Aside

The iPhone 3G is pretty rad, but after some reflection, there’s no real compelling reason for me to sell my first generation iPhone and get a new one. 1) The 3G costs just as much as the old one over two years. In fact, slightly more. 2) Taxes/fees included, my cell phone bill these days on T-Mobile (for 1000 minutes) is usually about $80. On AT&T it would cost me about $90 for less minutes, plus 3G. Is that worth…

Big ups to: Rick Karr for his new video commentary on Internet surveillance. Hamid Tehrani for his new post about anti-Semetic Iranian blogs. Glenn Strachan for his latest piece in Discovery about how badly America sucks at WiFi.

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my radio piece on learning English in Estonia aired today. Sorry I didn’t inform you in advance. The audio is here. Also, I had a spot news item on the new iPhone for NPR this afternoon. Audio is here.

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my radio piece on Apple’s WWDC will be on Morning Edition tomorrow (June 9). It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams). New York – 5 am to 9 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 5 am to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 2 am to 9 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM –…

Seriously, if you needed any more convincing about who to vote for, I present the following: McCain is selling golf gear on his website. Obama offers (free) mobile phone wallpaper and (as I mentioned before), ringtones. Could the symbolism be any more striking?

I was back on Chuck Joiner’s MacJury podcast yesterday. The entire hour is available here, both in stream and MP3 flavors. The topic? WWDC Preview – iPhone Speculation, Apple TV Wishes and Mac OS Expectations

I’m back in The Economist! The rise of the low-cost laptop Jun 5th 2008 From The Economist print edition Computing: The ambitious “$100 laptop” programme is having a few problems, but it may have catalysed a whole new market IN NOVEMBER 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society conference in Tunisia, Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a small, cute, lime-green computer. The “$100 laptop” caused quite a stir among those interested in…

Slate: So what happens when good fortune delivers vouchers (and hence computers) into the homes of Romanian youths? Obviously a lot more time logged on to a computer—about seven hours more per week for vouchered versus unvouchered kids. Much of this computer time came at the expense of television-watching: Children in families that received a voucher spent 3.5 fewer hours in front of the tube per week. But computer use also crowded out homework (2.3 hours less per week), reading,…

There’s no way that Obama will pick Clinton as VP. After reading The Huffington Post‘s analysis about VP picks, it would seem that there are three likely contenders: – Gov. Bill Richardson – Sen. Jim Webb [Here’s a Slate commenter and other bloggers on why Webb should get it.] – Gov. Kathleen Sibelius Harping on my international theme, Richardson seems the best choice here. He’s got the foreign policy creds, and hell, HE SPEAKS SPANISH. And as David Boyk pointed…

WashPost: The message — of unity and hope — did not come out of nowhere. David Axelrod, a Chicago campaign consultant, long ago hatched the idea that Democrats’ campaigns should revolve more around personality than policy. The money turned a seat-of-the-pants enterprise into a vast operation that occupied the 11th floor of a skyscraper on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, where 20-somethings tossed footballs, computer whizzes designed interactive Web sites and older volunteers filled an entire call center, not to place calls…