but not the reworked plumbing. There is plenty of new engineering in Mac OS X 10.6, just not where most users will see it. Snow Leopard is the most important Mac OS X release since v1.0 shipped in March 2001. The lower pricing encourages existing users to upgrade to 64-bit architecture, preparing the Mac market for Mac OS X 10.7. 

4. Lied about Steve Jobs’ illness. This one makes both lists, because Apple’s execution was both good and bad. Using “lied” surely will inflame hardcore Mac fans, but “misled” simply doesn’t apply here. The lying started in December 2008, with the announcement that Apple would pull out of Macworld from 2010, which really masked something bigger: Jobs wouldn’t give the 2009 keynote. Apple dished out information piecemeal, ending with announcement of Jobs’ six-month medical leave. 

Apple grappled with a difficult problem: How much outsiders, particularly investors, identified the persona of Steve Jobs with Apple’s success. Timing complicated matters. The late-September 2008 stock market crash hit Apple hard, as it did other public companies. Apple had legitimate concern about how news of Jobs illness might affect Apple’s falling share price. The stock hit its bottom for the year in late January, about the time Apple announced Jobs’ six-month medical leave. Withholding information may have prevented a short-term run on shares. But as I’ll explain in the did-wrong list, Apple may lose long term. 

5. Updated the $999 Macbook. In late 2008, Apple tossed potential buyers one older model white MacBook for under $1,000. Apple updated features throughout the year, later introducing a redesigned model with good features for the same $999 price. For consumers looking for a cheap Mac, Apple delivered a no-compromise laptop (That’s no-compromise compared to other Macs; I add this for benefit of commenters comparing to Windows PCs). 

6. Put Phil Schillers’ marketing skills to work. Super-secretive Apple broke the silence several times during 2009, using its marketing chief as mouthpiece. Schiller addressed developer concerns about App Store approvals in a surprisingly proactive fashion. I would describe Schiller as “Mr. Likable.” He’s the right man to mollify angry or confused developers or to quiet raucous bloggers bashing Apple. In November, he made the interview rounds explaining the App Store approval and rejection process. Business Week got a big interview. Sigh, too bad the new owners sacked senior columnists not long later. 

7. Lowered iPhone pricing to $99. In conjunction with the June launch of iPhone 3GS, Apple continued selling the 8GB iPhone 3G for 99 bucks. The lower price point opened a new market segment of iPhone buyers, which includes teenagers. For example, according to ComScore, among U.S. consumers planning to buy an iPhone within three months, more than one-third said the iPhone 3G. For many buyers, the iPhone 3GS’ $199 starting price is simply too much for their budgets. 

8. Supported HTML 5 in Safari 4. Some people may see Safari’s HTML 5 support as mere marketing, seeing as how the standard isn’t finalized. Oh but it is so much more. Apple doesn’t want Flash on iPhone, but that’s how most video is delivered on the Web. If Apple lets the Flash cat out of the bag, it will try to claw out App Store’s eyes. The last thing Apple wants is a rival development platform on iPhone (and even HTML 5 risks some development competition in the browser). But no Flash means no video outside of Apple technologies. 

By supporting HTML 5, Apple: 

• provides a browser platform for plug-in free RIAs, rich Internet applications, which could generate more cross-platform apps or services for Macintosh and eventually iPhone.
• opens the way for plug-in free audio and video streaming — no Flash required — on Safari for computers and eventually the mobile browser.

For today, iPhone’s browser offers limited HTML 5 support, but that does include audio and video tags and HTTP streaming. Microsoft Silverlight video streaming, using Internet Information Server Media Services, over HTTP to iPhone is one example of what’s to come. 

9. Took out Psystar. Apple’s legal battle with the Mac cloner was more than about intellectual property rights. Apple needed to win, which it effectively did earlier this month, in order to establish important precedents (legally and concretely) against software piracy. Psystar’s Mac cloning was the most visible misuse of Mac OS X licensing since Apple started offering Intel-based computers four years ago next month. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t use product activation, which wasn’t a big problem when Macs used PowerPC chips. Apple can control piracy more on trust, which is enforced by its end-to-end, software-to-Mac model. Hackintosh threatens that model, which Apple has now successfully defended. 

