Technology

Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry

In a tale of sales success breeding resentment, computer firms are worried the new breed of computers’ low price could threaten already thin profit margins. (Subscription required)

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Unlike John McCain, Many Seniors Rely on the Net

Blogs are buzzing over Sen. John McCain's recent admission that he's internet illiterate. According to data compiled by the Pew Internet Project, McCain is unusual for a college-educated white man over the age of 65.

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Advertisers Get More Social

Social networking tools open to marketers, who try to tread lightly.

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Curtains for desktops? If not now, when?

The statistics are starting to bear out the anecdotal evidence: Desktops are on their way out.

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Say goodbye to the computer mouse

Gestural interfaces could spell the end for the humble computer mouse says analyst company Gartner.

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For Half a Cent, a Call That Informs, and Annoys

The growing number of automated calls has alarmed privacy lovers and those who resist commercialism. (Subscription required)

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The Future of Retail: Instant Price Match

The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and were the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere... If you are a store, you might consider investing into a cell phone jammer...

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Why Some Hate Apple's 3G iPhone

Why Apple's latest isn't winning everyone over.

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Crowdsourced tagging tool makes photos searchable

It's not much good having a vast collection of photos if you can't organize and search through them in an intuitive way, but tagging capabilities have so far proven beyond the scope of most photo sharing websites. And while digital photography makes it very easy to shoot thousands of images, most digital photographers lack the time and patience to tag those individual photos. Tagcow aims to provide a convenient solution by automatically tagging users' photos with descriptive keywords that can later be used to find them.

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Nehru Place

09 JUL 2008 from Our Delhi Struggle | Read the full story»

Nehru Place is Delhi’s retail cluster for computers. Laptop repair specialists next to laptop repair specialists, hardware shops next to hardware shops, and printer cartridge vendors as far as the eye can see... You can’t imagine that this place once didn’t exist. The ancient old man screwdriving logic boards must have learned the trade from his father; the overstuffed cubicles must contain computers dating back to the Raj. Nehru Place is the new subsumed by the old: the greatest advances of humankind brought into a market that feels centuries unchanged.

Hat tip: BoingBoing

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How Mobile Boosts Productivity

Tech consultancy Ovum has produced a report that looks at the wireless industry's impact on American productivity. They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year - a figure that would exceed productivity from today’s motor vehicle manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries combined. Big winners will be healthcare and small business.

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Microblogging: Twitter and Other Blogging Tools

Microblogging is huge, but should anyone care?

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Three Statistics That Lie

07 JUL 2008 from Silicon Alley Insider | Read the full story»

In the realm of web statistics, there are three numbers that are great to use if you want to tell lies. They are: RSS subscriber numbers, Facebook app install numbers, [and] follower numbers on Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, or some other social media service.

Hat tip: PSFK

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As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll

06 JUL 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Alex Payne, a 24-year-old Internet engineer here, has devised a way to answer a commonly asked question of the digital age: Is my favorite Web site working today? In March, Mr. Payne created downforeveryoneorjustme.com, as in, "Down for everyone, or just me?" It lets visitors type in a Web address and see whether a site is generally inaccessible or whether the problem is with their own connection. (Subscription required)

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Government starts data mash-up

The UK government launches a competition to find innovative ways of using the masses of data it collects.

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Google, Yahoo to Make Flash Searchable

Showing that they can agree on something, the two search engine giants develop a means to index Web pages loaded with Flash animations.

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The rising cost of texting

Text message prices have risen as quickly as gas prices at the pump over the past two years. What gives?

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Charging mobile phones by dancing

As users move their arms along with the music, a specially designed system of weights and magnets creates an electrical current that gets stored as charge in a reserve battery. That energy can then be used to recharge a mobile phone.

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Group Suggests an Exchange to Trade Internet Capacity

There are exchanges where you can buy and sell stocks, pork bellies, wine and even pollution allowances. Why not an exchange for the trading of digital bits and bytes?

