As much fun as it is to view the world in a “Linux versus Microsoft” way, the reality is that a technology monoculture is less useful than a heterogenous one. Even Microsoft knows this: they’ve made a variety of tepid attempts to support integration with other operating systems for decades, because they know their customers are relying on those other systems. More recently Microsoft has even contributed to the Linux kernel.

So it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Microsoft is courting Linux developers with its Azure Platform-as-a-Service. Both Ubuntu and SUSE Linux are available and fully supported by Canonical and SUSE, respectively. CentOS is also an option, with support provided by OpenLogic.

“We at Microsoft want to work with the ecosystem of vendors and communities to deliver cloud solutions to customers based on their specific needs and scenarios," said Sandy Gupta, general manager of the Open Solutions Group at Microsoft. Canonical CEO Jane Silber said “We’ve always kept open communication lines with Microsoft and it was clear from the outset that this partnership would be a great opportunity for both.”

SUSE, as a distribution, has a dedicated commitment toward being “a perfect guest,” and has a long history of working with VMware to affect that goal. SUSE also has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft, so support for SUSE on Azure is an entirely unsurprising development.

In a similar vein, Canonical has been working hard to market Ubuntu as “the leading operating system for the Cloud.” As such, it’s in their best interest to have Ubuntu on as many public cloud offerings as possible to prove their point.

It’s also worth noting that neither Canonical nor SUSE have their own platform-as-a-service offerings yet. I’ve got a hunch that SUSE, at least, has a public cloud initiative under way; and I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that Canonical is working on one, too. Both Canonical and SUSE are working to improve the state of OpenStack, the emerging standard for open source private cloud infrastructure. But such work is a long-term effort, and in the meantime Amazon continues to dominate the cloud space while Microsoft, Red Hat, and others have already rolled out solutions.

Red Hat’s OpenShift platform-as-a-service has been available for about a year, and the source code was recently released as OpenShift Origins.

I asked Red Hat whether they had any plans to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure, and got a very sanitized response:

Red Hat is working with a variety of leading service and cloud providers to enable access to open hybrid clouds and provide a breadth of Red Hat offerings to our customers both on- and off-premise. From virtualization to PaaS, Red Hat’s comprehensive portfolio offers our enterprise customers the consistency and quality they need for cloud consumption architectures. Red Hat and Microsoft have worked together in the past to provide interoperability on the hypervisor and guest operating systems and we will provide additional services and offerings as customer demands dictate.

It will be interesting to revisit Azure in a year or so to see how much traction Linux has gained there, as well as to evaluate which customers are running what kinds of work on the platform.

It’s WWDC time. Like, tomorrow. And we expect to see plenty of fun announcements, not least of which being a brand new mobile operating system, iOS 6.

It’s the type of Apple product every iPhone owner can enjoy, and I’m more than pumped to bring you a full list of expected, rumored, and wishlist features that we’ll soon enjoy.

So how does a silver user interface sound as opposed to blue? What about a departure from Google Maps and a brand new 3D map view brought to you direct from Apple? How about Facebook integration as deep as (if not deeper than) Apple’s beloved Twitter?

All that and more after the break.

iMaps?
Rumor:

• Apple is ditching Google Maps data for its own in-house Maps system
• The app will have a 3D mode

Argument:

• We’ve been hearing about it from multiple sources for weeks
• We’ve seen it, albeit in blurry form
• Apple acquired three mapping companies in the past few years
• Apple’s new iPhoto app isn’t even using Google Maps data

Objection:

• In regards to iPhoto, it’s only fair to note that the app isn’t using Apple’s in-house system either. Instead, it uses OpenStreetMap data.

Judgment: This one’s highly likely. There’s really no other reason for Apple’s map tech shopping spree last year. We’ve seen blurry images, heard it from various corners of the blogosphere for nearly a month, and it makes sense for Apple’s general trajectory as a company. Google is a major competitor, and piggybacking off of the search giant in an area where Apple can afford to keep in-house doesn’t make sense any longer.

Plus, most of the top brass one of Apple’s recent map tech acquisitions, C3 Technologies, has left the company for other endeavors. This is usually the case when Apple builds out new features through acquisitions.

