stevenberlinjohnson.com:: "It was simply a sign of something that was probably obvious already: there's nothing cool any more about having an iPod. That's not to say it isn't an incredible product. It's just hard to defend the cool factor when the President apparently has two of them..."

Actually, I'd argue that it's when things stop being cool that they start getting interesting. For me, this was the case with mobile phones: when they were something special that yuppies lugged around with them in the 80s: boring. When everyone you knew had one: interesting.

Ditto microprocessors, puzzles, and the internet.

Wi-fi not killing a telco, yesterday: "The France Telecom-owned cellco has some 1,700 Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK and access to a further 12,000 overseas as part of a partnership with Orange France, BT Openzone and WeRoam."

Usability testing of mobile applications: "Usability testing a mobile application in the laboratory seems to be sufficient when studying user interface and navigation issues. The usability of a consumer application was tested in two environments: in a laboratory and in a field with a total of 40 test users. The same problems were found in both environments, differences occurred in the frequency of findings between the contexts. Results indicate that conducting a time-consuming field test may not be worthwhile when searching user interface flaws to improve user interaction."

Just gotten this through from Mr Walsh:

"A day of Round-Robin multi-style training, and presentations of "off-mat" aikido. A seminar for people interested in aikido in everyday life, and how the art can be applied in non-dojo settings.

Aiki Extensions around the world: http://www.aiki-extensions.org"

Full flyer here. I'll be heading along for the training, but probably not the evening dinner. Anyone else interested?

I can't think of anything meaningful to say about StarSight, but I just wanted to link to it because it presses my geek buttons: street lamps with wi-fi built in, for the developing world. Cutting crime and delivering connectivity in one fell swoop...