“…if someone sends you a tip, reporting on it might be journalism. If you get a tip inside your head, reporting on it means you’re just making crap up.”
– Walt Mosspuppet

Hear, hear.

Today Walt Mosspuppet (who is, by the way, my favorite puppet journalist of all time) posted the following about the Apple tablet:

According to a poll over at MacMost.com, what most people want out of the upcoming iSlate is to be able to read books. My god, you people think so small.

I must say: the puppet is right. Seriously, people? You’re going to use the tablet mainly for reading? What do you do with your computers all day, play 8-bit Tetris? Dear Gozer.

Anyway, go read Mosspuppet because he’s far funner about all this than I am. I’m too appalled at how unimaginative the people who took that poll are to be witty today.

Back when I was a freelancer I spent a large portion of my time trying to find good cafes and coffee shops with free wi-fi so that I could get work done while I was out. Being stuck in the apartment all day while dealing with clients quickly became untenable, so the instant I had a new laptop that could handle the programs I used I went off in search of good food and free wi-fi.

New York City is the kind of place you’d expect to find plenty of cafes and coffee shops with free wi-fi and that’s true, for the most part. Apparently it pales in comparison to Seattle — not surprising. There are plenty of issues, though. Like entire neighborhoods bereft of free wi-fi and even some places without anything resembling a cafe. There are places you’d think had free wi-fi, but no! They charge you, instead. Exorbitant prices. There’s a Starbucks every 5 feet below 135th, but is their wi-fi free? Not exactly. And the well-known spots are, of course, well-known, and thus are packed full of people who show up at 9am and don’t leave until the places closes at the ridiculously early hour of… 10pm.

Cafes that close before 1am should be banned in this city.

Anyway, this is all an extremely rambly way to get to the reason I’m making this post. Last week McDonald’s announced that in January they would be offering free wi-fi at the locations where they currently offer non-free wi-fi. This comes just a little while after Barnes & Noble started offering free wi-fi and Borders followed suit in order to keep up. Just thinking about the numbers of B&N’s plus Borders plus McDonald’s in this city my heart starts to go pitter patter because, well, there’s barely a foot of space below 125th street that isn’t covered by free wi-fi.

It’s like some kind of beautiful dream.

Except. Most of that wi-fi is from McDonald’s. And, well, I don’t really want to spend any time in McDonald’s, much less a whole day. Then again, in my neighborhood free wi-fi is sparse, and the cafe around the corner from me is wonderful but has horrendous, horrendous seating. Even more horrendous than McDonald’s. So if I want to get out of the house and get some work done, where am I better off?

This is, of course, just a gimmick to get more people into McD’s and it will most likely work. I’m not the only freelancing writer in need of outside wi-fi. Here’s the thing I wonder: how long will it be before every McDonald’s in the city looks like a Starbucks? A sea of laptops, nary a seat to be found, and obnoxious people complaining about the quality of their latte.

Oh yeah, this is a glorious new era.

I’m putting together a list of netbooks and notebooks that would be good to give to kids ranging from 7 – 14 as a “first laptop”. I have several netbooks designed for kids on my list, but wanted to ask the parents out there: what laptops or netbooks have you bought for or allowed your kids to use? Any models or brands you’d particularly suggest to other parents looking for a durable yet inexpensive computer for their kid?

My boss just passed along the link to the commercial below for Intuit Websites, a company that aims to help small businesses build websites right! Watch the short commercial and see if you can spot what’s wrong with Intuit’s approach:

Can’t see it yet? Then I’ll tell you: services that give the impression that it’s a good idea to build a business website using templates^[1] are lying to you. That’s right, lying. Universal template-based websites are rarely a good idea for anyone, and certainly not businesses.

You run the risk of your website looking just like a ton of other people’s but with slightly different colors or a different picture in the corner. Plus, I’ve rarely come across a template service like that which results in good-looking websites. They claim they’ll make the site building process easier, but easy too often means so simple that you might as well use MS Frontpage for all the good it will do you.

Not all small businesses have the money to hire fancy web design firms and it’s true that the president’s nephew probably isn’t the best way to go. But do not make the mistake of thinking that those are your only two options. There are tons of independent and freelance designers who will not charge you as much as a firm yet will still do a good job. If you’re really, really in a budget crunch, a college student studying design will do you better than a template site.

So please, whenever you see a commercial such as the one above: run away. Run away screaming. Because sites like that may seam easy and a good deal but it is all a horrible lie.

Notes

1. This is different from websites that use WordPress templates. Though you do want to make sure your WP doesn’t look like everyone else’s, you can still use a template made by someone else and tweak. The kind of templates I’m talking about are generally for non-dynamic sites. And sites shouldn’t be non-dynamic, anyway. [↩]

I thought that when I left my job working for a fashion magazine behind I wouldn’t have to care about Fashion Week anymore. But given that tech companies seem to think that FW is a great time to introduce new gadgets to the world, I’m starting to fear that I’ll be covering events over at Bryant Park in the near future. The increasing partnership of fashion and mobile tech isn’t completely unwelcome, but I have little patience for the number of waify models lying around on couches wearing tons of makeup and holding netbooks like works of art. Yes, it’s pretty, but can I use it?

