There’s been a bit of news about the recent NEA study, “Reading At Risk,” which found that only about half of Americans read books. Compare that to this interesting First Monday piece about the shift from print culture to Internet culture: The mentality Of Homo interneticus: Some Ongian postulates b

Null keeps linking to these personality tests, and fool that I am, I keep taking them. Wackiness: 40/100 Rationality: 46/100 Constructiveness: 82/100 Leadership: 72/100 You are an SECL–Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a politician. You cut deals, you change minds, you make things

Its odd shape might offend SLR purists, but the Sony DSC-F828 Cyber-shot has it all: speed, smarts, awesome image quality, and an impressive 8 megapixels of resolution, sufficient to make professional-grade 10 x 14-inch prints and stunning on-screen images. The heart of the Cyber-shot is Sony’s four

When nothing matters more than getting the perfect picture, you want the best camera money can buy. A good candidate: the Sigma SD10, a hulking slab of an SLR aimed at wannabe Leibovitzes. This camera makes few concessions to user-friendliness. But in capable hands, it has the potential to produce o

If you learned to shoot with a 35mm single-lens reflex camera, Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel will make you feel all fuzzy and nostalgic — while producing crisp, clear digital images. In fact, the Digital Rebel is a true SLR, so the image you see through the viewfinder is exactly what’s going to land on

When you’re lolling about under a palapa in Cabo, margarita in hand, the last thing you need is to be fiddling around with an expensive, complicated camera whose dozens of buttons will only confuse your tequila-addled brain. What you want is the FujiFilm Finepix A330, a 3.2-megapixel camera whose si

The HP Photosmart R707 has a stylish silver and dark-gray case that looks vaguely BMW, but it’s got a downright Midwestern personality that’s eager to help out a neighbor and do right by its friends. That personality shows through as soon as you venture into the camera’s menus, which include full-te

Do megapixels have weight? You might not think so, but the Olympus Camedia C-60 Zoom, which at 6.1 megapixels has the second-highest resolution of the midrange cameras in our roundup, is also the heaviest in its category. But if a couple of extra ounces are what it takes to produce gigantic images l

While most midrange cameras force you to make tradeoffs between style and performance, the Kodak EasyShare LS743 has almost everything: It’s a slim, elegant camera that shoots fast, takes good pictures, and is remarkably easy to use. The long and narrow lines of the LS743 echo those of a disposable

Imagine taking a 3-day ride into space, floating up underneath a massive air balloon. Sounds like Jules Verne, but it could be reality in the next few years. Although there’s a lot of excitement over the news that a private vehicle operated by SpaceShipOne entered space today, an intriguing alternat

For the past month I’ve been trying to get my daily haiku site, tinywords, a bit higher in the Google results when you search on the word “haiku.” I did this the usual way: By asking people to link to tinywords.com using the word “haiku” in their links. Results were good: Within a few weeks, […]

The iPod whose ribbon cable I accidentally punctured last week has been restored to complete health, thanks to a replacement cable from PDASmart.com’s iPod Parts Center. I got the new cable today, spent some time plugging it in (and reseating connectors when it didn’t work immediately), and voila–th