News Blogs

Is there a time and a place for laptop use? And should the place never be Starbucks at any time?

It seems that staff at some Starbucks in New York have had enough of those who spend their days using the home of the troubled croissant as their permanent place of work.

The Starbucks Gossip site (which I don't read, but Gawker does) was the first to offer that certain Starbucks were covering up their AC outlets, so that customers would have to rely on their laptop batteries, rather than the company's power supply.

A poster named Mike Pollock, … Read more

Should you have ever wished to throttle a texter in the movie theater, this might be a sobering story for you.

It seems that in a movie theater in Grapevine, Texas, a gentleman called Dale Fout felt the urge to send a text. As related by the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, the lady sitting behind him, Brenda Godwin, was a little disturbed by this self-centered rudeness.

In Godwin's version, she reportedly reached forward and tapped Fout with her finger on his shoulder. Fout allegedly found this alleged tap so preposterous that he leaped up and declared he would be charging … Read more

CNET has learned some new details on Sony's upcoming S1 and S2 tablets.

A source familiar with the company's plans for the Android devices tells us that four versions of the S1 will be available at launch: 16GB Wi-Fi only; 16GB Wi-Fi and 3G; 32GB Wi-Fi; and 32GB Wi-Fi and 3G. The S2 will come in 16GB and 32GB models that have both Wi-Fi and 3G, but no separate Wi-Fi-only variant like the S1, the source says. Those desiring more capacity will be pleased to know that the S1 tablet has a full-size SD memory card reader onboard for additional storage.

The source also pointed out that the S1 features an 9.4-inch IPS display with TruBlack and Bravia display technologies.

We weren't able to confirm the battery life of the S1 tablet, but our source did mention that it's "comparable to the iPad 2." The battery life of the S2 is unknown, but could possibly suffer from the dual-screen setup. Several accessories will also be made available for the S1, including a dock and at least one Bluetooth keyboard. The top of the BT keyboard described to CNET curves slightly, which may allow it to clip onto the bottom of the S1 when not in use, the source adds. … Read more

Chris Hoff, a former colleague now at Juniper Systems, and a great blogger in his own right, penned a piece last week about the weak underbelly of automation: our decreased opportunity to react manually to negative situations before they become a crisis. Hoff put the problem extremely well in the opening of the post:

I'm a huge proponent of automation. Taking rote processes from the hands of humans & leveraging machines of all types to enable higher agility, lower cost and increased efficacy is a wonderful thing.

However, there's a trade off; as automation matures and feedback loops … Read more

In early June, market researcher IDC cut its forecast growth for PCs in 2011 from 7.1 percent to 4.2 percent. Gartner Group, another IT analyst firm, had earlier trimmed its numbers. Meanwhile, Apple iPad sales continue to skyrocket, with 183 percent growth compared to the year-ago quarter. Android tablets remain more of a mixed bag when it comes to gaining buyers, but they'll gain traction over time as well.

Those numbers would seem to lay out the case for a post-PC world rather starkly. Especially when you consider that they don't even consider phones which, in … Read more

Wasn't it only a week ago that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was explaining to us yet again that we're all sharing more and more things with more and more people because we need to spread more and more of our love around the world?

And wasn't it mere days ago that he became the most followed human being on Google+?

I feel sullied beyond my normal coping mechanisms to tell you that he suddenly seems to have closed off his Google+ account from public eyes and disappeared from the Google+ popularity charts.

The Inquirer seems to have been the first to notice … Read more

I had heard, perhaps erroneously, that Texas has budget problems that tend to rival those of California.

So I was stunned to be informed by KDAF-TV that city hall workers in Dallas appear to have vast amounts of idle time--for 50 of them have reportedly been censured for spending far too much of their working days on Facebook.

Perhaps it's unfair to say that Facebook represents idle time. Perhaps some of these highly valuable employees were using Facebook to improve their social skills, something very important in a city hall environment.

The Associated Press identified one of the apparently … Read more

It started on Facebook. She looked into his two-dimensional eyes, ignored the fact that the game was called Mafia Wars, and decided that this might be love.

Oh, perhaps it didn't start with precisely those indications of love and foreboding, but I can tell you how it ended--with an $8,386.88 lawsuit for "misrepresentation, promissory estoppel, defamation of character, and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

All of us who read romantic novels must pay a debt to the Tri-City Herald, which dutifully recorded the progress and regress of a Facebook relationship between Cheryl Gray, 50, from … Read more

Tonight is the All-Star Game, a time when rich people gather together to celebrate the fact that they are rich and can hit a ball with a broom handle.

It's a world away from being, say, a Verizon salesman. It's not easy being a Verizon salesman. Yes, you can now sell the iPhone. But you also have to be a tolerant, cheery person, especially in the face of some customers whose sense of decorum and language can leave them in the twitch of a nostril.

When you hit a ball with a broom handle, you can ignore every … Read more