10. Opened new retail stores. Apple launched the first Apple Store during a recession. Why should another recession be reason to stop opening new ones? At a time when the weak economy caused major chains to close, including Circuit City this year, Apple continued its retail expansion. It’s a smart investment in the brand, product sales and customer service. 

Apple opened the 280th store, on New York’s Upper West Side, in November and plans another 40 or so store openings in 2010. Sales per store is about $26 million, and Apple consistently claims that half of Mac buyers are Windows users.

Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission launched an inquiry into Verizon Wireless’ early termination fee for “advanced devices,” which was increased to $350 in November.

Verizon responded to the inquiry last Friday, with a letter that cited various ways that “advanced devices” –essentially anything that we’d call a “smartphone” today– are more costly for the network to offer. According to the company, any time a customer cancels his contract, Verizon Wireless still collects less than it’s losing.

Today, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn responded to Verizon Wireless and said the letter was “Unsatisfying, and in some cases, troubling.”

“I am concerned about what appears to be a shifting and tenuous rationale for ETFs. No longer is the claim that ETFs are tied solely to the true cost of the wireless device; rather, they are now also used foot the bill for ‘advertising costs, commissions for sales personnel, and store costs.’ Consumers already pay high monthly fees for voice and data designed to cover the costs of doing business. So when they are assessed excessive penalties, especially when they are near the end of their contract term, it is hard for me to believe that the public interest is being well served,” Commissioner Clyburn said today.

“These issues cannot be ignored,” Clyburn continued. “Wireless communications are an essential part of our lives, linking us to our places of business, our communities, and our loved ones. The bottom line is that wireless companies can truly earn their desired long-term commitments from consumers by focusing primarily on developing innovative products, maintaining affordable prices, and providing excellent customer service. I look forward to exploring this issue in greater depth with my colleagues in the New Year.”

Like the Walkman was to the 80’s, and the Discman was to the 90’s, the dedicated, disconnected portable media player will no doubt be looked upon as a relic of the 00’s.

Today, the ability to play media files is stock functionality in tech devices. All computers have media players, four out of the five video game consoles have them, and most smartphones have them. You can pick up a low-quality Portable Media Player for $20 at the local all-night drug store, or you could even fish them out of a 50¢ Skill Crane machine.

Apple effectively cornered the market for portable media players in the United States, and has arranged it in such a way that the iPhone/iPod Touch “app device” will be the eventual replacement for the dumb PMP.

But here’s the thing, as “app device” functionality (that is, music, video, games and applications) develops strongly across numerous smartphone platforms, a lot of people will find themselves perfectly able to replace their iPod with their smartphone of choice. Since many smartphones also offer Web radio apps like Pandora, Slacker Radio, ShoutCast, SiriusXM, and various podcatcher apps, there is actually plenty of motivation to make that shift.

I look at the “What’s in your Bag?” Flickr pool as a sign of this looming change. In combing through the thousands of entries, you will see that there are several types of people: Those who carry an iPod and a feature phone together, those who carry a fully-featured smartphone and a high-capacity iPod together, and those who simply an carry a current generation smartphone. In the nearly 9,000 pictures on the pool, only a scant few deviate, and those are people who carry redundant home/work devices or nothing at all. The added bulk of a discrete media player and its sync cable it an easy weight to shed.

In fact, it is completely possible to replace your iPod with a smartphone today. However, you’re not likely to see many people doing it until smartphones improve in three key areas: battery life, storage capacity, and synchronization.

1.) Battery Life: Smartphones are subjected to rigors comparable to most notebook PCs, yet they are expected to retain a battery life many hours longer. The more jobs you assign to a single device, the more cycles you assign to its CPU, and consequently, the shorter you make its battery life. So when you need your smartphone for serious communications and personal information management, it’s hard to justify expending battery on non-essential entertainment functions like music, photography, and gaming. Until smartphones get heartier batteries, they cannot be a full replacement for dedicated media players.

2.) Storage Capacity: Since most smartphones accept microSD for memory expansion, the current maximum capacity hangs around 32GB. Apple exceeded 32GB of storage in the iPod in 2003, before it even had color screens. When 128 GB microSD cards become an option, then they start to become true replacements for iPods.

3.) Sync: The iPhone carries on Apple’s iTunes legacy, where apps, music collections, playlists, and podcasts are kept up-to-date between the owner’s PC and iPhone by frequent plugging and refreshing. Other smartphones have their own solutions for mobile data synchronization, but none are as media-oriented as iTunes. Once a solution for cross-platform media management comes around for other Smartphones, the final piece for comprehensive iPod replacement will be complete.