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New Flavors for Addresses on the Web Are on the Way

Icann voted to permit the introduction of Web addresses ending in words like .paris and .sports, making the most sweeping changes to the network’s address system since its creation. (Subscription required)

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Privacy on the Web: Is It a Losing Battle?

What if you visited an investment site and found advertising messages suggesting therapies for your recently diagnosed heart condition? Chances are you would experience what Fran Maier, executive director of TrustE, a nonprofit advocate of online privacy, calls the "creepiness factor." Maier and several others discussed the challenges of maintaining online privacy -- amid rising Internet use and plummeting costs of data storage and tracking -- at the recent Supernova conference in San Francisco.

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All-Seeing Car Reads Road Signs For You

General Motors builds a car that reads signs and warns drivers when they're straying into another lane, giving people yet another reason not to focus on the task at hand.

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Chrysler Brings 'Infobahn' to Autobahn

Chrysler wants to turn your car into a rolling WiFi hotspot where you check your Facebook profile, upload pictures to Flickr, and eventually be part of a nationwide traffic-control network.

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Supercomputing Power Hits the Desktop, Minus the Software

[C]heap access to such formidable computing power could mean that, over the next few years, we will see an explosion of new independent research along with profound new discoveries, analysts say.

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The Web Time Forgot

17 JUN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

As the Mundaneum museum prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary on Thursday, the curators are planning to release part of the original collection onto the present-day Web. That event will not only be a kind of posthumous vindication for Otlet, but it will also provide an opportunity to re-evaluate his place in Web history. Was the Mundaneum (mun-da-NAY-um) just a historical curiosity — a technological road not taken — or can his vision shed useful light on the Web as we know it? (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Internet-a-Gogo: Airlines to Offer In-Flight Access

19 JUN 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

For fliers who want to stay connected while in the air, in-flight Internet system Gogo does the job. (with video )
(Subscription required)

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Investigating Employees' E-Mail Use

Co-host Steve Inskeep talks to Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora. The California-based firm helps companies in legal matters by investigating patterns of employee e-mail use. (Audio)

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At Social Site, Only the Businesslike Need Apply

In the midst of Silicon Valley’s recession-proof enthusiasm for community-oriented Web sites, LinkedIn, the most boring of the social networks, is grabbing the spotlight. (Subscription required)

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Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast

14 JUN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Wikipedia Breaking News Faster Than NBC?

Someone mysteriously updated Tim Russert’s Wikipedia entry with news of his death a full 30 minutes before the story broke on NBC. IP address records indicate that the edits came from Internet Broadcasting, a company that runs websites for NBC’s Local Media Division. It’s also rumored that the news was hitting Twitter even before the Wikipedia edits. With our current capabilities of easily disseminating information, this kind of citizen journalism can come from anyone, and can easily outpace traditional media.

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Software Lets Senders Assign Value to E-Mails

Seriosity, a Silicon Valley startup, thinks economics will help people learn which of their e-mails have value. The company has created software that lets a sender attach value to an e-mail to denote how important it is. The idea is to get people to send messages that are truly important. (Audio)

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Verizon: Drop your landline, get a discount

Wireless operator says it will offer discounts to landline-free wireless customers who combine Internet or TV service from the company.

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Potential new weapon against TB: free cell minutes

Researchers at MIT believe they've discovered a new weapon in the battle against tuberculosis: Free cellphone minutes.

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WiFi in the Sky May Mean Big Bucks for Airlines

Airlines are rushing to adopt technology that would let you surf the web at 36,000 feet, and with good reason -- sales of in-flight broadband service could top $1 billion by 2012.

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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

JUL/AUG 2008 from the Atlantic | Read the full story»

What the Internet is doing to our brains...

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.

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Understanding "Cloud Computing"

Is computer software becoming obsolete?

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Apple unveils iPhone 2, both the phone and the business

Everyone knew the iPhone 3G was coming, but Apple quietly changed the way the iPhone is sold Monday in addition to releasing a next-generation product.

