Is 'Pulp Fiction' screenwriter Roger Avary tweeting from jail? [Updated]

Roger Avary pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter in September and may be tweeting from jail. Credit: Los Angeles Times

As is often the case with Twitter, screenwriter Roger Avary recently tweeted about what he had for lunch. It was soy, which, an acquaintance told him, contains a dangerous substance intended to shrink their genitals and reduce their sex drives.

Just another day in Ventura County Jail.

Avary, who won an Oscar for writing the "Pulp Fiction" screenplay, appears to be sending updates to Twitter from the big house. He received a jail sentence in September after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter following a fatal crash last year.

We can't confirm that the Twitter account, @avary, actually belongs to Avary. But a second account, @rogeravary, points to the companion profile and contains photos of sci-fi author Neil Gaiman and the Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer.

[Updated, Nov. 27, 2:40 p.m.: L.A. Now reports that Avary was tweeting while serving time in a Ventura County work furlough program. He is now in full-time custody.]

Students can research books on their iPods.... But will they?

Questia Library Plus iPhone app. Credit: Questia

We'll spare you the obvious "there's an app for that" joke. But you can get a library's worth of books on your phone.

Questia, an online research portal for students, announced its application today for reading books, articles and periodicals on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app costs 99 cents for 5,000 public-domain books and a week of unlimited access. After that, users can buy a two-week subscription for $9.99.

There are so many things wrong with this we don't know where to start.

For one, students don't like to buy things. Especially digital things. Many strapped-for-cash college kids aren't buying songs at a dollar a pop. Why would they buy books they can find free in their university library or on Google Books?

But you get the convenience of reading and browsing on your iPod, right?

C'mon, have you ever tried reading anything substantial on that tiny screen? The Kindle app is great, but we can't get through a chapter without our eyes bursting into flames.

Two universities recently rejected the Kindle DX device as a replacement for textbooks, in part because it lacks features like advanced notation and text-to-speech. (Considering that the alternative is a paper book, their issues are kind of absurd, but that's for a different discussion.)

If they didn't like the Kindle, imagine what they'll think of a device that's about a quarter of the size.

The Questia app is a decent implementation of a very niche idea. If you're planning to actually do research with dozens of sources, you'll be better off with more fully featured alternatives, which includes Google's academic offerings and Questia's own desktop-friendly site.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Texting too much? It could weigh on your shoulders

Texting could be bad for your health. Credit: Natalie Behring 

Are your shoulders aching? Try putting that smart phone down. A Booster Shot blog cites a study in which researchers found a link between text messages and feeling discomfort in the shoulders. It might now be time to let your fingers do the walking -- on your shoulders.

-- Peter Pae

Google bets big on mobile advertising in $750-million acquisition of AdMob

Google Inc. has shown which way it believes the winds are blowing by forking over $750 million for mobile advertising firm AdMob, one of the Web giant's largest acquisitions to date. 

As AdMob itself has described, the volume and effectiveness of mobile advertising has been skyrocketing over the last several years as more advanced smartphones have caught on, making it easier to deliver more kinds of graphical and text-based advertising to phone-toting consumers.

In a recent report, AdMob said that the number of mobile ads it served had increased nearly 540% from September 2007, to 10.2 billion per month from 1.6 billion.  

As mobile phones morph further into pocket Internet devices, and consumers grow accustomed to performing online functions like search, gaming and instant messaging on their handsets, opportunities for advertising companies like Google will grow rapidly, analysts expect. 

Google says the number of searches performed by smartphone users has increased by a factor of five over the last two years, led primarily by iPhone users and owners of Google Android phones. At least a dozen new Google-powered phones, such as last week's launch of Verizon's Droid, are expected to be released in the coming year.  

Google also says that marketer spending on mobile advertising is growing at 30% annually.

AdMob was founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui, a Web entrepreneur looking to generate traffic for his mobile-based website. The company has taken funding from venture firms such as Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Northgate, and the company's clients have included Ford, Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts and Paramount Pictures.

Google, which already owns a major stake in mobile advertising with its DoubleClick Mobile unit, said it expects regulatory scrutiny of the AdMob deal but hopes the pact will be approved within a matter a months.

-- David Sarno

Quitting smoking isn't child's play. Or is it?

You can play music on the iPhone with the Leaf Trombone app. Researchers believe they can come up with a similar app for smokers to help them quit smoking. Credit: Peter DaSilva/Los Angeles Times .

In a few years if you see a person nervously blowing on his cellphone for five minutes, do not call the cops. He might not be a crazy person who forgot to take his meds; he might just be a smoker trying to quit smoking.

Columbia University's Teachers College announced today that it received a  $150,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through the foundation's Health Games Research national program to develop a smart phone app that emulates the physiological responses smokers get from smoking.

