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From the New York Times: Tired of hearing other people’s cellphone conversations? It may become worse. Soon you may have to watch their favorite television shows and YouTube videos, too, as they project them onto nearby walls or commuter-train seatbacks. Pint-size digital projectors are in the works. These devices, when plugged into cellphones and portable …
From BBC News: By 2020 the terms “interface” and “user” will be obsolete as computers merge ever closer with humans. It is one prediction in a Microsoft-backed report drawn from the discussions of 45 academics from the fields of computing, science, sociology and psychology. It predicts fundamental changes in the field of so-called Human-Computer Interaction …
From the Globe and Mail: The biggest record store in the U.S. isn’t a record store at all, it’s Apple Inc.’s iTunes. Thursday, the computer giant announced that after just five years in the market, its online music store has blown past Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to become the largest retailer of music in the U.S. …
From AP (via CNN): The thousands of Navajo Nation residents who rely on the Internet to work, study and communicate across their 27,000-square-mile reservation will be out of luck Monday, if their service provider shuts access as planned. “It’s going to be a sad day,” said Ernest Franklin, director of the tribe’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.
From ABC News: What is it about April Fools’ Day jokes that we love so much? Perhaps it’s that, in the midst of the crushing influx of information that many of us cope with daily, a well-constructed prank provides a welcome break. For a moment, we smile, even when the joke is a tried-and-true chestnut.Google …
From Reuters: If you ever thought it would be cool to have an Xbox laptop, or wished those old Atari games in your attic could be reborn on a retro handheld device, you might want to talk to Benjamin Heckendorn. Better known as Ben Heck, the 32-year-old Wisconsin native has attained legendary status among “modders”, …
From SiliconValley.com: About nine months ago, Steven Boal, founder of Coupons Inc., began to see the fabled hockey-stick-like growth that has made fortunes for so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. That’s when he knew a recession was coming. The last time Boal saw this kind of growth was in 2001, after the dot-com collapse. Back then, …
From the New York Times: After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law. So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — …
From Time magazine: You might call it an avocational hazard. A recent ITN News video in the U.K. shows that some London pedestrians have become so preoccupied with e-mailing and text messaging on their BlackBerrys and cell phones that they can’t make it down a city block without crashing into lampposts or trash bins. One …
From the Globe and Mail: It’s one of the fastest-growing, most lucrative departments at CBS Corp. right now. But the company’s president, Les Moonves, has a far more blunt way to describe how the network has turned March Madness basketball into an Internet gold mine. “People sit at their computers and waste away their afternoons …