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Geek Girls: Revenge of the Nerdettes

As geeks become chic in all levels of society, an unlikely subset is starting to roar. Meet the Nerd Girls: they're smart, they're techie and they're hot.

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FCC chief's free broadband plan delayed

A plan by the nation's top telecommunications regulator to provide free wireless high-speed Internet service hit a snag this week over concerns about possible interference and a proposed censoring feature that upset free speech advocates....

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Study secretly tracks foreign cellphone users: They don't roam

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cellphone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

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How the Web Was Won

Vanity Fair:
How the Web Was Won — Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign.

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Comcast to test new way to manage Internet jams

Comcast, under fire for the way it treats subscriber Internet traffic, will start tests this week to see if it can avoid traffic jams by targeting neighborhood bandwidth hogs rather than file-sharing programs.

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BoltBus fleet has free Wi-Fi, power in every seat

30 MAY 2008 from bb Gadgets | Read the full story»

A new bus service called "BoltBus" offers free Wi-Fi an power outlets in all its vehicles. I just looked up the rate from New York to Boston (my most typical bus trip) and it's twice as much as the Chinatown options...which leaves it at a very affordable $20. I'd gladly pay $10 extra for Wi-Fi through the whole trip, even if it is likely just a 3G or satellite connection split between everyone on the bus. BoltBus currently services New York, Boston, Philly, and D.C.

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The Dawn of Free Internet Access?

The FCC is considering auctioning off a slice of spectrum with a free provision -- meaning millions of Americans could eventually enjoy free, broadband web access.

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Tech Industry Fueling Palestinian Economic Hopes

The talent and desire are there, but the region's torment has retarded economic growth, especially in the tech sector. But the Palestinians are reaching out to foreign partners to jump-start things, and finding them -- even Israelis.

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Mefeedia introduces news video search

Video search site launches a news video search feature, which tracks the content of news sources ranging from The Wall Street Journal to TMZ.

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Next-gen Internet will create bigger digital divide

The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today's broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.

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Global Dreams for a Wireless Web

An entrepreneur is trying to cover the Earth with Web access, one hot spot at a time. But his big idea is encountering equally big obstacles.

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Why the "mobile Internet" is a poor investment

Joi Ito, a shrewd Japanese/American venture capitalist, has written a great little blog-post about why he's not so hot to invest in the "mobile Internet." Basically, when a heavily regulated, big stupid phone company controls your "internet," then your ability to innovate and do cool stuff and make money is entirely predicated on the regulator's or the stupid phone company's willingness to allow that to happen.

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Prototype: Cloud Computing: So You Don’t Have to Stand Still

The term "cloud computing" means outsourcing computing resources — processing, storage, messaging, databases and so on — and paying only for what you use. (Subscription required)

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The 10 most annoying habits of technology companies

We surveyed readers at PCWorld.com and found that you've had your fill of such annoying policies and practices as well... Hoping for a little retribution -- or at least some explanations -- we went knocking on the doors of Apple, Intuit, Sony, Symantec, and other perpetrators of bad behavior. We didn't always receive good answers (or sometimes any answer -- Apple didn't bother to return our calls), but we did put these companies on notice: Annoyed customers frequently turn into ex-customers.

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Life, Death and Twitter on the African Savannah

For veteran wildlife ranger Joseph Kimojino, the traditional tools of his trade -- binoculars, off-road jeep and a rifle -- have been supplemented by Twitter, Flickr and a blog.

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Explaining The Internet With Paper

Common Craft is a fun site that makes videos which explain web technologies in plain English. The videos use good old fashioned paper signs and diagrams to breakdown complex processes. A healthy dose of humor and simple animation gives it the feel of a tutorial for kids, but that’s why it’s so brilliant. For people who have no clue what RSS or wiki means, this basic approach could be a huge help.

