Sixty percent of the people who bought a netbook thought it was just a cute little notebook, which is why 42% of them were disappointed with the widget's performance according research done by the NPD Group. The researcher found only 58% of the people who bought a netbook instead of a notebook were very satisfied with their purchase, compared to 70% of the folks who planned on buying a netbook from the start. Among the key 18- to 24-year-old netbook demographic, 65% said they bought their netbooks expecting better performance, and only 27% said their netbooks performed better tha... (more)

The Value is in Ideas and Distributed Contribution

Control vs. Order No individual wants to believe they are under control, but society needs to have a sense of order which means we exchanged control along the way with our institutions. With that control being exchanged, we gave power and influence to a centralized few. I feel there is a collective yearning to splinter control and to no longer allow for the gross centralization of control.... (more)

Oracle Reports Last Quarter Before Sun

Oracle earnings were down 7% to $1.9 billion, or 38 cents a share, but still above expectations, on revenues down 5% to $6.9 billion in the quarter ended in May. The company blamed the stronger dollar for the dips and reassuringly says its pipeline has been growing faster than reported revenues, particularly in the last 90 days. Without the currency impact, it reckons its net earnings pe... (more)

Dialog Boxes, Habituation, and Single Threaded Thought

In Jef Raskin's excellent book, The Humane User Interface, he discusses how the human brain is able to perform many tasks simultaneously while only having the ability to focus on one conscious thought at a time. Being able to process information and analyze it intelligently is crucial to our ability to solve problems, but once we have learned how to deal with a particular situation, just... (more)