Technically Incorrect

For those of you in parts of the world where there remain only four or five sunny days--London, New York--the wonderful news that I am about to impart may well be a little frustrating.

However, for those of us in the deserving paradise of the American west coast, this is the sort of joy that only indispensability can bring.

For a man in Seattle named Marc Johnson has invented the perfect solution to laptop usage on a gorgeous sunny day.

The Laptop Burka.

So practical. So you.

(Credit: Marc Johnson)

You might be shuddering in the thought that this has religious connotations. But, no. Johnson is not a member of the Seattle Taliban. He is just an inventor who has come up with the ingenious notion of donning a rather all-enveloping burka so that you might be able to blog on the boardwalk or comment in Cannes.

(Credit: Marc Johnson)

As you can see from the images that I have placed here to bring you excitement, the Laptop Burka is the ultimate in deep-seated privacy, as well as keeping the light at bay for as long as you might be able to breathe your own slightly stale air.

You know that antiglare filters don't work. So this hugely practical item, retailing at a piffling $20, could bring an entirely new meaning to your outdoor life.

Johnson seems to have begun his quest for your heart, mind, and most of your torso with this Craigslist posting . He claims something called Trend Setters has described the Laptop Burka as a "hot new item." He also claims a patent has been filed by axioslawgroup.com. However, this URL seems to engender no Web site.

There is an Axios Law Group in Seattle whose URL is axioslaw.com, so perhaps these are the patent filers. There is certainly a Dylan Adams on the staff, the name Johnson quotes on Craigslist.

No matter. The Laptop Burka is clearly a marvelous invention and I can see the beaches being full of beburka'd bloggers banging their thoughts out across the world, while enjoying a cooling sea breeze.

In my local Starbucks, there's a bald man who wears the same pristine white Prince tennis shoes every day. He is always perched on a stool, his PC open in front of him, typing away with the middle finger of each hand. He has one of those Bluetooth thingies in his ear and he's often talking as he's typing. This somewhat peculiar gentleman is, indeed, running his business from Starbucks.

One might wonder whether he's just getting the slightly better end of this deal. I have never seen him eat there. Perhaps he orders one or two coffees. Which seems to indicate that he is renting business premises for around 7 dollars a day.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, some coffee shop owners have decided to fight back against the laptop squatting fraternity.

Oh, go on. Talk to each other.

(Credit: CC (e)Spry/Flickr)

The post cites the example of Naidre's, a coffee shop in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, that limits the hours in which patrons can ogle their laptops without, well, eating. You cannot just be typing and sipping between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekends.

A sign in Naidre's expresses the owner's emotions on the subject very clearly: "Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day...but people gotta eat, and to eat they gotta sit."

Some coffee shop owners in New York even cover up electric outlets, so that the enterprising, the impoverished students, the merely very lonely or the merely very brazen cannot boot up, sip java, and take up valuable table space all day.

Which leads one to wonder just how painful it would be if Starbucks took their lead and banned laptops throughout its vast network.

There are a couple of coffee shops in San Francisco, for example--and I won't name them only because I don't want to encourage crowds--where there is silence because everyone is engrossed in their laptops. You can walk into these places and 30 or 40 pairs of eyes are illuminated by screen lighting. There is no conversation, not even recognition of other human life forms. Perhaps the most bizarre sight is a table for four, with four dedicated souls ignoring each other and having eyes only for their homework, gossip sites, or IM.

Is it possible that if Starbucks covered up its outlets, customers might find an outlet in each other? And, in finding an outlet with each other, might people stay longer, eat more, and drink more?

I think a scientific experiment is in order, don't you?

Back in May, my crystal ball twitched with wonderment at the idea that Microsoft might be feeling a frisson of excitement that Apple had decided to make an ad in response to Redmond's "Laptop Hunters" campaign.

I suggested that Microsoft executives would be dancing with fair glee and abandon.

It seems that, for once, my crystal ball may not have been full of Bay Area fog.

The revelation that Apple's lawyers allegedly called Microsoft to complain about the Laptop Hunters ads has brought much needed amusement to those who have not seen humor in quite some time.

Indeed, Friday, AdAge began to speculate as to whether Apple might become a Microsoft Hunter and drop a little lawsuit on Redmond's charmers.

The report quoted Michael McSunas, an attorney at Chambliss, Bahner and Stophel, who said that legally Apple "would have a leg to stand on."

