Filed under: Laptops

It looks like Intel has more than just wearable computers and newfangled UMPCs in mind for our future, with the company also recently showing off this slightly less far fetched "metro notebook," apparently aimed primarily at women. One of the most most conceptey elements here is the SideShow-esque e-ink display embedded in the laptop's lid, which promises to let you view your email, calendar, and other information even when the laptop's powered down. What's more, Intel also sees the entire laptop acting as a charging pad for your other gadgets, though it seems you'll still have to charge the laptop itself the old fashioned way. Even without those less-than-imminent additions, however, the laptop appears to be a pretty decent unit, measuing just 0.7 inches thick and packing a Core 2 Duo processor, along with Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiMAX connectivity.

[Via Tech Ticker, thanks Benaam]

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There's an interesting, if not altogether surprising, article written by a professor who recently did a study on "cumulative advantage" which suggests, effectively, that popularity begets more popularity. On its own, this shouldn't surprise anyone. We all know that once something starts to get popular, word of mouth discussions and just the fact that people tend to hear or see that thing more often tends to expand the market even further. The study done by the researchers suggests that there's quite a bit of randomness involved. They found that hit songs tend to become hits almost by accident (which probably won't make the folks at Hit Song Science very happy). Basically, once a song catches on, it tends to snowball into popularity -- whether or not it's actually any good. As the author notes, this has many different implications.

One implication that isn't discussed in the article is that this actually supports the idea that giving away content for promotional purposes is a very important strategy in developing a brand. The results of the study suggest that obscurity is a major force in killing the prospects of just about any creative work -- and the real trick is to promote the hell out of content until it starts to catch on. So, if you're trying to grab attention, why not give away the content to build up the name and make it easier for the content to gain the necessary popularity to hit that tipping point where popularity snowballs? At that point, plenty of new business models are apparent, because now, as the creator of a "hit" you're in demand, and there's only so much of you to go around (basically, access to the hitmaker is a scarce resource, while the content the hitmaker makes is not).