I apologize for the headline.  I’m just excited.  Flexible display technology has the potential to push mobile tech usage far and wide.  Imagine being able to use the equivalant of a laptop without having to deal with the hassle of a laptop.

A couple of years ago I took my Compaq Presario 2700 laptop on a 2-week vacation to Italy so that I could use it for mapping and travel information via dial-up internet and so that I could use it’s hard drive to store all the digital photos I took while there.  There were a couple of problems with this.

First of all, that notebook is pushing 8 pounds, which is a lot of weight … especially while carrying all the other luggage through airports, bus stations, and train terminals.  Secondly, the size is just awkward.  It’s like carrying a Trapper Keeper with you everywhere, except it costs thousands of dollars and you’re afraid to sit it down.

Just imagine something along the lines of those foldable keyboards that allow you to pull a full-size display out of them, à la, the mobile computers in …

The NYT and the Consumerist don’t seem to get the idea behind micropayment spam-protection schemes. Or at least they gloss over the benefits that AOL and Yahoo are providing whilst attacking their admittedly shady method of profiteering on spam control.

Update:  Upon further reflection, I realized that my original comment didn’t reflect what I was trying to get out there.  AOL and Yahoo are only going part of the way in spam-prevention here.  The ideal system would involve the email recipient to set a price to send him/her an email.  You could also whitelist friends so they didnt have to pay a thing.  This system would drastically cut down on the spam, and would still allow people who didnt know you to email you for a minimal fee, say one penny.  (Or you could set it to a dollar and no one you didnt whitelist would ever email you.)  AOL and Yahoo’s systems are a step in the right direction, but don’t really address the problem.  Neither company will see widespread adoption of their system.

Google Video has all of the Super Bowl commercials for your viewing pleasure.

Om Malik, in another fit of Apple-loving, has yet another post up about how great Apple is.

Let me first state that I don’t really have any issues with his conclusions, but I do have a few points to make.

He compares Apple buyers to people who buy expensive jeans. I think this is an excellent comparison. Diesel jeans and Levi’s both serve the same purpose and do their tasks equally well. Some people fall for the marketing and the whole cachet that comes with the more expensive jeans. Others buy the Levi’s, get their work done, and buy a couple of meals with the money they save. I wish I had access to the statistics on this, but I would bet the farm that the percentage of Apple users among Diesel jeans wearers, is much higher than the percentage of Apple users among Levi’s, or even Wranglers, wearers…even adjusting for the income differences between the two groups. Apple is all about style and cachet. The Dell’s of the world are about putting a box on your desk. You can do the same things with either, just as you can with a pair of Diesel jeans or a pair of Levi’s, but one is cooler than the other.

Om ends his little tirade with a note about how, yes, Apple doesn’t have a great track record, but we should forget about that because, well…I don’t know why we should forget about it, but Om thinks we should. He’s right, of course (rather Mark Twain is right), that historical trends, are not a guarantee of future performance, but it’s surely an indicator.

With those things said, I agree with what I think Om’s overarching theme is: Apple is becoming a force to contend with in the PC world. It’s not because their products are necessarily better (I can do everything that someone with their fancy G5 can do with my XP Pro box) but because their products have that ephermal quality called “cool”.

Update: In a somewhat tangential note, Cringely has a good idea, about how Apple is going to increase their market share…See item #3 in his 2006 predictions.

This is most likely the BEST EVAR post at Gizmodo.

Live at Macworld: Please Don’t Be This Mac User – Gizmodo

(By “seriously”, I meant “not seriously”.  Really.)

I just updated to WordPress 2.0 and changed to the K2 theme.  Hopefully this works out well.

Awhile ago I bought this cheap gamepad from WalMart and since then I had lost the driver CD. I had a difficult time locating a driver online, but finally did.

Update: The original link is now dead. I’m now hosting the file here.

Update2: Apparently AVG throws a false positive on this file. It’s not a virus, people. Feel free to use an online virus scanner to double check.

Update3: I can’t believe people are still downloading this file. Does anyone notice that this post was originally wrote over 4 years ago? What are the chances that the “Game Elements PC Recoil” you bought recently is even the same device that this driver was wrote for?

I’ve been having problems with the Bloglines Toolkit extension in Firefox 1.5.  The main problem being that it doesn’t work!  However I noticed here that the author, Chad Everett, posted a new, untested version in the comments.  That would be in comment #4.  This works fine for me…

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