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New $100 Laptop Unveiled

Yesterday, at OLPC’s Global Country Workshop in Cambridge, Mass., One Laptop per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte previewed the second generation of the much discussed $100 laptop. Dubbed the XO-2, the versatile new model will apparently be half the size of the original and feature two touch-sensitive, indoor-and-sunlight displays.

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Pay-By-Phone to Arrive in 2012

An article in Reuters claims that NFC (Near Field Communication) - the technology that enables people to make small payments by flashing their handsets over sensors, is likely to reach the American masses by 2012, when one phone out of every five sold will feature the wireless communication technology.

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All-you-can-read digital magazines

Through a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Relay's fixed-price program—Eco forfait—lets consumers receive unlimited magazines of their choice (not including adult ones) for a price of EUR 17.90 per month.

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New Sites Make It Easier To Spy on Your Friends

13 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

If you are still relying on Google to snoop on your friends, you are behind the curve. Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don't turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn't already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free. (Subscription required)

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Consumers ditching land-line phones

Traditional land-line phones, once the bedrock of communications in the USA, are quickly going the way of eight-track tapes...

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Welcome to the social mess?

With new data portability projects from Facebook, MySpace, and Google, the social-networking experience is on the verge of getting either a lot smoother or a lot sloppier.

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Social-networking sites work to turn users into profits

Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites have been the rage of the tech industry for more than a year.

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Nationalize Twitter? Hmm, not so fast

A lot of chatter recently that Twitter has become vital to our daily lives--with some suggesting it to a question of national security.

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U.S. lawmakers introduce new net neutrality bill

Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic.

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How Little Do Users Read?

06 MAY 2008 from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox | Read the full story»

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

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Technology Group Plans Wireless Network

A who’s who of technology and telecommunications companies announced Wednesday that it intends to build the first of a new generation of nationwide wireless data networks. (Subscription required)

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U.S. airlines bump up digital fun

More airlines are rolling out high-end in-flight entertainment products in the economy cabin, ushering in an era in which passengers have greater control and selection of movies, songs and video games.

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Itineraries: Free Wi-Fi, but Not for All

As travelers demand free Internet access, and providers seek revenue, a compromise is emerging to offer both free and paid options. (Subscription required)

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If You Use Outlook E-Mail, Meet Xobni

The free downloadable software can index all of your Outlook e-mail and make messages quickly and easily searchable. (Subscription required)

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'Cloud Computing' Puts Computer Resources on Tap

A new technology aims to make computer power, like electricity, a pay-as-you-go enterprise, potentially bringing supercomputing to the masses. Craig Balding, an information technology security expert for a Fortune 500 company, talks about what is known as "cloud computing." (Audio)

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Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter

IT engineers with a bent for home improvement are taking their energy monitoring onto the Internet. One house Twitters about its energy usage while another broadcasts to its human overlords about what's in the fridge.

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Web in infancy, says Berners-Lee

The world wide web is "still in its infancy", the web's inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee tells BBC News.

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Medical Advances—Through Your iPhone?

Researchers are beginning to understand how mobile phones can cut costs, help solve rural health-care problems, and even reduce medical errors.

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Short-term mobile internet for travellers

Travellers who need internet access on the road typically have two choices: either limit their use to the confines of hotel or café wifi—which can be pricey—or subscribe to long-term and expensive broadband data card services. New York-based RovAir now offers a third option with its day-pass wireless mobile broadband service.

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How to Fix the Web

"Please say who you are, what you do, and how the Web is screwed up." How's that for an icebreaker? That was the way Kevin Lynch, Adobe's CTO, grabbed his audience at the company's annual developers event this year, throwing open a discussion about what we don't like about the Web and what we'd like to see fixed.

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Broadband 2.0 Poised to Reshape Web, TV

Experts say this increased bandwidth -- when it becomes widely available -- will have a profound effect on everything from our social interactions on the web to the way we consume media.

