Yes, I know, the title of this post sounds a bit dry, but trust me, the article written by George Gilder, entitled “Silicon Israel”, is an incredible story of how far Israel has come in such an incredibly short time, and how it is still growing by leaps and bounds.

Read it here.

An absolutely incredibly breathtaking new device by Microsoft, called the Courier, has now been unveiled by Gizmodo, and I have to say this is really an new frontier for computing. This is everything the Tablet PC wasn’t, and I am blown away by the video.

Check it out on the Gizmodo site!

With an invention earning great praise from engineers and scientists, an Israeli teen, Zion Badash, has invented a device called Z5 that reduces emissions by as much as 40% and increases gas mileage likewise.

I just saw this via a youtube video, and then dug up a corresponding news article in the Jerusalem Post.

(Of course, I’m sure that those boycotting Israel would certainly not want to use these…)

Photo: GIZMODO

Gizmodo is reporting that an Alaska-based company, gScreen, is debuting a dual-screen laptop in December. The two screens will both be 15″ LCDs and will slide away one behind the other when closing the laptop.

The down side (besides the $3,000 price tag) is that this is expected to weigh more than 12 pounds (making it not much of a “laptop”, for all practical purposes) and is expected to have horrible battery life, considering the juice that two LCD screens would suck up.

You have to admit, though, it is a very sexy item, and slim and light (think: netbook) might not be the answer for everyone. As Gordon Stewart, founder of gScreen put it: “It is absolutely the opposite of a netbook.”

CNET is reporting on a Senate bill working its way through Congress that, if passed, would give the President emergency control of the internet, specifically private-sector networks. Additionally, the bill would create a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” along with a requirement that certain private-sector computer systems and networks be managed by people who have obtained that certification.

The author of that CNET report, CBS News corresponent Declan McCullagh, has asked four direct questions of the Senate Commerce Committee last Wednesday and got some sort of evasive boilerplate response in return. He is still waiting for a clearer answer, but in the meantime, it looks like they’re trying to push this one through the Senate under the radar. Drudge Report picked up on it, though, which should definitely make a difference in terms of blowing the cover off of this.

It’s probably obvious and not even necessary to point out, but when you consider the fact that the federal government has been hiring private hackers in recent years to help them with their abysmal grasp of cybersecurity, it’s laughable (if not outright audacious) that the federal government suddenly thinks it can become the leading authority on cybersecurity, and to the extent that it wants to write that into law!

The day the federal government sets the standards for our country’s cybersecurity is the day you can kiss the internet goodbye.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy /CNET)

This is one of those things that you see in science fiction movies and think to yourself, “yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon.”

Well, this time it’s different!

CNET is reporting that the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine is going to actually have a video advertisement on one of its pages! Granted, the actual video section of the ad is only a small part of the page, and, granted, it will only be found in a fraction of their magazine run for that issue, but it’s still pretty exciting news.

It would be interesting to see if this takes off and spawns more (and better) videos ads in the near future or if this is just a fad that doesn’t catch on.

Makes me think sadly about the Roomba. At the time it came out, everyone got all hyped up about how after decades of speculation as to the potential of robots, we have finally made them evolved enough to actually perform a useful task—vacuuming a room! There was so much talk of what would be next and how in five years, we’d have robots putting toys away, cleaning windows, making lunch, etc… and where are we now?

Still vacuuming.

So, while this is exciting news in its own right, I would be hesitant to drum up any hopes of rapid progression from this little limited video to anything widespread anytime soon.

Doesn’t it make you crazy when you call someone’s cell phone and get their voicemail, listen to their greeting in anticipation of the beep, only to have to listen to some inane instructions after their greeting, like, “once you are finished leaving a message you may hang up”?

I, for one, absolutely hate this. And the worst part about it is that even though most carriers have a key that allows you to bypass this and just get to the stupid beep already, that magic key is different for every carrier. While it may be asterisk on Verizon Wireless, it’s something different on AT&T, and something else on Sprint, and so on. So, unless you happen to know and can remember what carrier each of your contacts is on, it doesn’t help.

David Pogue, of the NY Times, has launched a campaign to “take back the beep”. On Leo Laporte’s podcast, he explained the obvious reason behind this annoyance: airtime. Every message left now earns the network revenue from those 15 seconds of airtime that it keeps people on the phone. Add up all those seconds across millions of users leaving tens of millions of voicemails daily, and you have some not-insignificant revenue.

(Incidentally, Leo Laporte had what I think is a better name for this campaign: “Where’s The Beep?!?”)

Apparently, Pogue’s campaign has sparked some serious reaction so far from the major carriers. They are apparently getting a lot of people responding to this, and some have actually set up forums on which to complain.

So, if this bothers you as much as it bothers me, go to Pogue’s blog and read the easy instructions on how to complain (and catch up on his latest progress with this campaign)!

Once again, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud hysterically at Glenn Beck’s commentary last night. Here he is talking about the Nissan “Leaf”, a new electric car in the works (fast forward to the 3:36 mark to get straight to the Leaf story):

Devices like keyboards and mice rarely undergo noticeable technological advances, but when they do it’s usually something major (think scroll wheel for the mouse; I can’t ever go back to a mouse without one!).

Microsoft is now announcing a major innovation for the oft-ignored and rarely-advanced keyboard: pressure sensitivity! Granted, the demonstrations in the video you’re about to see are pretty rudimentary, but if you think about what you’re seeing, the applications for something like this are incredibly useful and virtually limitless and, like the scroll wheel on the mouse, I think that if this comes with only a trivial price increase (like the scroll wheel), this will catch on fast and universally.

Why is it that my two-year-old Windows XP machine starts up in half the time it takes for my brand new BlackBerry Tour from Verizon Wireless?!

I’m not even exaggerating: I just timed it and it took a full 5 minutes and 38 seconds for my BlackBerry Tour to start! Isn’t technology supposed to be improving?

When I noticed the long start-up time on my last BlackBerry (the 8830 “World Edition”), I never thought that I’d be considering it “fast” by later standards. Now, with the new Tour, I long for those “quick” start-up times of 2 minutes or so.

I know this rant is really out of left field, but it’s driving me crazy because every single other thing about the Tour is just perfect.