Last week, computer book publisher SitePoint relayed a story about recent experiences with Digg that demonstrates that the Digg system is far from perfect. We’ve written recently on ReadWriteWeb about the decline and fall of quality on Digg, but SitePoint’s anecdote demonstrates that sometimes the wisdom of crowds approach is, well, kind of dumb.
The One Laptop Per Child project, which developed the low-cost XO education laptop for developing countries, has revealed plans for its next-generation mobile computing device. The new system, which will have a clamshell form-factor with two 16:9 touch-screen displays and no hardware keyboard, is expected to sell for $75 per unit and will be available in 2010. That’s the hope, at least. The reality is likely to be quite different, given the project’s troubled history.
The world we live in has become suffused with computer technologies. They have created change and continue to create change. It is not only on our desktops and in our hands that this is manifest; it is in virtually all aspects of our lives. … What will our world be like in 2020? Digital technologies will continue to proliferate, enabling ever more ways of changing how we live. But will such developments improve the quality of life, empower us, and make us feel safer, happier and more connected?
The young are learning to multitask at an early age thanks to the TV. A study conducted by Grunwald Associates on kids’ use of social networks found that 64 percent of people between the ages of nine and 17 aren’t just glued to the couch while the TV is on—they’re going online at the same time. In fact, the TV is what’s driving them to go online while watching their favorite shows, sometimes by offering interactive activities to go along with what they’re watching.
There was a time not so long ago when home computers sat on desks away from the main action in households. People used them for basic productivity tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets. Now, things have changed to the point where our home computers have become a center of our entertainment universe, offering up music, videos and photos.
The prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination–pasty, geeky, male–has failed to live up to his reputation. Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.
A pink MacBook, a computer repair shop, an internationally renowned actor and eight female pop stars are at the center of what is being described as the biggest Internet sex scandal in China. It all began last year, when Edison Chen, a star of “Infernal Affairs”–the movie that inspired Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed”–dropped off his custom pink MacBook at a repair shop. Then in late January, thousands of sexually explicit images began appearing on the Internet that showed Chen in rather compromising positions with eight of the region’s most popular actresses and singers. Authorities say the images were illegally copied from the computer by repair technicians.
Mac-erati are busy debating about the virtues of the supermodel skinny. John Gruber, who was a bit lukewarm earlier, compares the MacBook Air to a convertible coupe and writes, “It’s a secondary car, but for anyone without kids and with no need for significant storage space, it works just fine as their only car.”
The future ain’t what it used to be. In the pre-PC era, futurists predicted huge changes in transportation. By 2008 we would be flitting about in personal jetpacks and taking vacations on the moon. But the communications revolution spurred by personal computers and the Internet wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
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