OK, before anyone complains, I know that this product has been announced for almost six months, but I didn't see it until somebody showed it to me this weekend. It was just so silly (and yet useful), that I had to write about it. 3Com has an in-wall switch that …

An article on CNET shows (with pictures) one of the new ideas that Intel is working on for future laptop opportunities. This one can act as a tablet, but also has a keyboard on it if you need to do some serious text entry. Looks pretty slick, check it out …

An article in the New York Times runs over some of the more amusing aspects of the long-standing Apple-Microsoft debate over innovation. Many who saw news stories from last week's conference noted that the "revolutionary" HP computer that was being shown off looked like a combination of the 1st and …

In a move that is certainly more incremental than some of the headlines touting its coming, California's senate has passed a new bill that forces online retailers who hire local contractors to perform maintenance and installation to collect and remit sales tax. Although the headlines on this article refers to …

Ace's Hardware reviews the AMD Opteron (the new 64-bit chip that can run 32-bit x86 code unmodified) this month. Extensive benchmarks and a lot of background information. In the end, they think the chip family is very promising, but the 1.8GHz version can still fall behind a 2.8GHz …

ExtremeTech, a site dedicated to reviewing and previewing extreme technology, has a very in-depth set of reviews on various funky keyboards. This includes everything from one-hand to split-key and gesture boards.

In an exciting development, a Verizon has stated that the company expects to announce soon a plan to add WiFi hotspots to some pay phones. The idea is pretty simple: since the pay phones already have hard lines back to the Central Office, they can run DSL over the phone …

You just can't keep Buckminster Fuller down. Although he obviously wasn't personally involved in it's development (Fuller died in 1983), the latest development in high-density, high-speed non-volatile memory uses Buckytubes to store a bit of data. According to this article in The Economist, Nantero is developing what it refers to …

Forbes has an article that describes some of the new PalmOS devices that are coming our way. Among the devices to use PalmOS are: Tapwave - a handheld gaming device Meazura - a handheld measurement device platform Palm and Sony seem the only folks to be continuing the development of PalmOS PDAs …

RecordStoreReview.com has a comparison between the AAC and MP3 formats. No real surprises, as an audiophile, he prefers to use non-perceptual encoding, but AAC sounds better than MP3 at most/all bitrates.

Not for the faint of heart, this Emergency Boot Disk from Russia has a micro Linux on it and a whole bunch of tools to help you fix what is preventing your computer from booting.

An article from CNet points out that Microsoft is operating under a Consent Decree with the Federal Trade Commission regarding the service. In part, the consent decree states that Microsoft shall not "misrepresent in any manner... the extent to which Microsoft Passport will maintain, protect, or enhance the privacy, confidentiality …

Users of AT&T Wireless mobile telephone services have a new way to get information on their cell phones. The new TXT-411 service provides "411" information services via SMS messages (text messaging) for $0.40 per request, which is about a third of the cost of using the voice 411 …

The systems that Microsoft is putting in place in the next major version of Windows (code-named Longhorn) to handle security and permissions are falling under greater scrutiny as the company starts to provide some answers, and feed a lot more questions. An article from Wired tells of some of the …

An article from the NY Times describes one Austin, TX businesswoman who decided to add free wireless to her coffee shop. In the end, she figures the service is costing her about $40/month in addition to her $80/month internet bill and an additional $700 for the hardware to …

E Ink is showing a prototype of a flexible screen with a black and white resolution similar to that of today's laptops. The screen can be rolled into a tube approximately 1/2" in diameter and then rolled back out for use. Although the refresh rate on the device is …

Researchers at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced that they have successfully used an engineered "smart virus" made from the common cold to destroy brain tumors in laboratory rats (which I've always thought were pre-disposed to cancer...). An article from Wired provides some cautionary comments from throughout the health …

An interesting article this morning on MacCentral details the rather complex set up for using an iPod as the backup for an FM radio station that has intermittent problems with its satellite feed. The basics are that they installed the 5GB iPod as an on-site backup at the transmitter so …

With all of the discussion around these days about The Santa Cruz Organization (SCO) suing people over using bits of UnixWare in their Linux, at least one company, SuSE is claiming that they have an existing cross-license agreement with SCO that will protect them from the legal assaults. According to …

An interesting contest comparing the results of optimization by hand and optimization by optimizing compilers. I'll spare you the suspense, the article shows that the human is a better optimizer than the machine.