Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet.

This highly speculative article about Google's future undertakings is very interesting. And I hope its predictions do come to pass, but even if so it'll be a long time coming.

State Limits Hybrids in Fast Lanes

I didn't even know that California was doing this. Last I heard, only vehicles which used no petroleum-based fuels at all were permitted in the HOV lanes. It seems that drivers of two Honda gas/electric hybrids-- the Civic and the Insight-- as well as one from Toyota-- the Prius-- are being given the opportunity to drive in carpool lanes even when traveling alone.

Makers of other hybrid vehicles, such as Ford (which makes hybrid Escape pick-up), are upset that their products are not on the list. However, I trust the researchers who made the rules and I'm pretty sure that making a truck (like the Escape) or an SUV (like the Toyota Highlander) operate on a hybrid motor will increase its fuel economy enough to warrant special treatment.

Of course, I own a Prius, so that might account for my agreement with the government on this point. Now my wife (the primary driver) can sneer at drivers of hybrid Accords, Escapes, Highlanders, and Lexus RX's from the carpool lane.

Of course, I don't really mean that. She's not really a sneering kind of person... more of a Shakespearean thumb-biter.

Now there's a fun mental image...

A Brilliant New Memory Card

How cool is this? A memory card with a fold-out USB dongle. You don't even need a card reader anymore... the card itself will plug right into the computer!

I'm not going to look for one of these, though. I've already got a Lexmark USB Key that's actually an SD reader instead of having embedded Flash memory. Giving USB connectivity to the little cards directly is pretty nifty, but ultimately unnecessary with tools we've already got at our disposal. I see this becoming the SD card of the future, though...

Daylight-Saving Switch May Cause Tech Woes

President Bush is expected to sign a bill on Monday that will extend Daylight Saving Time by three weeks in spring and one week in the fall. This is intended to be an energy saver, by allowing Americans to make use of natural light later in the evening so that they musn't turn to the electric alternatives.

Problems are expected to arise when older technological devices with automatic DST correction are no longer changing the clocks on the right date. As Windows users have probably seen, when the clocks must be adjusted your computer tells you on startup that the time has been changed. The programming for this auto-modification is hardwired to the current system of DST changes (first Sunday in April and last Sunday in October), and it will require a software update to work according to the new standard.

VCRs, online calendars, and computers will all be affected by this issue, and they will likely have to be manually modified to stay in step. My favorite quote from the article is this:

"We get up and change the time on the VCR ourselves," Tzur said. "These things come with directions."

If only things were actually that simple for the vast majority of Americans these days.

Future Tech Software Is Here Today

This article from Ziff Davis is a snapshot of where technology is going (and, for many early adopters, where technology is).

Google News Adds RSS Feeds

FINALLY!

Google News has added RSS feeds for its news service. I'll probably be switching to Google News from Yahoo! News now, but I'll be looking at the feeds from both for a few days just to compare.

And yes, I realize the irony in linking to a Yahoo! News story to point this out...

The college library of tomorrow

This article from CNET details the emerging trend toward digitizing reference books. Of course there will be major problems with intellectual property and copyright issues, but I have every hope that they will get worked out satisfactorily for all parties.

I have even started reading some things digitally. Any text file can be converted, using Plucker, into a Palm database that cen be read on my Tungsten E2. Most texts I can get this way are public domain works from Project Gutenberg, but many people who release their writings on the Web include plaintext versions (like this amazing essay on the evolution of computer use called "In the Beginning was the Command Line").

Books in print may never die, but increased access to material, portability, and searchability of digitized texts will definitely make them the publishing wave of the future.

Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator

Konfabulator is the shareware application that Apple ripped off when they made the Dashboard for OSX 10.4 "Tiger." Apple's incarnation is doubtless a bit more refined, but now that Yahoo! bought Konfab they've made it free. There goes my only reason to even think about upgrading to Tiger.

Konfabulator 2.1 is now freely downloadable at konfabulator.com, and all of Konfab's existing widgets run with the new free version. By the way, Konfabulator runs in both Mac and Windows, and (even though the application was Mac-only to begin with) a good number of the widgets are cross-platform as well.

Check it out on both Mac and Windows! It's a great way to have a bunch of useful tools tucked away and easily accessible with just a keypress.

(Here's Yahoo!'s announcement of the buyout)

Web Site Help: Is Anybody Out There?

This is an interesting report from PC World on the ease-of-use in contacting and receiving responses from a dozen of the Web's most-visited sites and services. Netflix won hands-down on response time, with craigslist and Yahoo! never actually sending a response.

Thirty-Eight Ways to Win an Argument

These "Ways to Win an Argument" are apparently condensed and translated from Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophical tome on "The Art of Controversy." The original, of course, was originally written in German during the first half of the nineteenth century.

I find the propositions it advances amusing, but not particularly insightful. For instance, point twenty-one includes the phrase: "it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth." This seems to me to hardly be a valid philosophical objective. Truth, to some degree of certainty, has always been the final aim of philosophy. To attempt only to prove your own conclusions acceptable has nothing to do with accepting and synthesizing new information, which is the goal of the truly learned.

But as a humorous bit of historical thought, I find this interesting; worth a quick read, but a set of ideas to which no deep investigation or lasting importance should be ascribed.