Facebook integration
Rumor:

• Facebook will be baked straight into iOS 6 the same way that Twitter is in iOS 5
• This will allow for system-wide Facebook authentication services for apps, sharing to a limited extent (links, perhaps photos), and possibly check-ins.
• It would also be possible to integrate Facebook Events with the iOS calendar (iCal)
• Also possible, but even less likely: Integration of Facebook Chat with iMessages

Argument:

• It comes rather confidently from MG Siegler
• Apple likes Facebook
• Apple wants to keep things as easy as possible for users, and baking in Facebook only makes sense for users of Apple products, Facebook, and developers
• Facebook sharing is already built into iTunes desktop
• When asked about future plans with Facebook, Tim Cook said “stay tuned.”

Objection:

• Apple has baked in Facebook before and scrapped the idea
• Facebook is a far more complicated network than Twitter: Facebook privacy, Open Graph, etc.
• Concerning the deeper integration (iCal, iMessages, and even Photos), Apple usually takes its time with these big endeavors, like with Siri

Judgment: Likely. As the LA Times points out, all signs point to a Facebook-laden iOS 6. Facebook is usually the most popular social app on the App Store, and Facebook is picking up some serious steam in the mobile realm. Partnering in this way only makes sense, and should only strengthen both companies.

Color Scheme Change-Up
Rumor:

• The iOS 6 user interface will be silver, rather than blue

Argument:

• Blue is used as a complimentary, not primary, color in most Apple products (like the background of File, Edit, etc. in the OS X menu bar when clicked).
• OS X and iPad have silver-based UI
• Apple likes to unify its products as much as possible
• Apple’s WWDC 2012 app has a silver row of buttons, instead of black and blue

Objection:

• Apple’s really good at not trying to fix it if it ain’t broken
• For example, certain apps like Calendar, Contacts, and YouTube haven’t really changed at all since their debut in 2007

Judgment: This one seems pretty likely, as well. Not only has the WWDC app and iPad UI been silver since their inception, but the newly released iPhoto app has also been dipped in chrome. Everything about Apple is silver, from their hardware on the notebook line to the backside of the iPad to the Apple icon on most of the company’s brick-and-mortar stores. Why was iOS ever blue to begin with?

Siri for iPad
Rumor:

• Siri support, not just voice dictation, will come to the iPad
• The personal assistant will be accessed through a hold tap to the home button (like on iPhone 4S), whether the iPad is locked or not
• Siri will take up only a small portion of the screen, popping up from the bottom of whatever app the user is currently in
• It may only come to new iPads

Argument:

• It’s only a matter of time
• 9to5Mac “trusted sources” claim Siri is in testing on second and third-gen iPads
• Again, Apple wants to unify its products
• Siri is used in voice dictation on the iPad, it’s just not fully functional

Objection:

• The iPad may be too far away to understand dictation, according to some skeptics
• Siri is still in beta. Why jump to a new device?
• “Users aren’t proving adventurous with their usage”
• It’s possible that Apple may not reveal Siri for iPad at WWDC

Judgment: This one’s a maybe, but only because it may not show its face tomorrow, not because it won’t happen. Siri for iPad is only a natural progression. My guess is that it’s unveiled tomorrow and available only to third-generation iPads. Apple is scaling Siri to make sure that quality stays up to snuff with concerns for servers, etc., just like Siri was only available on the iPhone 4S.

Siri APIs
Rumor:

• Apple will finally let developers integrate Siri at a command level

Argument:

• John Gruber and MG Siegler are both betting on it
• Developers were given limited access to Siri in iOS 5.1 for dictation
• It would go over well with developers, and offer an interesting new assortment of applications to users
• There are at least three dozen sessions at WWDC marked TBA. Gotta fill ‘em up somehow.

Objection:

• As with Siri for iPad (and earlier generation iThings), iPad is still in beta. Perhaps it should graduate before migrating to new territory.
• Tim Cook said on May 30 that we’d see some amazing stuff out of Siri “in the coming months.”