Testing the smartphone’s viability as an iPod replacement has been something of a pet project of mine for the last few months, and I regard the sync issue as the most pivotal.

You see, I have been an iPod user for most of the decade, and I’ve never been all that fond of iTunes. It’s rigid, oversized, and generally unpleasant. Worst of all though, it never sparked in me the excitement that Winamp did in the late 90’s. Maybe it’s because it didn’t support .sid files, but I digress.

I’m constantly on the prowl for the next great iTunes replacement, and I’m a firm believer that the first device/ecosystem that will freely and easily sync ALL of your content will be the true dominator in the mobile space. That’s why I have hope for Windows Mobile and MyPhone. With that free service, you can sync your calendar, contacts, tasks, text messages, browser favorites, photos, videos, music, documents, and the contents of your phone’s memory card with your Windows Live account.

But I’m an Android user. Android syncs contacts, calendar, and email with Google and Picasa and YouTube handle photos and videos, but it doesn’t have a desktop or cloud-based service with which to sync the user’s music collection.

That’s why Dazzboard popped up on my radar again last week. We first heard from the Finnish company in July, in the midst of the Palm Pre/iTunes support scuffle. The company’s browser-based music, photo, and video sync service (billed as Universal Media Management or UMM) could bridge the gap between a user’s device and his media, even content was in iTunes and the device was unsupported.

Now, Dazzboard had shown up again, this time with Android support.

“Google’s Android technology is by far the most advanced, and takes mobile phones experience to the next level of innovation,” Tero Salonen, Dazzboard’s CEO said in a prepared statement. “However, it is crucially important for the user experience to carry through onto the PC, and our new system provides the missing link.”

Dazzboard is a Windows (XP, Vista, 7) plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox that lets Android devices be recognized in Dazzboard’s Web interface, and opens them up for file management. The service is still in beta, so it has its bugs, but it can act both as a bridge to iTunes and as a standalone sync tool.

Only HTC’s Android devices are supported by Dazzboard at present, and when I tried hooking up the Motorola Droid, it was not recognized. Plugging in the G1 successfully established a connection, but the Dazzboard navigator recognized it as the HTC Hero, a minor quibble, really, since file transfers all worked successfully.

Dazzboard offers a simple, menu-based interface to your files, and lets the user queue up the content he wants to send to the mobile device, and then drop it all in at once. It’s an effective way to share files, but lacks the simple auto-update functionality that makes syncing with iTunes so simple.

Using Dazzboard and the MediaFly desktop podcatcher software can bring your mobile device an experience that begins to compare to iTunes in functionality, but it still has a long way to go before it can compare in simplicity.

As we progress into the new decade, it’s all but certain that mobile storage will increase and battery life will improve. The birth of an effective music sync solution for smartphones, on the other hand, is not such a sure thing.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep looking.

Just about everyone who is anyone has asked “Is Google evil?” some time during 2009. I did, in an early November post. Google’s growing dominance is reason enough to wonder. That dominance helped put me out of a job nearly eight months ago and many other journalists since. Google’s free business model, supported by advertising, has hugely disrupted news and other information services. More disruption is coming to more business categories in the early 2010s.

Is this disruption evil? The answer may depend upon worldview. In a compelling blog entry posted late yesterday, Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of Product Management, described the company’s “meaning of open.” But the meaning is broader than open standards or open source. What he lays out, whether intended or not, is a different business worldview — and it’s one that can’t help but be disruptive.

Open and Closed Principles

“At Google we believe that open systems win,” Rosenberg asserts. “They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable and competitive ecosystem for businesses.” For Google, open — as in “open information” and “open technology” — is a business philosophy. “We run the company and make our product decisions based on these principles, so I encourage you to carefully read, review, and debate them. Then own them and try to incorporate them into your work.” 

Exactly what kind of public company talks about principles? Not many, but most successful companies operate by some guiding principles, even if not overtly stated. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates tipped off his business principles in 1976 “An Open Letter to Software Hobbyists.” Gates wrote: 

Most of you steal your software… One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?

