Lenovo’s Clever Counter-Ad to the MacBook Air

This ad for Lenovo’s ultra-portable ThinkPad X300 is a pretty good counter to the ad for the MacBook Air…

…but I think I’ll wait for the Mac version. The ThinkPad may boast that it’s the “no-compromise” machine, but the lack of Mac OS X is a big-ass compromise in my books. Especially when the OS likely to be bundled with this machine is:

Rogers to Offer iPhone in Canada

It’s official: Rogers will be offering the iPhone in Canada. No word on whether they’re going to lower their ridiculous mobile data rates to reasonable levels.

Darth Emo

Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood will tell you that there’s nothing like a computer you build yourself, and as the Star Wars comic below shows, it applies to droids you built yourself too:

Click the comic to see it at full size.
Comic courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Click here to see the comic at full size.

The Real Threat to Google

According to a BusinessWeek article, the real threat to Google isn’t Microsoft or Yahoo!, but cell phones:. “As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. […]

Update on Creative Labs’ PR Nightmare

Even more on Creative Labs’ recent mistake. Read on for details…

Creative Labs: Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

When driver incompatibilities with Windows Vista caused Creative Labs’ Audigy series of sound cards to lose some of their functionality, one “Daniel_K” stepped up and wrote some workaround software that restored those missing features. You’d think that this act — essentially crowdsourcing at its best — would be applauded by the fine folks at Creative. You be wrong.

Read on for more about how Creative did not let a good deed go unpunished.

Slight MacBook Improvements Mean Savings For You!

By now, you’ve probably heard about the latest revisions to Apple’s laptop lines. You may not have heard about the opportunity to save money thanks to this “refreshing” of the line. Read on for more…

Taliban Wants Mobile Phones Shut Off at Night

The Taliban wants mobile phone networks shut off at night. It’s less about their war on all things fun and more about their belief that American soldiers and rebels within Afghanistan are using mobile phones to track down remaining Taliban members. Afghanistan’s 4 mobile phone operators were told to expect their towers and offices to […]

The Outcome of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Fight as Illustrated by “RoboCop”

Animation courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

How Devotees of Older, More Traditional Programming Language X See Newer, Different Programming Language Y

They see it in pretty much the same way that Grandma sees the remote:

Click here to see a larger version of the comic.

Big Box Linux

My friend Paul has opened an online store aimed at making life easier for Canadian Linux users: Big Box Linux is a place where you can buy computer parts and peripherals that are known to work with Linux. The site has a feature that lets you select parts based on which distro they’re known to […]

Floppy Fail

Here’s a geeky image, courtesy of The FAIL Blog.

Conspiracy Theories Emerge After Internet Cables Cut

By now, you’ve probably heard that three — possibly four — undersea internet cables have been cut, and you’ve probably heard the conspiracy theories. Perhaps it’s just a fluke – such things do happen in complex systems — but I am reminded of the words of James Bond archvillain Auric Goldfinger: “Once is happenstance. Twice […]

Ten Worst PC Keyboards of All Time

PC World takes a look at the 10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time…

At Last, a Computer Peripheral for Those Romantic Encounters

The use of computers as assistive devices for romantic encounters isn’t new: from the “computer dating gone terribly wrong” plotline used by some ’60s and ’70s sitcoms to the likes of LavaLife and eHarmony, we’ve had a handful of dating generations’ worth of software approaches. However, there wasn’t much in the way of romance-assistive computer hardware…until the USB Aroma Radio + Speaker!

The Weighted Companion PC

Based on an item from the game Portal, it’s the casemod of the moment: The Weighted Companion PC! “The pink heart melts the frozen soul of the lonely modder!”

Contender for Most Insane Tech Article of the Year: “Why the OLPC Promotes Terrorism”

If someone’s compiling a list of the most off-the-wall out-of-touch-with-reality tech blogger posts of the year, I want to nominate Robert Graham’s post at Errata Security titled Why the OLPC Promotes Terrorism. It’s so filled with the type of over-the-top pronouncements that one normally sees on extreme right-wing blogs that I had to reread to make sure that it wasn’t parody, and even now I’m not 100% sure. (Next to this article, Zed’s rant sounds rather restrained…)

The Invisible Computer Revolution

“If I had told you ten years ago that by the end of 2007 there would be an international network of wirelessly-connected computers throughout the developing world, you might well have said it wasn’t possible.
…it was created, and it continues to expand, not through Non-Governmental Organisations or charity or development grants but through the market, […]

Steve Jobs Keynote Coverage

I wasn’t at the Steve Jobs keynote, but lots of other bloggers and journos were: see TechCrunch, Engadget, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Tech Trader Daily, MacWorld, Big Tech and the TV-B-Gone guys.

Gizmodo’s Self-Righteous Claptrap Debunked — By Gizmodo!

In an article defending their actions at CES, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam cited his reporter’s misuse of the TV-B-Gone device as a defiant act of journalistic independence and integrity, vaingloriously calling it “civil disobedience”. However, an October 2004 Gizmodo review of TV-B-Gone does a far better job of explaining the type of person who’d use the device…