Judgment: I’m entirely on the fence about this one. Gruber and Siegler count for something, especially combined, and it’s a developers’ conference. It would kind of be like Christmas morning for a developer. At the same time, it goes against scaling Siri, and it feels rushed. Yet still, Tim Cook’s hints are ambiguous. The release of a Siri API at WWDC would be a month from his statement, which is discouraging. But amazing Siri-integrated apps would appear in the coming months.

iCloud Updates
Rumor:

• Apple is syncing new and current OS X features with iOS 6 through iCloud
• This includes iCloud Tabs, Do Not Disturb for Notifications, and Mail VIPs
• iCloud Tabs is said to offer a synchronized list of Safari tabs open across all Apple devices.
• Do Not Disturb would be a toggle under Airplane Mode in Settings that would disable notifications

Argument:

• An iCloud beta site confirms that new iCloud features will affect iOS 6.
• Mail VIPs is already a feature in OS X Mountain Lion, and it’s much appreciated by users. It only makes sense to include it in iOS 6 Mail.
• iCloud Tabs have been integrated into OS X 10.8 Developer Preview 2 in March.
• Even with rumors of added display real-estate to the next-gen iPhone, horizontal resolution wouldn’t change. With most games played in landscape, the ability to disable not only badges but banners during play is even more needed.

Objection:

• All three features come by way of anonymous “trusted sources” at 9to5Mac, with no real concrete evidence behind them.

Judgment: It seems like these features only make sense in the new mobile OS. It’s all-but-announced that whatever’s happening with iCloud — and some new things are undoubtedly happening — will be a part of iOS 6. However, the specific features listed don’t have much solid proof to back them up. We could be entirely wrong. Perhaps the Notes and Reminders synchronization shown on the iCloud beta page are on the WWDC menu.

We’re keeping you up to date on everything you should expect from the all-but-announced features to wishlist items. Check out Matt’s rumor round-up on Apple’s Notebook announcements, as well as a forthcoming post on possible OS X features to look forward to. WWDC 2012 is set to be the biggest developer’s conference yet.

I’ve seen the future, and it consists of a 5 foot eleven-inch hologram of Tupac rapping onstage with an incredibly stoned Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre at Coachella. Despite all the (consumer Internet) startups I interact with, with the possible exception of TaskRabbit, Dropbox and Uber, this pretty old-school hologram technology applied in this completely novel use case is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I live in the future.

I’m not alone, HoloTupac actually impressed KPCB analyst Mary Meeker, of all people, so much she included it in a surprisingly overlooked 50 slide portion of her famed Internet Trends presentation: ”The Re-Imagination Of Almost Everything” as the “Re-Imagination Of Concerts.”

According to Meeker, society is currently going through a phase of innovation that will inevitably result in an evolution of almost all products and services, a phase which is being fueled by an explosion of new mobile devices, easier connectivity, a renewed focus on UI and design and a “what do I have to lose?” economic environment.

According to Meeker, we’re currently in the first generation of this re-imagination of everything — and she backs this her argument with the fact that Encyclopedia Britannica JUST went out of print a couple months ago. To Meeker, taxi’s will eventually be Ubers, drawing with pen and paper will eventually be replaced by the app Paper, VCs will be eliminated by Kickstarter and notes will fall to the wayside as people warm up to Evernote. The sum total of this disruption of the way humans live will eventually result in an addressable market of over $36 trillion according to her calculations.

So here’s why I’m pissed: Arguably as I write this from our offices in SOMA, I’m at Ground Zero of this re-imagination (and across the street from the Creamery) but every time I go to a store (even said Creamery), I’m handed a paper receipt, which I may or may not recycle or toss. Sure the paper receipt business is multi-million dollar industry that likely employs a multitude of well meaning people, but it’s a business that couldn’t be destroyed a moment too soon. I mean think about how many receipts you’ve thrown away over a lifetime, now multiply that by a billion and think about the effect that has on the environment, among other things. Inefficiency at its finest.

And yet, it’s still happening, despite the existence of payments technologies like Square, just like I still use Post-it notes in addition to Evernote.

Every time a taxi driver bitches at me for using a credit card, I wonder why the Re-Imagination Of Everything hasn’t engulfed everything its wake. Same deal with purchasing postage stamps and flying United (ugh).

The sad part is that the isn’t here yet.  So much so that using the more successful re-imagined products, like using Postmates to pick up anything from anywhere, feels like going back to the future in a sense. It’s almost if we live in some sort of hybrid dystopia, with innovation only accessible to a wealthy, fortunate few, who even then have to slog through piles and piles of receipts to complete an expense report.

I guess the only recourse is to ask you guys (the entrepreneurs in the room) to hurry the fuck up. Please read through Meeker’s slides below, and leave your suggestions for other industries that desperately need re-imagination in the comments.