The idea of a netbook as an accessory to your busy or even not-so-busy life is a fine one. But the Samsung promo video I posted over on LAPTOP’s blog today has me truly mystified.

Brad Linder claims that it’s supposed to highlight the netbook’s all-day longevity. Could have fooled me. All it seems to highlight is that model’s ability to stretch her lanky body and possibly to warn young ladies from trusting that their boyfriends will pick them up at the train station as promised. Seriously, go look (and please comment there, I am eager to watch you all apply your creative minds to the plot and message).

When I compare that video to this one Nokia did for their new netbook, I find myself much more drawn to the Booklet 3G. This video tells me what this device is, what it does, what makes it special, and even includes some heart-tugging music that somehow makes me want it even more.

But if we must have models, here’s what I’d like to see: women actually using netbooks in some way that shows off what netbooks are good for while providing the eye candy that someone is convinced consumers need. That way it appeals to those of us to buy tech for what it does and those of us who buy anything because hot women are peddling it.

A few nights ago I was watching The Closer — one of my very favorite shows — and during a crucial scene in which the Major Crimes squad is closing in on tracking down two suspects, one officer after another comes into the Chief’s office to deliver a new piece of information. One member of the squad, Lt. Tao, is the tech geek of the group. His bit of information was that he’d located the address of the suspects and had a picture of the location on his phone.

On your PHONE? Someone asked with far, far too much emphasis.

Yes, on his phone. Tao proceeds to flip the screen up and, oh, look at that, a T-Mobile G1. If I wasn’t aware that this phone was called a G1, a shot of the back of it revealed G1 in huge white letters on the back of the screen. (I don’t think that exists in actual, real-life models of said phone. I could be wrong.)

There is some more waving the phone around. Chief Johnson wants to see this picture of the address (provided by Google Maps/Google Street View) for herself. She grabs at the phone, but Tao says, “Let me e-mail it to you.”

I think at this point someone actually exclaimed, again far too emphatically: E-MAIL!?

Yes, show, we get it. The G1 is a marvel. You can see maps on it and it can send e-mail. Woo.

I don’t usually mind product placement. I don’t know if most people even register the model of the laptops and other computer equipment TV people use. I do, usually because I find it funny or I’m scoffing. But man, this was a bit beyond.

So anyway, just so you know, the fake LAPD Major Crimes Squad prefers the T-Mobile G1 for finding pictures of suspects’ houses. And E-MAIL!?

I shall not be buying an Amazon Kindle because I don’t need a device that’s controlled by outside parties. Also, DRM sucks.

I shall not be buying an iPhone because I dislike paying gobs of money for crappy service. I’ll pay a pittance for my crappy service, thank you.

I shall not be buying this Kingston $900 flash drive… yet. When it’s $100 I’m all over that.

Okay, I needed a third thing and that’s all I got.

Found this article via the SammyNetbook blog about a large percentage of netbook owners who find themselves unhappy with their purchase. Jez wonders if this is because people don’t understand that netbooks don’t make great laptop replacements. or, I should say, primary laptop replacements. I’m sure if we polled the dissatisfied we’d find that they were slightly to massively ignorant about what netbooks are for and can do.

When I bought my first netbook I wanted to use it for very specific tasks and it fulfilled its function perfectly. I sometimes tax my NC10 a bit more than I should, but that’s more because I end up doing too much at once instead of concentrating on my most important tasks. Still, I’ve never found myself unhappy.

One could say that I’m an over-informed consumer, so of course I’m not going to be disappointed. Still, every consumer should be informed. They should know how netbooks differ from notebooks, their limitations, and which netbook will give them the best experience. However, I know this is not often the way consumers approach buying electronics.

I wonder what the return rate is on laptops in general…?

A couple of days ago Brad at Liliputing talked about how netbooks are a better platform for touchscreens than regular laptops. I agree that the future of touch is probably going to be pioneered by netbooks, but that future won’t be exciting until software makers step up their game.

I don’t know if it’s an issue on the hardware or software side, but I suspect it’s more software side, especially considering the capabilities we’ve seen in touchscreen smartphones like the the iPod. Every time I’ve ever used a touch notebook I’ve found it nice, but limited. Yes, I can hand write text into documents, but I haven’t seen a program that allows me to draw on or create notes in the margin of documents like I can with a pen and paper. This may exist and I’ve missed it, but I feel like something of that nature should come standard with every touchscreen computer. It’s a basic need from my perspective.

Beyond that, I’ve not been bown away with any touch software ideas or concepts. Why bother having a touchcreen at all if it just means that you can write in small, yellow boxes that have to be cleared periodically, anyway?

Before touch can blow up on any laptop format, someone has to make touchscreens worth having. The iPhone did, and it rode on the coattails of other smartphones and PDAs that tentatively pushed the touch envelope before it came along. For once I feel like Apple’s insistence on controlling both software and hardware was the right move.