Looking Back To See The Future Of Tech
David Pogue highlights the 2009 tech advances that he think are most interesting and likely to point the way for future development: tiny projectors, low-light capable cameras, scrutiny of wireless carriers, the explosion of mobile apps, netbooks and e-books.
The year’s not quite over yet, but it’s over enough to observe a few of the most interesting high-tech highs, lows and trends of 2009. Besides, it’s Thanksgiving — a perfect time to contemplate the future that’s starting to take shape.
via State of the Art - Some 2009 Technology That Won’t Be Novel Long - NYTimes.com.
Blogging and Email Join Forces
Neat new feature from WordPress allowing comment reply via email.
[I]nstead of clicking back to your dashboard, you can reply to the comment straight from e-mail. When you click reply, a special WordPress e-mail address will appear in the Sender line, matching your reply to the proper comment thread. Send it off, and your reply is up on your blog in seconds.
MSI Wind Review: The Month Of Joy
The MSI Wind U100.
I bought an MSI Wind U100 exactly one month ago. I paid $350 at Best Buy for the following configuration:
- 120 GB hard drive
- 10" screen
- 3-cell battery
- 1 GB of RAM
- 1.3 megapixel video camera (above screen)
- Ports: (Left of keyboard) 2 USB 2.0 ports. (Right of keyboard) ethernet port, VGA port, headphone and mic ports, SD card slot, 1 USB 2.0 port. No BlueTooth.
- Operating System = Windows XP Home
The short review? I LOVE my Wind.
Death to the double space. Viva la revolucíon!
The reason I only use one space between sentences is because the two-space standard is an artifact from manual typewriters. Typists made a practice of using two spaces because otherwise the keys would jam because many typists were too fast for the keys. In the days of the secretary pool, many people, women mostly, had typing as their job, so they got pretty damn good at it. And those old typewriters couldn't keep up.
Once the electric typewriter was invented, the two spaces between sentences standard should have become a thing of the past. My guess, however, is that it remained the standard because the men in charge, who didn't type and only read, thought it looked "weird" after having been raised on the two space standard. As they never typed themselves, they didn't ever experience the annoyance of the double space tap or of needing to go back to double check to make sure that your sentences are properly spaced.
Take a look today at the fields where double spaced sentences are still required. They're either bureaucracies where people follow arcane rituals for no good reason, like government agencies, or professions where the people in charge are old and/or never had to type for themselves, like the law. Because these professions have so much relative clout, they're able to hold out against the vast tide of workers accustomed to using computers and inserting single spaces.
Death to the double space. Viva la revolucíon!