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the book DIGITAL VERTIGO, authored by TechCrunch columnist Andrew Keen.

It occurred to me that the corpse might make more human sense after I'd expressed myself about it on Biz Stone's Twitter where, as @ajkeen, I had a following of several thousand followers. Squeezing the rectangular BlackBerry between my fingers, I wondered how to socially produce my confusion about Bentham in under 140 characters. Turning away from the Auto- Icon, I noticed that the University College corridor was thronged with students walking to and from their afternoon classes.

As I watched this procession of strangers trooping across the Bloomsbury campus, I saw that some of them were glancing at me queerly, perhaps in a similarly foreign way to how I was peering at Bentham's corpse. What impression, I wondered, did these students have of me— this globally networked yet entirely solitary stranger from another continent, determinedly anonymous in the metropolis, gazing with a detached intimacy at a pre- Victorian corpse.

My confusion about the dead social reformer drifted into a confusion about my own identity. Instead of contemplating Bentham's exhibitionism, I began to consider my own personality in the order of things. How, I wondered, could I prove my own existence to my prized army of followers on Twitter, the vast majority of whom neither knew nor would ever know me?

Rather than using Twitter to broadcast my thoughts about the Auto-Icon or to confess what I'd had for breakfast that day (grilled kippers again— eaten at the chic Oxford prison) or to tell the world about my plans to look at the pictures in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum the following day, I went all Cartesian on my global audience.

I UPDATE, THEREFORE I AM, I thumbed onto "Tweetie," an application on my BlackBerry Bold that enabled me to send a tweet anytime from anywhere.

These twenty- four characters of digital wisdom blinked back at me from the screen, impatient, it seemed, to be pushed out onto the network for the world to see. But my thumb hovered over the BlackBerry's send button. I wasn't ready to publish this private thought out onto the public network. Not yet anyway. I glanced down at my screen once again.

@ajkeen: I UPDATE, THEREFORE I AM

If these words were really true, I asked myself, then what? Would the entire world, all eight billion human beings, have to migrate— like settlers in a promised social media land—onto this new central nervous system of society? What, I wondered, would be the fate of our identities when we all lived without secrets, fully transparent, completely in public, within the social architecture that Reid Hoffman and Biz Stone were building for the rest of humanity? I looked again at the dead Bentham, the utilitarian father of the greatest- happiness principle. Would this electronically networked society result in more happiness? I contemplated. Would it lead to the improvement of the human condition? Would it enrich our personalities? Could it create man in his own image?

Questions, questions, questions. My mind drifted to the unwired, to those unwilling or unable to live in public. The thought triggered a feeling of dizziness, as if the external world had sped up and was now revolving quicker and quicker around me. If, as the fictional Sean Parker argues in The Social Network, our future will be lived online, I thought to myself, then what will be the fate of these dissenters, of those who don't update? What, I wondered, in a world in which we all exist on the Internet, will become of those who protect their privacy, who pride themselves on their illegibility, who— in the timeless words of Brandeis and Warren— just want to be let alone?

Will they be alive, I wondered, or will they be dead?

Editor's Note: Sales Marketing Manager Leslie Hitchcock is a non-editorial TechCrunch employee. In addition to working at TechCrunch and being super fashionable, she reviews startups and tech products occasionally on her personal blog, Leslie Just Joined.

Two weeks ago I sat next to Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal at a dinner. Because I cannot help myself when meeting someone as interested in the fashion world as I am, I naturally talked his ear off. What we specifically discussed was the panel Neil sat on at Disrupt called “When Will Fashion Tech Just Be Fashion?” One thing that came up in the panel was the concept of fashion startups disrupting traditional brick and mortar stores by cutting out the middleman and keeping prices lower, presenting a unique AND cheaper online customer experience. Win win, right? The market is booming with companies entering this space: Warby Parker, Shoes of Prey and Everlane to name a few.

Always up for a challenge and bolstered by my positive Shoes of Prey experience, I decided to give Everlane a spin. Everlane is built on the premise that it can manufacture and sell a $50 boutique-style t-shirt for $15. Its retail model boasts production of a t-shirt for a mere $6.50 and by cutting out a middleman, Everlane sells their discerning customer a designer dud for a decidedly non-designer price. A new collection of both clothing and accessories is rolled out each month, but only features a few select items so Everlane can focus on quality.