The first apps are likely to be for Apple Inc.'s iPhone or iPod Touch. The user would control the game by blowing into the device's microphone in response to different color and sound stimuli coming from the handset. Researchers hope that it will be able to elicit the same brain patterns, heart rate levels and relaxation responses that smokers get from smoking. The game, Lit: A Game Intervention for Nicotine Smokers, is expected to be released in about two years.

Breath therapy has been used to help smokers quit smoking for a while, but it's hoped that the game will  disseminate this technique to the masses. "You don't have to learn anything; the game will cause you to breathe the right way," said Charles Kinzer, professor of education in the Communication, Computing and Technology Program and the Game Research Lab at Teachers College.

Technology is being used in another way to help smokers quit smoking. Researchers at the GRAP Occupational Psychology Clinic and the University of Quebec in Gatineau recently found that smokers who crushed virtual cigarettes experienced a significant reduction in nicotine addiction.

Tobacco use is still the leading cause of death in the United States, according to a statement from Kinzer and the Lit project team. It added that 70% of adult smokers say they want to quit, and more than 40% try to quit each year.

Kinzer said, "If we can capitalize on the motivational aspect of games and the availability of mobile devices, there is tremendous potential to positively affect heath and wellness for smokers who want to quit, and this would have implications for healthcare costs as well."

--Melissa Rohlin

Is the iPhone romance fizzling out?

You can almost hear David Guetta's "Love is Gone" playing on iPods around the world. Have iPhone marriages hit a rough patch?

Apple announced today that the iPhone's App Store broke the 100,000-software mark, and app fever rages on. Heck, there's now an app for driving a car.

But maybe apps aren't enough anymore.

We were taken aback when readers flooded a post about AT&T improving cellphone service in Southern California with comments spitting venom at the telecom and threatening to jump ship to Verizon -- iPhone or not. Funnier still, complaints about AT&T kept rolling in even as T-Mobile was experiencing a full-on outage that affected an estimated 5% of customers.

Could it just be lust for Verizon's Droid, the telecom's first smartphone based on Google's Android operating system?

Either way, it's comforting to know that we here in the States are not alone. CNet UK called the iPhone "the worst phone in the world" on Tuesday, adding that it was a great mobile device but terrible for making calls. CNet lays much of the blame on O2, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone 3G S; other carriers offer the older models.

AT&T to Verizon: We're improving cell coverage in SoCal [Updated]

As Verizon Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc. hype their new Droid phone, AT&T Inc. is firing back with a response -- improving its cell service.

AT&T announced today that it's rolling out six new cell sites in Los Angeles County as well as five new sites in Orange County and one in Ventura County.

The new sites should improve cellphone coverage and 3G Internet connectivity in those areas. AT&T is set to add 200 sites in California before the end of the year and upgrade 320 existing ones to 3G.

AT&T still has Apple Inc.'s iPhone, one of the most desirable wireless devices, exclusively in its arsenal.

But with Verizon releasing the Droid, a worthy iPhone competitor, on Nov. 6, AT&T will have to strike back by making sure its phones can actually make calls and keep them connected.

IPhone owners often complain of dropped calls and unreliable 3G connectivity. Verizon has been capitalizing on the stigma with an ad campaign for its network, saying, "There's a map for that" -- that being reliable national wireless coverage.

Updated, Oct. 30, 9:52 p.m.: Verizon wrote in to tell us that it has added nine local cell sites to its network in October.

-- Mark Milian

Photo credit: Sean Masterson / European Pressphoto Agency

Thanks to Google's and Motorola's Droid, Verizon opens up

Verizon Wireless opened up to us.

Verizon Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc. proudly and excitedly showed off their new Droid smart phone in a meeting Wednesday afternoon.

First impression: The device is fast, powerful, fully featured and well-designed -- a combination of adjectives we've never used for a Verizon cellphone.

When was the last time a Verizon phone got this much hype? The BlackBerry Storm? Ouch.

Yet, one is coming on Nov. 6, and it has a good chance of living up to the hype. A phone with Google's fast-improving Android operating system, a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and digital zoom, a well-implemented touch screen and a slide-out keyboard.

Despite the Verizon check-mark logo branded on the device, the $200 Droid is all Google inside -- and a little Motorola. The handset manufacturer added some features on top of the Android 2.0 open-source system.

"That's really what open source is all about," said Paul Nicholson, Motorola's global marketing director. "You can layer on top of it."

For years, Verizon had this habit of stripping out good features and software from phones it carried in exchange for a clunky proprietary system. Motorola knows what we're talking about.

We won't miss the hideous red menus, the crippled Bluetooth functionality, or the Get It Now download service or Verizon App Store or whatever they're calling it now. This was a company that just months ago head-butted its way onto Verizon's BlackBerry devices with a separate app store to compete with the one that the phones already had.

Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said the company has no plans to make its own app store for Android -- another platform that already has one, called Market. Good idea.

