You mean like Stardock's Impulse? That's been out for nearly two years now? Ah, thought not...

I'm not so sure - in the case of traditional advertising you get certain groups intentionally targeting users that match a given criteria such as views of a certain type of website or TV program. Even if web advertising then adjusts based on the effectiveness of links between given groups and given adverts, that's still fundamentally driven by a manually selected connection.

In the case of the system described in the article, to match you with similar uses and then apply a degree of randomness to provide more interesting results. In this case, the link is driven by automatically calculated connections based on usage rather than targeting. This means it can be applied not only to products, but to any other site that involves multiple users with varying interests.

This seems like a more interesting alternative with more potential than traditional targeted advertising.

Your analogy does nothing but complicate financial markets. There's also no real consistency in your argument - you seem to be using vague and increasingly baseless environmental analogies that have no real connection to each other. Your last two sentences in particular also seem to have no real relevance to the earth as a system, economic or environmental, due to the input of the sun's energy and the potential for exploitation of resources within and external to the earth.

It's supported on the HTC Hero, but only as an explicit addon by HTC.

I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing - a full mobile browser is a full browser that has the bonus of mobility i.e. runs on a mobile device. Certain websites serving certain variations on their standard HTML to specific useragent strings reflects nothing on the capabilities or the type of the browser that renders them.

Yup, they're *so* anti-DRM that they chose to restrict application sales on the iPhone/iPod Touch to iTunes, with mandatory DRM even for developers who don't want it and no way to distribute or install outside of their proprietary methods.

Apple were happy to go anti-DRM for a bit of geek cred once iTunes and the iPod were both already dominant and they no longer had to rely on technological lock-in. When it gives them more control they're all for it. Ars have an article that sums up the iPad's restrictions on freedom.

Your argument that Apple succeeding with a closed DRM'd model forced open music is also counter-intuitive - their leverage over the music industry may have hastened DRM-free music, but that was at best an unintended side effect. Indeed, it's possible that without the success of iTunes the industry would never have bothered shoving DRM on us and we'd have seen a natural progression from CDs (although that may be a bit optimistic...)

It's DRM'd to high hell - books, movies and apps. The only reason the music isn't is thanks to competition from the likes of Amazon. There's something slightly frustrating about using an explicitly open format and then spewing their own brand of DRM all over it.

1. I've had the exact opposite experience - reading long journal articles and the like on a kindle is a far nicer experience than trying to do the same off my laptop. Given its glossy screen, I can't imagine the iPad will cope too well either if you sit with a 200W light behind you. I still prefer books given the choice, but spending a significant amount of time in front of an LCD sucks in my experience. 2. That's fair enough - it's more of a fundamental problem with e-ink, although I'm sure Amazon could do something with the software (a single button to zoom straight in). 3. This seems to be very similar to 2 - the fact is it's a very specialised device that does one thing well (IMO) and a few value-added things significantly less well. Your reference book point - when I'm looking for something specific I find the search function sufficient but I guess that's a personal thing. 4. This is more a case of publishers not wanting to sabotage their existing business model I'd have thought - hopefully things will equalise over time. Unless publishers lower prices to undermine Amazon I can't see this changing. Hopefully competition will eventually benefit all parties involved in this respect. Really, I think the Kindle will remain the superior straight reading device - it's a vast improvement over a standard LCD in my experience and in that of friends who've tried ebook readers. That said, Apple's bling-factor and the devices other features could be enough to relegate the Kindle to a niche. We'll see...

Or you could make *two clicks* and change it back. This is a significant opportunity for Canonical to become profitable and could potentially see a minor, insignificant revenue increase for MS. If they were dealing directly with MS you could argue they're asking to be screwed, but with Bing/Windows on the one side and Google/Chrome OS/Android on the other Yahoo appears to be the least self-sabotaging search engine at the moment. Particularly with Chrome OS, Google is looking to make the desktop ecosystem on which Canonical depends an irrelevant commodity in the face of a closed, in-the-cloud system.

If you'd rather use Google then take the two clicks to change it, but don't act as if you're making an ethical stance against corporatism. Google's end goal is you being locked into their webapps, just as MS' end goal is you being locked into their OS and apps.

Canonical brokered a compromise with Mozilla, something about authorising their patchset, whereby they were also allowed to keep the branding. However, if a user makes further changes to Firefox and distributes it they would have to remove the branding. These terms were unacceptable to Debian but Canonical decided it was worth it to draw new users with the Firefox brand.

All they're doing is changing the system defaults - your user profile will remain exactly. It gives them the potential for a positive cash flow and the only cost is that people who need their Google will have to add 2 seconds to their system set-up process. I'm tempted to go Yahoo anyway due to their better privacy policies, and if doing so helps Canonical then that's pretty tempting. It's good to see a couple of underdogs team up like this, even if Yahoo is semi-backed by MS.

What looks unique to me is the use of the touchscreen not to interact with virtual strings but to control midi parameters - the neck is used to finger chords, and all notes fingered are played no matter where on the touchscreen you tap. The touchscreen is used to modify pitch and distortion with multiple fingers at the same time for multiple chords.

In comparison, your example involved fingering chords and 'virtually' strumming them - much closer to a typical electric guitar. If it's an effective instrument this does seem innovative enough to be patent-worthy IMO.

The Nexus One is manufactured by HTC, not Google - they have a lot of experience making OEM phones (many of the network-branded phones of the last 15 or so years were designed & built by them).

As for software, it's give and take - I like Android for the multiple concurrent apps (allows some very clever add-on features, such as automatically switching on your wifi when the cell identifier indicates you're in an area you normally use it), the widgets (especially calendar), the open app store (so emulators and alternate browsers are allowed) and the google integration & syncing. On the other hand, the app ecosystem isn't as good as the iPhone and the UI isn't always as fluid/good looking.

Depending on your use case, I can see how Android could be far better suited.

Bit of a false dichotomy - given the current state of corporate America it's more likely they'd savagely poach each others' ideas and blow the spare cash on more advertising or to line the pockets of execs. At least the patent system is inefficient rather than intentionally wasteful...

Software patents are complete bullshit, but that doesn't mean all patents are worthless. Medicine, for example, would likely have stagnated long ago without patents. Cameras are somewhere in between but this is the kind of case the court systems were designed to test, unlike software patents which are abused by people cashing in on insignificant advancements.

In 2008, Nokia had a net income of 5.77 billion dollars, Apple had a net income of 4.83 billion dollars. Their margins are lower then Apple's but they're a far bigger company. Get your facts straight before dismissing others.