The site itself is clean, focused and tightly-edited, featuring primarily luxury t-shirts and totes for ladies, luxury t-shirts and ties for the gents.  Owning my fair share of $30 layering t-shirts from the likes of J.Crew and a few expensive designer ones to boot, I was curious to try this basic wardrobe element for an admittedly attractive price.

Buying a new brand online is always slightly anxiety inducing to me, as the effort involved in returning ill-fitting goods is challenging. I agonized a bit over sizing of the women’s t-shirts but as the product description assures they fit true to size, I selected my typical fit in both tops I bought. I would have purchased a men’s shirt as well to give away, but the choices only go up to a large. Do only smaller men buy from the site or has vanity sizing become en vogue even for our male counterparts? Regardless of the answer, I opted not to take that chance and will revisit gifting a men’s Everlane shirt in the future.

When my purchases arrived, I appreciated the stripped down, yet chic packaging. Instantly, the shirts felt soft and durable. I opted for the Women’s Crew Neck in white and the Watercolor Crew Neck in peach. The sizing is accurate and the fit is divine, however I haven’t washed either one yet so we’ll see how they handle being tossed in the dryer. Paired with a blazer and skinny jeans, the peach crew neck handled its first day in the office with aplomb and a couple of complements thrown in for good measure. I do love complements!

Other luxury t-shirt options for women on the site are sold out and potential buyers can add themselves to a waitlist. While I personally don’t love those particular cuts, if Everlane introduces a new style with limited inventory, I’ll test that process out and report back. I can’t stop thinking about its Essential Belt, which is really snappy in its design. As I have a referral credit on the site, I will most likely use it toward adding the belt into my wardrobe.

Returning to my dinner conversation with Neil: I really want to use sites like these regularly and have clearly tried them out several times, with the exception of Warby Parker — but that’s only because I have impeccable vision and refuse to wear non-prescription glasses. (Hopefully hipster glasses will still be cool when my eyesight fails me at 60, if I’m like my parents.)

From what I can see, the hurdle these sites face is a high one; a concern that reflects the psyche of the American consumer. I fully admit to being one of these consumers: the person who owns a pair of Miu Miu S/S ’11 runway heels that hurt like the dickens but still sit in my collection because of their (owner-perceived) status. When I received my Shoes of Prey order, people asked me if they carried the same cachet as a pair of “true” designer footwear — and I had to admit that, to me, they did not. The American mentality of MORE! EXPENSIVE! BETTER! is going to be a tough nut to crack for these fashion startups, but based on their quality I think Everlane and Shoes of Prey have more than a fighting chance.

Why am I so confident in this? As I do with all sites or mobile apps under review, I perform a Facebook litmus test of sorts. As I’m testing sites, I post links or like their pages to see if anyone I’m friends with will download and join. Everlane conveniently tracks all email and Facebook referrals that their current customers send out. While no one commented on the actual wall post, this particular link has the most traction of any that I’ve released in the lab that is my Facebook timeline. If Everlane can keep that pace up, it’ll become a household name just like it intends to.

Looks like a talent acquisition. Smells like a talent acquisition.

Meebo, the chat and publishers tools company that Google acquired for roughly $100 million, is going to see most of its products shut down next month. That includes Meebo Messenger, the sharing widgets and mobile apps.

The one major product that will keep running is that Meebo Bar. (Yes, that one.) Haters aside, Meebo Bar does actually generate some meaningful revenue for publishers, but it sometimes irks visitors with ads that pop up from the bottom, left-hand side of the page. All of the products, except for the bar, will go down on July 11.

Google typically shuts down products it doesn’t want to service when it has talent acquisitions. The reason? It costs money and time and it distracts the acquired team from working on things that Larry Page and Google’s senior management want them to work on. In this case, that’s Google+, which is Page’s Captain Ahab-like attempt to spear the white whale of Facebook. We reported earlier this week that Meebo’s product team will be using its expertise to help build out publisher tools for Google+.

Meebo’s sale to Google is a graceful exit for a team that is well-regarded in the Valley, but didn’t find the momentum it needed to be a sustainable, independent platform. The company did accomplish many notable things, however. It had 100 million monthly active users. Its mobile apps, which had seamless chat between desktop and mobile devices, predated Facebook Messenger. Its sharing widgets were built with some noteworthy JavaScript hackery.