The Droid's App Store does have a Verizon tab, which contains a Visual Voicemail app.

But all of those little Verizon injections added up to potential revenue in the past.

Lala snips some of the ties that bind Web songs

Lala.com's new deal with Facebook and its rumored partnership with Google could introduce millions of music fans to the "Web song," the cheap but, umm, not universally loved format that Lala pioneered. For the uninitiated, Web songs (which sell for 10 cents each or about a buck for an album's worth), can be played from the Lala site but not downloaded, burned onto CD or otherwise moved. (Lala also sells conventional, full-featured MP3s for 89 cents.) Some might consider 10 cents a fair price for online access to a song; for others, it's a ripoff in comparison to free on-demand services such as iMeem, Grooveshark and the much-anticipated Spotify. The critics' biggest complaint is that people who buy Web songs can't listen to them when they're away from a computer or disconnected from the Net. 

Lala may soon fix that problem, however, with a free iPhone app that enables people to play their Web songs on the road. It works even when stuck in an AT&T dead spot (more on that in a bit). The app, which still has to be submitted to and approved by Apple Inc., can also be loaded onto an iPod Touch. I saw a demo this week and it's quite slick. Users can find tracks or albums from Lala's 8-million-song catalog and play them with minimal delay, view their Lala news feeds to see and hear what their friends are listening to, share songs with Facebook friends, and add web songs easily to their Lala lockers. The app also stores up to 200 of songs on the phone -- for now, it's the ones most recently played by that user, but in the future Lala plans to give people more control over how to fill that cache. Those songs can be played even when you're not online or connected to AT&T's network -- such as when you're on a plane. 

Being able to play Web songs with an iPhone dramatically improves the value proposition, at least for iPhone users. (Lala Chief Executive Bill Nguyen said the company was "excited" about the BlackBerry platform but doesn't have an app available for iPhone rivals yet.) Of course, some people will still object to the notion of paying for music that comes with a diminished set of rights. But then, 10 cents a track is a steeply diminished price.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him on Twitter: @jcahealey

Comcast, 1Cast and Boxee

Two seemingly unrelated announcements this week illustrate the intensifying pressure on cable TV's business model. Comcast announced this week that it would make more cable-TV programming available free through the Internet by the end of the year but only to people who get broadband and cable service from Comcast.

According to PaidContent.org, the additional programming includes fare from HBO, TNT and TBS, which have kept most of their shows off of Hulu and other online TV sites. The move might dissuade a subset of Comcast's customers from dumping cable in favor of free online TV but won't charm the ones who get their broadband from a phone company.

Granted, the masses still prefer to get their TV shows from cable and satellite operators rather than Hulu because they bring it to the TV, not the PC. But the momentum behind free online TV is unmistakable -- there are new devices, such as Netgear's Digital Entertainer Live, that make it easy to bring online video to the big screen in the living room, older devices such as the Roku Video Player with ever-expanding capabilities and services including Hulu and Netflix that are continually expanding their libraries of free content. 

So here's the second announcement. 1Cast, a self-styled Hulu for news videos, unveiled a new partnership with Boxee, a program that provides a user interface for online video streams that's optimized for a TV set. The deal adds an important element to Boxee's entertainment-heavy lineup, while giving 1Cast a route to TV screens.

1Cast's approach is novel for an online news aggregator -- it strikes revenue-sharing deals with networks, rather than just monetizing the feeds that are freely available online. CEO Anthony Bontrager said his company gets clips directly from the networks in "near real time" -- typically within minutes of their appearance on air. Visitors to the 1Cast site can browse through thumbnails of the most recently added clips, or they can use the site's search function to gather all the clips related to a given topic. They also can create virtual newscasts on the topics of their choice that are dynamically updated whenever new material arrives. Or they can watch what other users have been watching or saving.

In other words, it's the Internet's remix power brought to bear on the TV news industry. It's not for people who like having someone else decide what the most important developments of the day are or who the most credible speakers might be. Instead, it's for those who want to be their own news directors or tap the collective judgment of the crowd and who like the idea of being able to view multiple perspectives on the same story. 1Cast draws from more than a dozen sources, including CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, the BBC and MarketWatch. It's also expanding into entertainment news -- it just added clips from E! Entertainment and Style. What's in it for them? In addition to the shared revenue -- 1Cast adds post-roll advertising and some interactive overlays to the clips -- Bontrager said networks like the idea of getting their material in front of viewers who might otherwise be wedded to a competitor's channel. 

One interesting tidbit about 1Cast's users: The big screen doesn't appear to be as important to them as the mobile one. Bontrager said viewers typically spend 12 to 15 minutes watching 1Cast on a PC, but the average session time on mobile (iPhone or Android phones) is 36 minutes. Sure hope they're not watching while they drive. ...

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.