Many people are asking the same question today. It’s fundamental to the recent clash between media mogul Rupert Murdoch about Google search. Gates’ question “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” was strangely prescient of today’s expanding Google free — supported by advertising — business model. The question also defines one of the principles behind Microsoft’s worldview — that people (or the businesses they work for) who create something have a fundamental right to profit from it. 

Modern American capitalism is built on concepts of dominance and profit. Businesses seek to control key concepts, copyrights or patents that put critical information in their control or allow them to selectively lock-in customers to proprietary technologies or standards. Copyright laws have helped organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America and the record labels it represents to gain copyright control over most music and lyrics. Getty Images obtains the rights to photographs that it licenses on a per-use basis. 

Microsoft is a technological monopoly. Gates understood the importance of establishing and controlling file formats and software standards that locked-in customers and partners. The resulting Windows ecosystem has been hugely successful for the company. But as I explained 11 days, during the last decade Microsoft abandoned the standards principles that made it a software giant. 

A Contrary Worldview 

Google’s open principles and resulting business model are in many ways the antithesis of concepts behind establishing modern monopolies or other corporate centers of power. Yesterday’s Google blog post compares so-called open and closed systems: Traditionally trained MBAs are “taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle,” Rosenberg asserts. He adds: 

There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software — expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.

That’s an apt description but also a misdirection, whether or not intended. The stagnation he describes isn’t necessarily from a system being closed. It’s a byproduct of success. Dominant products tend to stagnate as they reach a certain threshold of adoption. If there is an ecosystem established around them, it seeks to preserve the status quo infrastructure. 

Take the television as example. There were many manufacturers creating TVs using network broadcast standards for which they didn’t control. The system was more open than closed, yet still stagnated in the United States during the 1970s. In the late 1990s and throughout the first decade of the new century, new technologies revived the sagging TV set industry. 

Rosenberg claims that “open systems are just the opposite” of closed ones. He writes: 

They are competitive and far more dynamic. In an open system, a competitive advantage doesn’t derive from locking in customers, but rather from understanding the fast-moving system better than anyone else and using that knowledge to generate better, more innovative products. The successful company in an open system is both a fast innovator and a thought leader; the brand value of thought leadership attracts customers and then fast innovation keeps them. This isn’t easy — far from it — but fast companies have nothing to fear, and when they are successful they can generate great shareholder value. 

Open systems have the potential to spawn industries. They harness the intellect of the general population and spur businesses to compete, innovate, and win based on the merits of their products and not just the brilliance of their business tactics. The race to map the human genome is one example. 

These two paragraphs are staggering for their implications — and directly relate to other portions of Rosenberg’s post I will only briefly explore here; open information and open source, for example. Harnessing “the intellect of the general population” raises the question: “By whom?” It’s not like there is a collective, Borg-like “open” hive mind. Google harnesses the intellect of others for profit. As a public company, Google has obligation to its shareholders to make money. The “competitive advantage” belongs to individuals and companies savvy enough to exploit the smarts of people working for similar profit-making goals or none at all. 

The human genome is an amazingly revealing example of Google’s worldview. What’s open about companies rushing to patent biological processes related the the Human Genome Project? Rosenberg writes about how open is Google technology, but he ignores that it is closed, too. The company controls key technologies, such as the secret recipe behind its search algorithm, that provide competitive advantage. Open is open until there is a business need to be closed. 

Means to an End 

In 2004, at JupiterResearch’s defunct Microsoft Monitor blog, I took a contrary view about Google. I asserted that Google is not a search company. “Search is a means to an end, and information is that end. Google monetizes the information through search and contextual advertising.” That Google is all about information should be obvious enough now, although perhaps not to many people outside of Google five years ago. 

Google is in the information trading business, which is another aspect of its open philosophy and really the foundation of the free business model. “On the Web, the new form of commerce is the exchange of personal information for something of value,” Rosenberg writes. “This is a transaction that millions of us participate in every day, and it has potentially great benefits.” 

Rosenberg writes about individuals giving up information as part of a mutually beneficial ecommerce transaction. But Google takes much more information through its search bots. Information is currency to Google. The more information that Google catalogs, the more money it can make from search keywords and advertising. 

This so-called open approach fundamentally opposes longstanding principles of intellectual property ownership. Copyrights are a barrier to Google gaining information that it can monetize. Google takes what it gets for free — but which someone else may have paid to produce — gives it away for free but with eventual profit motive. 