But Meebo had raised $70 million in venture capital. So a $100 million sale is not a win. Hopefully Meebo’s integration with Google+ will not make this tweet from Vic Gundotra, who oversees Google’s social efforts as a senior vice president, seem rather ironic.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Christian Springub, co-founder of Jimdo, a DIY website creator. Since Jimdo launched in 2007, it has grown into an international company fully supporting 11 languages and operating successfully from offices in Hamburg, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Shanghai. In his guest post Christian talks about internationalization and how to avoid failure. You can read more from Christian on his 3Founders blog or follow him on Twitter.

In today's fast-paced and global tech world, internationalization is often on the minds of entrepreneurs and CEOs. If done correctly, it's a great step that will make your business thrive on a global scale. However, there are a few essential insights an entrepreneur/CEO needs to break into a new country successfully. This is both easier and harder than you think it is. Easier, because you've already built up your business in one market. Harder, because what you don’t know how to do, you really don’t know. And there’s no faking it – examples of internationalization gone wrong are a dime a dozen (think "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" or i18nguy). If you're seriously considering venturing beyond your core domestic audience, make sure you cover your bases and internalize these lessons.

You don’t know anything about other countries

This is the first and most crucial step every company must take before going international: admit you have no clue how other markets and countries function. Convincing yourself otherwise will set you up for failure. No translation agency can help you and no two-week vacation will give you the necessary insight to understand the people who live there. Once you accept this truth and what it means for your strategy, you’re ready to face the consequences—get a local to help you.

Quick quiz: where do people in Taiwan go to pay their utility bills? ¹ If you don’t know the answer to this (and a lot more), you’ll need a Taiwanese native to help you break into the market! Someone from a country is an expert in its language, culture, and traditions. They can help you successfully enter a market by providing indispensable knowledge. If you choose to go it alone, you're sabotaging your expansion from the very start.

Say hello to "mini" CEOs

So you found someone from Russia to help you get started there. Congratulations! Say hello to the new you. This person is your eyes and ears, so spend some time searching for the right person and fit. You need to give them your complete trust and support. Remember: you don’t know the language, you don’t understand the culture, and you have no idea how Russians think. So be supportive and get out of the way. If you've found the right person, you'll feel more at ease about being "hands-off".

Here is the first upside: If you hire the right person for the market and give them a bit of freedom, you can harness their entrepreneurial spirit and pass on that "founder passion."

Hiring is easier than you think

The next time you go to lunch, look at the people around you. Listen to them. If you live in a large, international city, there are people from other countries living there, too. They're there because of love, location, or pure adventure. If you offer these transplants a job they love – one where they keep their native language skills sharp and stay in touch with their roots – you’ll have a loyal ambassador for your company. Hire those people and cultivate a long-term relationship with them: your internationalization will benefit.

You will be slower

More markets mean more complexity—everywhere. It means you'll need more people to do "less"—30 people to do what your competitors are doing with 10. It means rolling out features after translations are done. It means creating a new video in each language when you launch a new feature, not just one.

Despite the difficulties, internationalizing has advantages: if one market fails or doesn’t take off as quickly, you have others to fall back on. You’re also in a great position to share experiences from one culture or market with the others. And last but not least, it's a hell of a lot of fun to work with a diverse set of people from different cultures. So, go ahead, be crazy and prepare yourself for the clash of cultures and remember: You don't know anything about it.

¹ The answer: people in Taiwan pay utility bills at the grocery store. Who would have thought, right?

On June 6, 2012, filmmaker Tom Lowe found his film, Timescapes, on The Pirate Bay. His response wasn’t to sue the uploaders into oblivion. Instead, he wrote a simple note:

The film, available in multiple resolutions and DRM-free, is a beautiful, Malickian meditation on nature and the American Southwest. It is, in a word, striking. But his note struck a chord in the web community and his film gained the attention of Reddit and other communities where it was hailed as a refreshingly calm and reasoned approach to piracy. I wanted to know more.

I tracked Tom down in Las Vegas and asked him a few questions about piracy, filmmaking, and what it takes to be an artist in a time of digital downloads.

TC: Why did you comment? Were you upset? Did you just find the torrent?

