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I wouldn't for a moment think that anyone working late on something frightfully significant in Redmond would conceive of alcohol as a means to help them through their engineer's block.

But just in case there is one tortured soul who might be tempted to have a six-pack delivered to his cubicle, I have some difficult news.

i-Booze, the Seattle-based folks to whom you used to be able to turn online for a swift delivery of soothing liquids, seems to have fallen on difficult times.

For Techflash has delivered the information that not only has i-Booze failed to secure … Read more

Perhaps you have already become used to Verizon's Droid tossing names at the iPhone like an 8-year-old boy behind his teacher's back.

However, the latest ill feelings directed at Apple's little cutey seem beyond even anything heard in an elementary school.

In a new TV spot, Droid asks an important question: "Should a phone be pretty?" To which many sane people would say "yes," and many emotionally challenged beings made of metal would say, "Huh? What?"

Its answer--the latest in its presentation of the Droid as a robotphone--is to hurl metallic-tasting … Read more

I am consumed, as I am sure all imperfect beings are, by the furor surrounding Tiger Woods' sudden and somewhat vertical descent from his image pedestal.

There will be those who will have much sympathy with his plight, as there will be those who will have none.

However, I was reading a quite brilliant editorial on Yahoo Sports offered by Dan Wetzel.

I was fully absorbed by Wetzel's strong, persuasive arguments that Woods should really not bleat about the tabloid world, when my right eye was drawn to an ad from the Professional Golfers Association. I immediately took a … Read more

If you thought that all wireless carriers know just how good their competitors' networks are, you might be suffering from a dropped conception.

In a recent speech to the Association of National Advertisers, posted on the AdAge Web site, Verizon Chief Marketing Officer John Stratton explained that his company couldn't get hold of any good data on just how reliable AT&T's network is. So it commissioned a third-party survey, one that seems to have sent it giddy with joy.

"What we saw, we sort of suspected, but it was almost astounding," he said.

So … Read more

You know that apocalypse thing we're always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?

For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people's loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.

It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim … Read more

Some, perhaps including Rupert Murdoch, might find this story uplifting.

While there has been much recent bellowing, whining, and general cat-on-heat griping about Google making money from the fine work of others, now I can report that some are finding ways to make money piggybacking on the broad spine of Google's engineering.

Two enterprising entities, different in their form but united in their purpose, have attempted to use Google's Street View as a medium for their own commercial messages.

First, there was car rental company AutoShare, the Canadian equivalent Zipcar in the U.S. You know, the folks … Read more

The Disney Company is always so good at accessing one's inner child. The hope, the joy, the glory of absolute love, family goodness, and everything that sails in it.

So I am thrown a little off course when I hear that Disney may have falsely accused an 11-year-old boy of hacking the Pirates of the Caribbean video game and disabled his account.

The account I have read comes from the boy's dad, Brian Guy. Guy is a manager of MySQL's hardy pirates at Sun Microsystems. He also has a blog, which was positively fulminating with frustration Tuesday, … Read more

Sometimes ingenuity doesn't quite lead you to a comfortable place.

The enterprising folks at WPMI TV in Mobile, Ala., decided that they should reach out on a real-time basis to their viewers. They erected a billboard, adorned it with an image of three of its most photogenic anchors, and added a live Twitter feed.

The whole thing ran very smoothly, until a passing human took this photograph and sent it in to The Palmetto Scoop.

Perhaps one's first reaction would be that this image might have enjoyed a little concoction.

However, Mashable has confirmed that not only is … Read more

I'm sure that all Dell laptops are wonderful machines that would make perfect gifts for even the most misanthropic, laptop-loathing humans.

However, my feelings were temporarily frozen, not unlike Michael Douglas' forehead, when I espied that Austin's finest was trying to garland this holiday period with a Netbook that seems to have special twittering powers.

I see the liquid remnants of your scoffing floating through the ether. However, please peruse the picture with which I have decorated this post.

It's from the Dell site and it seems like a normal Dell Netbook, doesn't it? The blurb … Read more