My decade 2010 prediction: Unchecked, Google’s open approach and free business model will eventually disrupt most businesses that produce information. The news business is being disrupted now. Google will disrupt software products or Internet services, too. The RIAA, Hollywood studios and stock image companies should watch their backs for a Google knife. Google’s power isn’t so much the open philosophy as the free business model it empowers. Bill Gates asked the right question 33 years ago: “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” It’s the question everyone should ask as Google’s free business model expands. 

Is this evil? If your worldview is in line with Gates’ — that he or she who creates something should own it and profit from it — the answer is likely “Yes.” Perhaps it is not, if your worldview is that all things — all information — belong to everyone. 

I encourage anyone trying to really understand Google to read Rosenberg’s post, but to think of the content as presentation of a business worldview rather than definition of open. Google knows its business model is disruptive. Dare I use “anarchy” to describe its goals. Rosenberg writes: “We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get.”

The US Circuit Court of Appeals in DC has today denied Microsoft’s appeal to overturn a court injunction preventing it from selling copies of Microsoft Word (or Office with Word). Those copies contain a feature that a jury last May found infringed upon patents held by i4i, a former Microsoft partner that built Word add-ons for editing XML.

Now, Microsoft says it will be ready to sell revised versions of Word 2007 and Office 2007, beginning next January 11 — the date the court injunction takes effect.

“With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products,” reads a statement from the company’s director of public affairs, Kevin Kutz, this afternoon. “Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.”

Kutz added that the company is considering a request for a rehearing, though at that point the question may have become moot. Microsoft began patching Word back in October to remove the infringing feature; not surprisingly, very few general users actually noticed. The offending XML editing feature does not appear in the Beta 1 version of Office 2010, and probably never will.

The official disposition of the Appeals Court was not yet available at the time of this writing (typically during the holiday season, posting documents takes place more slowly). However, it’s believed that the original $200 million award for i4i, with interest attached, is now valued at $290 million.

Now that Word will be minus an XML authoring tool, the add-on market for such tools could regenerate. Recently, i4i announced version 3.1 of its latest XML authoring tool add-on for Word, called x4o. The tool enables businesses that must create documents to specific standards — especially government agencies — to tailor XML templates for themselves. Those templates enable Word to edit documents using, for the most part, the ordinary word processor, and then save them to the exacting standards they require.

Microsoft saw this as a worthy feature as early as 2001. But then it apparently learned that i4i had a patent for software capable of editing XML schemas separately from XML documents. As i4i claimed last summer, Microsoft proceeded to circulate memoranda among i4i’s customers in an effort to generate interest in a Microsoft-only alternative, effectively using i4i’s customer base to build its own. Microsoft’s defense had been that it and i4i had developed that customer base together, that offering an alternative was essentially pro-competitive (even if it was built into Word), and that i4i only decided to complain when it couldn’t keep up its end of the competition — a defense that evidently failed, in the opinion of the Appeals Court panel.

Social networking site Facebook has more than 350 million active users, and more than 35 million users update their “status” every day. They could be updated with personal information, music, videos, links, or anything that users feel the need to share with their social group.

During 2009, nearly 13 billion of these status updates were posted, and Facebook has released its “Top Status trends of 2009,” indicating just what was on people’s minds.

The top status update trend was “Facebook Applications,” which includes automatic posts made by the hugely annoying Farmville game from Zynga. This game proved to be extremely popular this year, and has 72 million monthly active users. This application prompts users to post numerous status updates which aid other players of the game, and helps them progress faster. 

But because this isn’t exactly an active post made by users, it’s the second place that is most interesting: FML. 

FML is a shorthand expression for “F*** my Life” which is usually tacked onto the end of a description of something bad that has happened to the speaker. It is most effectively employed in situations with ironic or ridiculous outcomes. 

“Today, I received my passport in the mail. They got my birthdate wrong. Then I picked up my birth certificate that I had sent in with the application. Turns out my parents have been celebrating my birthday on the wrong day for 16 years. FML”

The phrase is actually a translation of the French abbreviation “VDM,” or “Vie de Merde,” which began as an IRC channel where friends could share stories of comedic suffering. The phrase was then loosed on the general public as a dedicated microblog in 2008, and has since become a common expression in French online conversation. 

