Apple Protest

Desperate? Clever? Too little, too late? It's hard to know what to make of the news that Research in Motion, the company behind BlackBerry, has taken credit for the "WAKE UP!" "protest" that took place outside an Apple store in Sydney, Australia, last week. "We can confirm that the Australian 'Wake Up' campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia," the company told The Age. Even before it was revealed who was behind the "protest," caught on video by Australian video blogger Nate Burr and viewed around the world, it was clear that it was a marketing stunt.

Desperate? Clever? Too little, too late? It's hard to know what to make of the news that Research in Motion, the company behind BlackBerry, has taken credit for the "WAKE UP!" "protest" that took place outside an Apple store in Sydney, Australia, last week. "We can confirm that the Australian 'Wake Up' campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia," the company told The Age. Even before it was revealed who was behind the "protest," caught on video by Australian video blogger Nate Burr and viewed around the world, it was clear that it was a marketing stunt.

Doodle 4 Google-- the competition that pits K-12 students across the U.S. to come up with a doodle to replace the Google logo on the search engine homepage -- has announced 50 national finalists. And Google has opened voting to the public to help narrow the 50 down to five, one per age group. The annual competition, now in its fifth year, has the theme "If I could travel in time, I'd visit ... " The voting site , which also has a list of the national winners, opened at 6 a.m. PDT. Every year, Google taps guest judges who, along with Google employees, narrow submissions to 250 state finalists and then 50 state winners.  This year, the search engine giant scored some famous folks dear to 9-year-olds everywhere, including Katy Perry and Jordin Sparks, as well as Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, creator of "Phineas and Ferb.

UC Berkeley has won a $60-million grant from the Simons Foundation to establish the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, the University announced Tuesday. The institute, which hopes to draw top computer researchers from around the world, will be up and running in July. The first scientific programs are expected to start in January 2013. Richard Karp, a Berkeley professor of computer science, will serve as the institute's founding director. Computer theory is being used increasingly in scientific communities to help scientists analyze the huge quantities of data that better and cheaper technologies have made it possible to collect.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected next week to appoint a field-tested general to lead the California National Guard, an agency battered with internal strife, a legislative investigation and allegations of spying on civilians. Brig. Gen.