Treo 300 announced - Sprint and Handspring announced the availability of the new Treo 300, which is a phone designed especially for the Sprint network. It's basically the Treo 270, which has been available for several months now. The Treo 270 is a color PDA/phone tool, that uses the Palm OS, and features a QWERTY keyboard, Internet access, as well as access to corporate email. The Treo 300 is apparently all that, but it works with CDMA technology, which is the prevalent cellphone system in the United States. The Treo 270 only works with GSM, which is the standard in Europe. The suggested retail price of the Treo 300 is $499.
Oh, and by the way, if you are considering the Treo here is a great review of the Treo 180 (by Dan Bricklin); this is basically a black & white display version of the Treo 270. The review is outstanding, better and more comprehensive than anything I've read in print. It even includes links to other reviews, including one by Philip Greenspun (one of my favorite geek-writers). Reading reviews like these, written by people who actually used the product --and who receive no money from advertisers-- are pure joy.
9:24:34 PM
Deep Linking - Another article on deep linking, another heavy sigh. Somebody call a timeout. And motion for Congress to send some eager beaver who likes to create new laws. Say, Berman, get over here. You want to introduce some Internet legislation? Okay, here's what you do. Introduce a bill that says the law doesn't recognize any cause of action based on someone linking to another person's site (after all that's what the Web was created to allow). But this law isn't there to protect people from their own stupidity, so if people want to use technical means to frustrate deep linking then they're allowed to do that. Now that would be a law that makes sense. So what are the odds of that getting passed?
4:00:05 PM
Will the US keep the torch burning? - Neal Stephenson's words are relevant:
"The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn't get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals." via Instapundit
I don't want to sound like a doom-sayer, but I often wonder if our American culture --with its strong federal government, and inclination to address important issues from a central authority-- doesn't contain seeds that will weaken its place in a world that is increasingly vesting power in individuals. I realize that's a bold assumption, i.e. that we are vesting more power in individuals. But, if you believe it, as I do, then you have to recognize that the power shift is so subtle that it isn't yet registering on any measuring scale. Nevertheless, I can't help concluding that technical advances such as the Internet are making central control less meaningful. Maybe that's why government, along with Hollywood, is enchanted with the notion of controlling the flow of information on the internet. Maybe not consciously, even. Are beauracracies capable of unconscious wishes? Freud and others would say absolutely not. Anyway, I was just wondering. You may now return to the regularly scheduled broadcast.
1:14:58 PM
Divorce is about how you play the game - it's not about winners and losers says a Canadian court. "The adversarial terms "custody" and "access" will be eliminated from Canada's divorce laws in legislation to be introduced this fall. Justice Minister Martin Cauchon told the Citizen yesterday that he intends to abandon the words because they create a "perception" of winners and losers in child custody disputes." [Story Link]
12:48:20 PM