Tom: I wasn’t upset about the torrents. I knew it was going to happen. I am a member at Demonoid and other torrent sites, so I was checking every couple of days to see when it would hit torrents.

When I saw the torrent, I felt like letting downloaders know that this was a small, self-financed film, and there are not any Hollywood fatcats in the revenue stream. We have also gone out of our way to offer like 15 different types of paid downloads, from standard-def resolution up to 2560×1440, for those with 2560×1600 monitors, which we believe is a first. If you want reduce file sharing, I think you should offer fast, secure, relatively inexpensive, DRM-free downloads in as many flavors as possible. The only people DRM hurts are your actual, paying customers.

TC: How long did it take you to make the film?

Tom: Two years. I essentially shot the film out of my Toyota Tundra pickup truck, sleeping outside on cots under the stars for hundreds of nights.

TC: What do you feel about piracy in general? Do you see it as a hindrance to art?

Tom: I just see piracy as a reality. I don’t really see it as good or bad. Artists need to accept that this is reality now, and adapt their business models around reality.

How many copies did you sell? Did things improve after the attention?

Tom: We made the entire movie for about $300K, and we have sold about $200K from our own website in downloads, so we are doing pretty well.

We're hoping to break even in the coming months. If we happen to get a TV deal with Nat Geo or BBC or Science Channel or whatever, that would instantly put us into the black. But there is also overseas TV, which I think our film would be great for

TC: What can people do to support artists besides buying films? What could you use?

Tom: You know, we had pre-orders of “TimeScapes” and the public funded us with about $120K. That really helped. In exchange we offered to put their names in the credits, along with other small incentives, which people seem to enjoy.

TC: Are you angry at the Internet?

Tom: Only when it's slow. Of course not. My entire film “TimeScapes” was born of the Internet. I met the film's producer and financial backer over the Internet. In fact, having only ever chatted on email a few times, he sent me $100,000 and a $50,000 Red MX digital cinema camera from New Zealand. It would be at least a year later that I actually met him in California.

TC: As a filmmaker, how has piracy helped you? Hurt you?

Tom: I don't think it's possible for me to say yet. What if some kid downloads my film, and his father turns out to be head of distribution at the Discovery Channel or something? Who knows.

TC: If you were to sit down with a pirate right now, what would you tell him or her? How would you explain your position?

Tom: I can just look in the mirror and have that conversation. This will piss off some of my friends who are artists, but I download movies and music. Usually, if I like something, I will get on Amazon and send a copy to a friend or a girlfriend, or a family member. Do I always do that 100% of the time? No. But I do try to make a point of it.

TC: What needs to change in the industry to make piracy not worth the cost or risk?

Tom: I think providing very cheap, very fast downloads directly will help. I do not have complete control over pricing of my film, as I have financial backers who need to be paid back. But generally speaking I think film downloads should be cheaper and faster, with no DRM. As far as music goes, I think artists should rely more on live shows and merchandise and such to make a living. And in terms of films, I think theaters should be bigger, with higher resolution, better seats, better sound, to create an experience that you simply cannot get at home. I would also like to be able to drink a beer at the movies. Why not? And stop raping me for $5.50 for a coke. People don't like to be raped.

TC: Is there any way to make purchases or rentals more appealing than piracy?

Tom: Make it cheap, easy, and fast.

TC: What kind of response did you get from your comment and reddit post?

Tom: The response seems very positive. My entire career and film have been based on the support I get on the internet. I didn't plan any of this. I just wrote what I felt like writing at the Pirate Bay spontaneously, to let people know there is a real human being behind the download.

WWDC kicks off next week and in traditional fashion, a keynote headlines the event Monday morning. Much is expected from this year’s show including iOS 6 and new Macintosh desktops and laptops. So far the rumor circuit has been a buzz with talk of a complete hardware refresh including Apple bringing back the MacBook brand, adding a retina display to at least one model and finally employing Intel’s latest silicon that will also bring USB 3.0 to Macs for the first time.

What follows is the first post in a series rounding up nearly every rumor concerning Apple’s WWDC notebook announcements (iOS 6 and Mountain Lion to come) no matter how far-fetched or wild — some will likely come true and others probably won’t.

