Miscellaneous Stories

I'm starting to catch up on blogging after a lull because of a move and a new job.  Here are some links that have been festering in my feed reader for a while:

• The Wall Street Journal explains the failure of Negroponte's laptop: A little laptop with big ambitions.  For a shorter take on this, and the Negroponte-Intel feud, read Fake Steve Jobs: Give one, get one -- right in the ass.
• Print is Dead by Jeff Gomez, the latest book to rehash the perennial "future of books" debate, is now available.  I've listened to podcasts of a few chapters and was not terribly impressed.  He's a thoughtful writer, and has done a decent amount of research, but his premises and arguments are seriously flawed, in my opinion.
• Mark Hurst critiques a WSJ article on new e-mail software that tries to solve the problem of e-mail overload: Silicon Valley's solution to overload: More technology.
• Second and third graders draw designs for laptop computers: The laptop club.
• "Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches… What if it controlled your life?" -- Scroogled, fiction by Cory Doctorow in Radar magazine.
• New Greenpeace guide to greener electronics.  Nintendo, Philips, and Microsoft are at the bottom this time.
• Novelist John Degen explains why copyright is important to writers: Copyright = Oxygen.  He includes an excellent rant by Harlan Ellison on the topic (at YouTube).
• Derek Cheshire proposes a slow approach to innovation, taking its cue from the Slow Food movement: Slow Innovation (Change This).  I once considered rebranding this blog as "Slow Technology", for the same reason, but that didn't get far.