REAL SILLY The following op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle is worth some attention involving an initiative called RealDVD* by Real Networks.  Titled the "Movie industry's shortsighted fight", it explains: "Thomas Edison, probably America's best-known and most prominent inventor of all time...

DEEP BLUE As someone who's long been a fan of relief globes of the Earth depicting the depths of the oceans, I was glad to see this announcement by Google today.  As the New York Times explains: "Two and a half years ago, the software engineers behind Google Earth, the searchable online replica of ...

COMING SOON Regular readers have long known my enthusiasm for solid state drives and their potential.  While the costs of these drives today vs. mechanical hard drives is still substantial and the relative benefits still incremental, there are some big improvements on the horizon.  This ComputerWo...

TOTAL HIT Like so many iPhone geeks, I'd been waiting for this long-anticipated game to be released and it doesn't disappoint.  IGN has a review that puts it in context and explains: "A few years ago, an oft-asked question at mobile games conferences was, "Where is mobile's Mario?" It was essential...

NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS Well, I've had a couple of days now to play with the new iPhone 3G and the flood of third-party applications now available for it in the Apple App Store, both free and for a fee.  And the good news is that there are some pretty cool applications, especially games that take ...

TORTOISE  vs. HARE Most PC performance tests and reviews by the computer magazines and tech blogs, tend to focus on the bleeding edge computers by vendors, and then measure which one can go the fastest on the most bleeding edge, highest cost configurations.  Kind of like how car magazines ...

BEEP, BEEP As a camera fan, I enjoy looking forward to the latest and greatest in photographic equipment.  That's why I read this review of the new Casio Exilim EX-F1 digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera by the New York Time's David Pogue, with interest. But while reading the first few parag...

MULTI-TASKING NO NOs ABC News ran a story on a recent silicon valley trend with the titillating title "Going Topless to Office Meetings", wisely adding the sub-title, "Why Silicon Valley employees are going to meetings Laptop-less". Here's the gist: "In the headquarters of D...

NEED FOR SPEED Here's a timely review by Ars Technica doing some performance testing on the MacBook Air with a regular 80 GB hard drive, and one with a solid state drive (aka SSD) 64 GB drive: " The MacBook Air is nice, but as we discovered in our in-depth review, not everything is sunshine and...

DIGITAL DREAMS For lovers of TV and movie fare, Amazon has an enticing list to peruse titled "The Ultimate List of Spendy DVDs".  These are not your average boxed sets of DVDs, but the "Ultimate" sets.  For example, top on this list is "Seinfeld-The Complete Series...