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Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail

28 APR 2008 from CNN | Read the full story»

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

Hat tip: Biz Stone

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Taipei Commuters Use Mobile Phones as Digital Wallets

Asia Scout Network point us to commuters in Taipei, Taiwan who are using their mobile phones to make traveling a bit more convenient. Mobile phone users attach a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip to their mobile SIM card and transportation fees can then be charged via the Easy card system, eliminating the need to buy and carry a ticket for each trip. The system can be used to pay for Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), buses and parking fees.

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Stark warning for internet's future

Is the future of the open and innovative internet at risk? With the second billion of the planet's citizens due to go online in the next 10 years and an avalanche of online-enabled devices hitting the market with each passing year it would be understandable to assume that the internet is in a healthy position.

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Microsoft not ruling out Windows XP extension

LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE, Belgium (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer offered a glimmer of hope on Thursday to fans of the company's Windows XP operating system, saying the company may reconsider its decision to stop selling it soon....

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Microsoft Reveals a Web-Based Software System

The new system, called Live Mesh, is Microsoft’s most ambitious step yet in tying its personal computer business more closely to software running in remote data centers. (Subscription required)

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Microsoft's Tellme launches BlackBerry voice search

Microsoft Corp.'s Tellme subsidiary launched an application for the BlackBerry on Tuesday that lets people speak commands into their smart phones to search for businesses, look up movie times, check traffic and make other queries....

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New Service Will Monitor Your Site For Typos

Automatic spell check has been built into many browsers for years, but typos continue to plague even the most reputable websites (and print media, for that matter). Recognizing this fact, a number of services have emerged that will continuously monitor your site for spelling errors. Spellr.us, currently in a registration-required beta, plans to offer hourly, daily, and weekly sweeps of your site, and will provide a visual snapshot of a page with errors clearly marked with strikethroughs.

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A Slice of German Wikipedia to Be Captured on Paper

In an odd experiment in reverse publishing, a collection of Wikipedia articles in Germany is being produced in book form by a major publisher. (Subscription required)

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Web Could Run Out of Gas by 2010

Growth in broadband traffic may mean we reach the limit of the Internet's physical capacity by 2010, according to AT&T. Investment in infrastructure is needed.

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Gadgets at Work: The Blurring Boundary between Consumer and Corporate Technologies

The boundaries between work and play are beginning to disappear as consumer technologies -- including social networking tools, user generated content and wikis -- are increasingly adopted by corporate America. For technology companies, this emerging "consumerization" trend represents an opportunity, but it also brings new management challenges as companies struggle to embrace these technologies in a way that doesn't limit their usefulness but also doesn't result in lost time or money. And while there may be productivity gains for corporations that experiment with integrating the latest consumer gadgets, security remains the deal breaker, say experts at Wharton.

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Lexicon: Meet Facebook's answer to Google Zeitgeist

Members will be able to search for phrases on the site to see just how often they were talked about in public "wall" posts, according to the company. Cool or voyeuristic? Could be both.

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what if products could twitter?

As chip technology gets ever smaller and cheaper, it's possible that most things will have the ability to share information with their owners. Even something as simple as deodorant bottle could send you a "money off next purchase" message when it's running low.

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Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

Why a corporate "user anthropologist" is spending so much of his time in the shantytowns of the world. (Subscription required)

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More cities offer Wi-Fi on buses

More cities across the USA now offer wireless Internet connections on buses, according to the American Public Transportation ...

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When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission

For decades, Silicon Valley has been defined by the tension between the technologist’s urge to share information and the industrialist’s incentive to profit. (Subscription required)

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Nationwide text message alert system approved

Federal regulators Wednesday approved a plan to create a nationwide emergency alert system using text messages delivered to cellphones.

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Yahoo's Flickr Expands Into Online Video

Yahoo Inc. will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that may be too late to lure most people away from the Internet's dominant video channel, Google Inc.'s YouTube....

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Google Offers to Host Services on App Engine

Google is offering to host enterprise Web applications on its own infrastructure with a new tool for developers, App Engine. (Subscription required)

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EU Flights Just Got Irritating; In-Flight Cell Calls OKd

Air travelers will be able to talk, text and e-mail in European airspace after EU regulators approve the use of mobile phones during flights.