In 2009, both the site and phrase grew beyond their French origins and were released in Swedish (FFML), Italian (VDM), Spanish (PVDM), and English with language-specific taglines. It has been a hit in all of them, and looks to be a socio-linguistic phenomenon. 

“We get a lot of e-mails and posts on the blog section of the Web site thanking us…mainly pointing out the fact that people get a kick out of laughing at some of the stories posted on the site,” fmylife.com’s Alan Holding told Betanews today. “Through the auto-moderation system, the users can also contribute to the direction the site can go in, and the user involvement part is very popular with the users, it’s becoming a real community. And the comments section under each FML story shows that sometimes, people from other countries and cultures can empathize with the original posters, so we can definitely say that the same sh** happens to us all over the world!” 

“The main ingredient of the stories posted on fmylife.com is the ability to laugh at your own mishaps, and have the guts to share it with the world,” Holding continued. “On sites like Postsecret for example, the posts are way more serious most of the time, but the fact that people are willing to share with others shows that it’s borne from a real need to share. Anonymity enables us to do so without running the risk of being ‘found out’, even though the theory is that people write diaries with the subconscious desire to have them read by other people. So these sites offer a sort of half-way measure, a way to share things that have to come out, it’s always been said that a problem shared is a problem halved, so I hope that in sharing these stories, people are unburdened in a way of what they’ve been holding back, and burning a hole in their brain, through shame, disgust, etc. But have to be funny as much as possible! To make it on to the site, the story has to be true, or at least plausible, funny, not (too) gross, amusing, bittersweet, there’s no real criteria, but it the idea behind the site isn’t to present a collection of sad stories of depressing woe, but an alternative look at the crap that happens to us every day, as well- written as possible, with a modicum of self mockery!” 

So the combination of Schadenfreude, anonymity, and repetitive branding turned FML from an anonymous thread into a full-fledged aphorism in half a dozen languages. Impressive, to say the least.

How’s this for a Christmas miracle: We’ve been saying that if Opera wants to get back in the game — if it truly wants to earn a place among the Top 5 positions on Europe’s forthcoming “Choice Screen” — then it has to pick up the pace in the performance department. Apparently while we were writing that, the developers at Opera Software were a little ahead of us on that count.

It’s rare that any company should release a product for the public’s inspection under the guise of “pre-alpha,” but what we expect it to mean for now is, “Don’t use this as a browser yet.” So we won’t: For now, we won’t consider the pre-alpha build of Opera 10.5 — leaked earlier this week, but officially released this morning — as a browser that is ready to be tested in real-world scenarios. Opera is testing yet another completely new chassis, one which borrows a few ideas from Google Chrome and a few others from its own Opera Mini and Opera Mobile products. And as we discovered for ourselves — not shockingly — it’s not a complete product, quite capable of bizarre behavior. That’s what the “pre-” means, apparently.

However…What’s brewing under Opera’s new hood is something astonishing: three replacement libraries including a new rendering engine and a new JavaScript engine. One wonders why they’re not calling this “Opera 11.”

The new look of Opera 10.5 (if this is indeed representative of the first test build’s appearance) is handsome. The menu bar has completely disappeared, having been absorbed into the “Big-Red-O” button in the upper left corner. Service windows such as Bookmarks, Downloads, and History are accessible from this button. You can bring the menu bar back from here, if you wish; if you do that, the “Big-Red-O” disappears.

Tabs take over the top title bar, and the sliding thumbnail previews introduced in Opera 10 appear here too. You can also adjust the tab/thumbnails bar to appear along the left side, and in 10.5, the glassy background applies here as well for Windows 7. In our tests, playing around with the title/thumbnails area too much, crashes the browser. That’s to be expected from this very early build. Opera Software is advising curious testers to use extreme caution: “Do not run in hydroelectric power plants.”

It’s a handsome environment for the new browser, and if they get it working and clear up some of the loose ends, it could be a functional one as well. The original left-hand optional sidebar concept appears to be missing in this build, but in its place is a system where the user can create fully customizable toolbars, thus fulfilling the same purpose.

This is the level of customization and functionality that Google Chrome users have been aching for — the possibility of a lightning fast browser that runs in something other than a plain blue box. If Google doesn’t watch out, Opera is going to answer Chrome’s users with what they’ve been asking for all year.

Next: Opera’s last-second Christmas present…