Kevin Rose, of Milk Inc., has announced the release of Oink, a new social app aimed at aggregating user ratings of “things around you.” Oink is available for free on the iTunes Store.

From the Oink app description:

Oink is an easy way to rate and rank the things around you. Instead of just rating places, you rate the items inside. You could easily find the most popular items on a menu and see if a friend has tried anything there. Then if there’s something you like, it’s just a single press to rate it and share it with friends.

What you can do with Oink:

• Rate items around you and share with your followers
• See all the cool stuff your friends and other users are Oinking
• Find the best things in town (e.g. Best “Pizza” in Denver)
• Find the items at a place (e.g., Best roller coasters at Six Flags)
• Build “cred” in your areas of interest
• Share your Oink activity on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare

The PBS documentary “Steve Jobs: One Last Thing”—which aired last night—is now available to watch online:

Through interviews with colleagues and others who knew Steve Jobs, whose innovations transformed the lives of millions, “One Last Thing” provides an inside look at the man and the major influences that helped shape his life and career.

The video has been embedded below for your convenience.

Just a few days back, I wrote how Windows 8 “SecureBoot” could lock out non-Windows operating systems, and how Linux advocates were voicing their concerns. Have no fear, Ed Bott of ZDNet has posted an article outlining how Dell and HP plan to handle this issue:

In an e-mail exchange and a follow-up phone conversation, a Dell spokesperson told me, “Dell has plans to make SecureBoot an enable/disable option in BIOS setup.”

[…]

I also contacted HP’s PC division, where a spokesperson had to scramble to find anyone within the organization who was even familiar with the issue.

[…]

The spokesperson confirmed for me that HP has no plans to participate in any conspiracy against a non-Windows OS: “HP will continue to offer its customers a choice of operating systems. We are working with industry partners to evaluate the options that will best serve our customers.”

The fact that HP had to scramble to find “anyone within the organization who was even familiar with the issue” is disconcerting. While I appreciate Ed doing the research, it was hard getting past his blatant smarmy delivery.

Grand Theft Auto fans rejoice. Rockstar Games has just posted their new trailer for the yet-to-be-released Grand Theft Auto V. From what I can tell in the trailer, it appears the franchise is back on the west coast in the city of Los Santos (their version of Los Angeles).

Since the launch of the iPhone 4S and the introduction of Siri, I have read many accusations that Apple has restricted Siri to the new model to help boost sales. Considering that much of the heavy lifting—like speech processing—is handled in the cloud, and the fact that Siri has been successfully ported to the iPhone 4, the assumed A5 hardware requirement started to fizzle. According to an article on AllThingsD, Siri’s iPhone 4S exclusivity really does look like a selling point:

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu says his latest checks with industry and supply chain sources show broad sales strength across Apple’s entire iPhone portfolio, but most of all for the 4S. Evidently lots of folks who could be spending $99 on the iPhone 4 are opting to fork over another $100 for the 4S — and a lot of them are doing it for Siri.

“Despite global macroeconomic headwinds, Apple continues to defy conventional wisdom with a higher-end product mix,” Wu says. “Talking to industry sources, what’s driving the 4S is better than expected reception of its new Siri software.”

It may also be possible that Apple plans to roll out Siri to the iPhone 4 at a later date. For the initial rollout, Apple may have labelled Siri “Beta” and restricted its user base size solely to ensure their infrastructure could handle the demand. Once Apple establishes confidence in the service, they may very well open up Siri for the iPhone 4 and move it from beta to gold master.