McSunas continued: "If, indeed, you now can buy a MacBook for under $1,000, then [the 'Laptop Hunters' campaign] would be inaccurate and misleading."

But grinding your teeth and filing suit are two different things.

So McSunas speculated: "Apple seems to have this sort of cool image; I'd be surprised if they'd file suit on something like this...It would be bad publicity and only make people talk about Microsoft being more relevant."

Does having "this sort of cool image" really preclude Apple from suing or at least doing a little more than wearing black and looking superior?

There is precedent for ads being taken off air when the claims within them were no longer accurate. Chrysler, McSunas pointed out, persuaded Ford to remove an ad for its Freestar minivan in 2004.

But the truth is that in any kind of legal action, the PR is more important than the actual legal action.

If there is one area (and, of course, there are more) in which Apple is extremely talented, it is the area of making people feel exactly what the company wants them to feel.

If the company thought there might be PR value in publicly upbraiding Microsoft, you can be sure that it will lay the groundwork meticulously before delivering a nasty two-fingered jab just below the eyebrows.

It is one thing your lawyer calling Microsoft and telling the company to knock it off. It is something slightly different (and a lot more fun) when Redmond tries to make PR capital from your phone call.

Will Apple file suit? Unlikely. But will it let it all just bubble away like a virus on a cheap PC? Somehow, I doubt it.

Social crises come upon us like paparazzi down the alleyways of Hollywood. In what seems like a flash, we turn around, smile, and see what we have become.

So it is imperative that I warn you of a deeply concerning trend that may well be sweeping the world: the use of laptops and mobile devices in bed.

A company called Credant Technologies, which appears to specialize in something called endpoint data protection, suspected that the world was heading toward something untoward between the sheets. So it commissioned a survey to discover whether workaholia was causing melancholia.

The results will numb.

It appears that 57 percent of those who said they worked in bed (more than a quarter of those surveyed) said they whipped out their devices between 2 and 6 hours a week. Eight percent said they spent more evening time on their devices than talking with their partners.

Does she seem happy to you?

(Credit: CC Riot Jane/Flickr)

I am sure your first thought (after counting the number of hours you are mobile while prostrate) is to consider the effect this must have on these poor people's loved ones.

Do they screech and howl in frustration? Do they scour the bars, the health clubs, and the monasteries for new lovers, ones who are less inclined to connect with others while reclined? Or do they, perhaps, have makeovers that cause them to look slightly more like something designed by Apple, BlackBerry, or Dell?

While you consider the possibilities, might I attempt to ease your involuntary eyelid-twitch by describing a little of the methodology of this survey.

A mere 300 people were asked about their digital proclivities. And all 300 were employed in the City of London, where it is perhaps inevitable that workers need to use their laptops just before snoring, being a city with a proclivity for more than few afterwork pints.

However, I would be interested to hear from those whose relationships; television viewing; trashy novel reading; hygiene of the hands, feet, nose, or other bodily areas; oh, and sex lives have been affected by a deep and lasting need to be connected to work, when they should be connected to their reason for living.

People, if you don't put your Apple or BlackBerry away...your gadgets may be the only things joining you in bed.

So here's what having a strategy and taking a stand gets you. Yes, results.

At least that seems to be the conclusion one can reach from new data culled by BrandIndex. BrandIndex is a company that seems to get its kicks from tracking brands every 24 hours. A little neurotic, if you ask me. But you have to make a living somehow.

Anyway, its latest data suggests that Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" campaign is radically altering value perceptions of PCs.

According to a report in AdAge, BrandIndex says Microsoft's so-called value perception has risen steadily since the campaign began in March, while Apple's has fallen.

Last winter, Apple stood at 70 on the value scale, while Microsoft was at zero. (Zero means that as many people feel bad about a brand as good) Now, Apple has fallen to 12.4, while Microsoft has risen to a glorious 46.2.

Here's the thing that might make you pause for wonder: the people who seem to be most influenced by the Microsoft campaign are aged 18 to 34.

Brand Index's global managing director for polling service YouGov told AdAge: "Apple had a pretty big advantage, historically, when we look at our data. Apple did a great job of putting Microsoft on the defensive. It made them look old, stodgy, complicated to use and unhip. But Microsoft has started to hit back, and younger folks are more cost- or value-focused."