MacBook Pro Redesign
Rumor:

• A revamped MacBook Pro line will launch at WWDC
• New models will be thinner without an optical drive

Argument:

• The MacBook Pro hasn’t seen a new design in two years
• Several credible rumors state the same message of thinner design, no optical drive and USB 3.0

Objection:

• See next rumor

Judgment: Likely. The MacBook Pro is long overdue for some new digs. It’s a safe bet that if it doesn’t happen at WWDC — it is a developer’s conference after all — Apple will announce the new models in the coming weeks to get a head start on the lucrative back to school season.

A revival of the MacBook brand
Rumor:

• Name would be just MacBook
• Prices would start at $1399 for a 13-inch model, $1,799 for the 15-inch
• No optical drive and optional SSD
• Would eventually replace the MacBook Pro

Argument:

• Comes by way of AppleInsider sourcing a KGI analyst
• MacBook is a known brand
• The stats match up with previous rumors

Objection:

• A third line of Apple notebooks would cannibalize existing sales

Judgment: Possible. Apple is set to kill the optical drive in its notebooks, but doing so in the so-called Pro line would diminish ever so slightly the line’s professional brand.

New Intel Chipsets
Rumor:

• Apple will finally employ Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPUs

Argument:

• The current MacBook, MacBook Pro lines use older Intel CPUs.
• Intel is currently rolling out Ivy Bridge CPUs.
• Apple generally uses the latest generation of Intel chips

Objection:

• Apple sometimes works in mysterious ways

Judgment: Highly likely if Apple announces notebooks at WWDC. Apple’s current notebook line use relatively antiquated Intel CPUs. It’s time for an update. If Apple doesn’t announce notebooks at WWDC, look for new notebooks with Ivy Bridge CPUs in the coming weeks.

USB 3.0 on the MacBook Pro
Rumor:

• USB 3.0 will join Thunderbolt on the MacBook Pro

Argument:

• If Apple finally deploys Ivy Bridge CPUs, USB 3.0 is supported natively

Objection:

• Apple sometimes works in mysterious ways
• Apple is pushing the competing high-speed interconnect standard of Thunderbolt.

Judgment: Highly likely if Apple announces notebooks at WWDC. This feature is dependent on the Intel chipset.

A retina display in a notebook
Rumor:

• Apple will use a higher resolution, likely retina-quality display in a notebook — either a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro

Argument:

• High resolution icons have been found in OS X
• Next generation AMD and NVIDIA GPUs can push crazy resolutions

Objection:

• Super high resolution screens are very pricey
• A higher system resolution could disrupt current applications and development

Judgment: Unlikely even though retina displays is a strong part of Apple’s product branding strategy. There is little benefit to roll out very expensive high resolution displays when there isn’t much built for the new resolution yet. If this is in the cards for future models, Apple might announce high resolution support alongside Mountain Lion.

17-inch MacBook Pro to get the ax
Rumor:

• Apple is discontinuing the largest MacBook Pro amid slow sales and a new notebook strategy with a revived MacBook line replacing eventually the MacBook Pro series

Argument:

• The 17-inch MBP is the least selling Apple notebook, capturing only 1.7% of sales in 1Q2012
• A smaller, high resolution screen could replicate the workflow of larger screen

Objection:

• The 17-inch might not sell well, but it’s a true mobile workstation

Judgment: Won’t happen at WWDC. If true, this will likely come later this year. The cancellation of the 17-inch model is dependent on higher resolution screens that won’t likely be available in mass quantities until later this year or early next. A higher resolution 15-inch could in theory replicate the large screen of a lower resolution display like the one currently found in the 17-inch.

The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Dan Farber, Dan Taschek, and Dan Gillmor — no, that’s not right. Steve Gillmor, Steve Taschek… No. Without Scoble, we have little time to get to the point, which this week is Google’s Do As Much Evil as Possible Tour. @dannysullivan returns with a 20 minute diatribe on paid inclusion, whatever that means.
 
Without Kevin Marks, we have to fend for ourselves until @stevegillmor picks a fight about Google’s war with Apple and its consequences for Google +. In rebuttal, Danny ends up proving @stevegillmor even more right than usual. Hovering just off camera is the sense that with all this talent and possibility, shouldn’t these guys work together as they did when the disruption began? Hey, how old are you anyway?

@stevegillmor, @dannysullivan, @dbfarber, @jtaschek

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor