Rough Drafts

Why switch a Mac? “My father used to beat me with his PC.”

How much money is really spent on R&D in the U.S., and where’s it all going? Hard to say exactly, but a wonky study just churned out by the California government does shed some light. Their estimate: $220 billion a year, 20 percent of it in California. California also happens to be the biggest singl

Integrating online and offline business Harder than it looks, but you really have no alternative. My latest column for Business 2.0 looks at the lessons to be learned from Webvan’s collapse — and its smarter competitor, U.K.-based Tesco.

Microsoft suffocating the software-development ecosystem? Software giant removes Java support from Windows XP. Author and developer Clay Shirky asks PC manufacturers to resist Redmond by installing Java on their PCs anyway. Columnist Dan Gillmor is a supporter.

FBI busts Russian programmer For cracking Adobe’s weak PDF encryption scheme. Free-speech activists retaliate Boycott Adobe / Free Dmitri campaign, clever logo

Hope for the future: A couple of recent news stories point to the incredible resourcefulness — and speedy learning — of young people encountering the Internet for the first time. The Financial Times reported late last week on Indian street children discovering free Internet terminals placed on the s

eCompany Now is now Business 2.0, and they’ve debuted a new site design under the new URL. My work as the “Defogger” continues under the magazine’s new name, with a weekly Web column and a monthly print column. This week’s column on slimming down your home page leads the new site’s lineup today.

Good news for California citizens: Now you can be notified by pager when your neighborhood is scheduled for a rolling blackout. “Oh goody,” millions of power-hungry Californians are no doubt thinking. “Now I can plan ahead for those enforced hours of idleness and darkness when the power cuts out.” P

A Georgia State IT administrator is being prosecuted for installing P2P software on college computers. The university says that in so doing, he robbed them of more than $400,000 worth of bandwidth. This, even though the software primarily ran during the December break, when the computers were otherw

I have to admit I didn’t call this one: Webvan is going out of business, making official what observers have been speculating for months. In the two years since it got started, Webvan burned through about a billion dollars of investors’ money (OK, it was actually $800 million, but whats a few hundre

I bet you can’t wait for this site to go live: Coca-Cola has a Web strategy and will launch its site this summer. “The new site will allow visitors to view branded Coke products in various indoor and outdoor settings.” Be still, my heart! E-Coke

Oops — so much for that trend! Investors are getting spooked about B2B e-commerce now, too. Analysts see hard times for e-commerce firms