Brain Age for the Nintendo DS ($20) is a videogame masquerading as a brain-training tool. The exercises include rapid-fire math, counting syllables, reading aloud, and even drawing pictures from memory. The friendly bobbing head of Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima explains what each exerc

Almost unbelievable growth: Broadband usage in the U.S. up 40% in the past year (and up 121% among African Americans): Home Broadband Adoption 2006 (pdf)

Adding a computer to your home theater no longer means crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. In the latest issue of WIRED, I review 4 PCs that handle video and audio with aplomb, and even play saved movies while burning DVDs, thanks to the powerful Intel chips inside. But guess what: The to

Tired: objective journalism. Wired: shorting a company’s stock the day before you publish a hit piece alleging they’ve committed accounting fraud. Mark Cuban: Why Journalism Matters

Net neutrality: Never had it, never will: Neutral Net? Who Are You Kidding?

Jaron Lanier says Wikipedia’s not only stupid, it’s “boring”: DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

Kings of All Media Adding a computer to your home theater no longer means crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. All of the rigs here handle video and audio with aplomb, and even play saved movies while burning DVDs. For the Windows PCs, Intel’s Viiv (rhymes with five) standard promises plug

Last week, my haiku site, tinywords, appeared as the 30th-40th result on a search for haiku on Google. This week, it’s not in the top 500. What happened? I think Google is punishing me for mentioning the word “haiku” too many times in a previous post, which I admit I did in a fit of […]

The essence of good conversation is give and take. The problem blog-based “conversations” is that the essential give and take is almost always missing. I might say something provocative on my blog, and you might be moved to comment, but that’s usually where the back and forth ends. If I’m an especia

Technologists think their business is the creation of cool technologies, because they are engineers who thrill to the idea of change. By contrast, Coburn says, “technology is widely hated by its users,” because ordinary folk loathe change: Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

D’oh! AT&T lawyers accidentally leak sensitive info in NSA suit

I think it’s time we all agreed that the “nofollow” tag has been a complete failure. For those of you new to the concept, nofollow is a tag that blogs can add to hyperlinks in blog comments. The tag tells Google not to use that link in calculating the PageRank for the linked site. In […]