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Mobile Services Boom in India

Indians are using their cell phones—some 300 million have subscriptions, vs. only 30 million PCs—as a "one-stop shop" for everything from e-mailing to banking.

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Email Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Chinese

03 APR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Many Chinese prefer traditional, face-to-face meetings, or at least one-to-one phone calls and text messages sent via cellphone. And in China's go-go climate, instant responses are greatly valued. For many people I know, email is an afterthought -- they'd rather chat via instant message. (Subscription required)

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In-Flight WiFi Coming Soon

American Airlines is one step closer to offering in-flight broadband access to it’s passengers. Aircell, the airline’s in-flight internet provider, just received approval from the FAA to begin producing and employing it’s broadband connectivity gear on any aircraft cleared to use it. The service will initially be limited to transcontinental US flights, but will eventually roll out to shorter flights. Both companies expect to debut the service by the end of 2008.

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Computers to merge with humans

People will become ever more reliant on machines says a report on the future of human-computer interaction.

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Amazon Launches Text-Message Shopping

Amazon.com Inc.'s brick-and-mortar competitors have yet another reason to fear the Web: a new service that lets shoppers compare prices and buy things with a few quick taps on their cell phones....

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Phones Will Soon Tell Where You Are

28 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Would you want other people to know, all day long, exactly where you are, right down to the street corner or restaurant? Unsettling as that may sound to some, wireless carriers are betting that many of their customers do, and they're rolling out services to make it possible. (Subscription required)

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We Want It, and Waiting Is No Option

The Web empowers both groups and individuals as a place where choice is not only an option, but an imperative. (Subscription required)

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Silicon Valley meetings go 'topless'

31 MAR 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

As the capital of information technology, Silicon Valley may have more gadgets per capita than any other place on the planet. Yet, even here, "always on" can be a real turnoff. Frustrated by workers so plugged in that they tuned out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going "topless," as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices on which so many people have come to depend.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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IT's Not about the Technology

Gartner researcher Tom Austin on why your head of IT should be a cultural anthropologist and why you should think twice before you block YouTube.

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Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat

A new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing into online social networking Web sites. (Subscription required)

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Pay-Per-View Funerals bring Mourners Online

From tomorrow Southampton Crematorium will be offering a "pay-per-view funerals" service, allowing family members who are unable to make it in person the chance to watch the service online. The Guardian reports that for £75 a family will be able to purchase a password that will give them access to a live webcast of the ceremony.

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Interruptive media versus multitasking

The mature information worker is someone who can manage his queues effectively, prioritizing and re-prioritizing as new items crop up, doing the fast-context-switching necessary to respond to an email while waiting for a file to download or a backup to complete. It's a little like spinning plates, and when you get the rhythm of it, it can be glorious. There's a zone you slip into, a zone where everything gets done, one thing after another clicking into place. But once you add an interruptive medium like IM, unscheduled calls, or pop-up notifiers of mail, flow turns into chop.

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Joocing the Next Billion Internet Users

Paris startup Jooce has an idea: Instead of one laptop per child, why not many virtual desktops per public computer? It's catching on.

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After the Techno Lust, There's Always E-Cycling

Americans are using -- and getting rid of -- more electronic devices than ever. As technology improves and gets cheaper, old cell phones, computers, iPods and digital cameras end up in desk drawers, basements -- or on the curb.

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Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out

Plans for municipal Wi-Fi grids have been tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. (Subscription required)

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There's Gold in 'Reality Mining'

Data from the use of cell phones and other mobile devices yield patterns of movement that can help public agencies and businesses.

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Love It or Hate It, In-Flight Cellphone Use Has Arrived

As if flying weren't already hellish enough, the airlines make it worse by allowing passengers to gab on cellphones. Emirates Airlines outfits its planes with technology that will allow passengers to use their mobile phones in flight.

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