I love research. I really do. It provides great fodder for discussion, cogitation and, ultimately, fireplaces.

The thing I am slightly more fascinated by is sales.

Currently, it may well be that younger people, who just might have less disposable income than those slightly older, are ragingly cost-conscious. (I have embedded a video that shows one young person's purchasing plight.) So when a survey person calls or e-mails them, they will give ragingly cost-conscious arguments.

This doesn't necessarily mean that their attitude while answering interesting existential questions will mirror their behavior when they come to buy.

Far more significant is the fact that Apple decided to respond to the Laptop Hunters campaign with an ad of its own. The competition always knows more than the researchers.

Microsoft has so far only pointed to a 10 percent increase in preference for PCs since the campaign was launched. When accurate and consistent sales figures emerge, they will be very interesting.

For those of you who are interested in what the slightly older folks thought, well, in the 35 to 49 age group, Microsoft went up a couple of weeks after the campaign launched, but now Apple has regained its lead.

Do these older people have more money or more sense? I will leave that to you to decide.

Through its Laptop Hunter campaign, Microsoft has proved there are so many people in Los Angeles looking for a laptop that I am surprised Apple has not responded with an exclusively LA version of its own ads.

You know, 60 seconds of people just talking about themselves and eating wheatgrass, while Justin Long looks on, mesmerized.

So let us celebrate Redmond's takeover of America's cleanest-living city by meeting another Lauren.

Yes, there is more than one Lauren in LA who needs a laptop and scours Craigslist for acting opportunities. This Lauren is about to be a law student. She therefore wants "speed, portability, and battery life". For under $1,700.

Lawyers, you see, must take their vast, fast, infernal brains with them at all times and expect them to sock it to a jury without a socket.

Lauren's mom, with a stern face that suggests she might favor hanging and flogging, becomes most concerned when Lauren wafts over to those enticingly evil Apple laptops. Lauren gingerly fingers a Mac that costs $2,000, even before you add anything on it.

Mom cross-examines Lauren: "Why would you pay twice the price?" Lauren, who has clearly not been coached for the witness stand, replies: "I wouldn't."

So we lurch towards the happy ending, already sensing that this movie, featuring the blonde, bubbly Lauren's quest for student satisfaction, will be entitled "For Whom the Dell Tolls."

And the toll is so cheap for this Dell XPS 13: $972. That's less than the cost of all the law books she'll have to buy in college.

Thankfully, there is still one left in the store. These things are popular. Who amongst you knew that?

Lauren gets exactly what she (and the highly neutral market research company for whom she thinks she is filming the ad) wants. Mom smiles as she tells us that her little girl usually gets what she wants. I am sure her future college sorority sisters are looking forward to meeting Lauren.

In this case, what Lauren wanted was for the Mac to get six months in solitary (at Best Buy) for price gouging, as she takes the first, important step towards her rightful place on the Supreme Court.

And may I just make it entirely clear that there is nothing funny at all in the fact that Lauren's mom is called Sue.

I did hear a rumor that this may be the last of these beguiling Laptop Hunter ads. I'm not so sure. Now that we are being aggressively informed just how cheap PCs are (and especially now that Apple has been moved to respond), I can see more LA demographics being plundered in order to keep the fun going.

I wonder if we soon might see "Lauren Bacall, Laptop Hunter". I'm not sure she'd be quite so easy to please.

I hear an excited rumbling in the tummies of the Responsible in Redmond.

I see the tiniest glint in their eyes that is not caused by tree pollen. For Apple has decided to address the Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" campaign, albeit in its usual laconic manner.

John Hodgman, the actor behind the PC guy, has the human version of most of Best Buy with him, as a laptop huntress called Megan declares she wants a big screen with a fast processor.

One by one, the suitors are dismissed as being unsuitable. Their failings? Small screens. Slow processors. Oh, and viruses, crashes, and headaches. A couple had really dreadful suits too.

Perhaps Apple decided that, in a difficult economy, it had to address arguments that it sees as bilge-filled bunkum. Perhaps the company thought the Microsoft ads opened themselves up a little too much to some spring amusement.

However, I am sure that Microsoft executives will be bringing out their handkerchiefs and donning those tight pants with little bells on the bottom in order to perform a ritual dance around the Redmond Morris pole.

This is something that they have not been able to do in quite some time.