What is your ideal computing environment? Is it one place, or many? Do you only need your information when you’re sitting at your desk, or do you need it with you, wherever you go?

PDA’s have become somewhat popular to people like me who want to be able to take all of their important information with them wherever they go. But as good as they are, they still suffer from the fact that they are not able to synchronize all of my important data.

With my current combination of laptop computer and PDA, I can be “mobile� in the sense that I can pack up my laptop and lug it around for serious computing, or I can ram my PDA into a pocket on my way out the door and still have most of my data available. But there’s still something missing.

The Tablet PC is very intriguing, because along with the fact that it is smaller and lighter than a traditional laptop, it has added functionality that allows it to be used in new contexts. Until the Tablet came along, it was really not realistic to do any form of computing while standing up, with the exception of PDAs. Now, you can have a fully functional “desktop� operating system available to you while on the move.

I have to admit, I love the idea of this, and can see many new ways that a Tablet PC will enable me to do all the things I currently do, and some new things. The only problem is that the Tablet can’t really replace one particular feature of a PDA: its form factor.

So now we’re back to the original problem. For me it’s all about context – I want to be able to have full access to view and modify all of my data in whichever context makes sense most for me at that time.

I only see two somewhat viable solutions:

1. Software creators become fully aware of PDAs, and include two-way synchronization features with their products. While Microsoft has done this well with some applications (Outlook), it has done a dismal job with other applications like Word and Excel. If Microsoft can’t get it together, who else will

2. A variable-size tablet PC.

Let me explain the second one a bit more, since I believe this is the only truly viable solution. This would essentially be a “modular� PC, where the CPU, memory, and hard drive all exist in a PDA-sized unit which includes a touch-screen, and is in fact a PDA. However it will run a full desktop operating system, with features to make the reduced screen resolution and touch-screen interface bearable, even convenient. This unit will then have the ability to dock into a tablet (slate) PC shell that includes a full-sized display, proper tablet pen digitizer input, and a larger battery. This tablet PC will then also be able to dock at a workstation, much as current tablets do.

Obviously I’m talking about something we won’t see for a few years, but at least it is something that is possible. In the near-term, I believe that Tablet PC functionality could and should become a standard part of any mobile PC. All of the functionality that is included in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition should be standard within all versions of XP, whether the system it is running on has the hardware to take advantage of it or not.

Microsoft, please don’t screw up the Tablet PC. It is arguably the best idea to come out of Redmond in the past 10 years, and from all appearances you’re letting it languish. I want to believe Scoble, but seeing is believing.

Check out InstaSnow, another “if you’re trying to find the perfect present for me” type of product. Totally useless (as far as I can tell), but incredibly cool, nonetheless. Here’s the main page that has links to different video files of different formats showing a demonstration of the stuff, as well as links for more information about it, and here’s a direct link to the high-quality Windows Media version of the video.

What do you get when you cross workout videos with a video game console? You get Yourself!Fitness, a new game that is being developed for Microsoft’s Xbox this fall, and for Sony’s Playstation 2 console for late this year.

I think this is a brilliant idea - and I expect that this will prove to be the beginning of a new market space. What better way to exploit the processing power of a modern game console then by using it to improve on what is already a very solid industry, that of exercise videos. Imagine celebrity versions, as workout videos already have - that’s the obvious next step. But the interesting thing is trying to imagine where this market might go!

I’m not all that sure that I agree with this attempt to characterize Windows vs. Mac OSX, but it’s entertaining, nonetheless. Found on Scobleizer.

“There’s a certain painted-on mystique to her, of course. We’ve all been indoctrinated with the propaganda, the hooker with the heart of gold, the disturbingly wide-mouthed Pretty Woman. When you find her, though, beneath the paint she’s really quite plain. You take what you need from her, but reluctantly and because you have no alternative. You get what you want, but she is almost peripheral to the act.”

Actually, I think what makes me uncomfortable about this is that he may be right. Of course, from all appearances this will change drastically with the release of Longhorn.

From boingboing.net:

Amateur digital photographer R. Todd King has posted a set of startlingly gorgeous photos of the snow and ice festival in Harbin, China.
“The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both farenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. So what does one do here every winter? Hold an outdoor festival, of course!”

Below is one of his photos showing buildings made entirely out of ice, with coloured lighting inside. Unbelievably beautiful, and other-worldly.

What do you get when you cross a contemporary band like Radiohead with bluegrass music?
One word: Rodeohead.

Read the response of AccordianGuy, a Filipino-born Canadian, to a racist blogger who maintains that non-white Canadians are somehow less Canadian. AccordianGuy (Joey DeVilla) is my newest hero.

Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called “Gunkanjima” that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Check out the photo gallery, and description of this forgotten place.

“I was twenty-two when I first visited the island I had dreamed about ever since childhood. Much like a fortress built upon the sea, surrounded by high walls, the island possessed an air of a small kingdom, where its denizens boasted ‘There is nothing we don’t have here.’ They were right. They did have everything within their miniature kingdom - except a cemetery. But, the irony of it was proven by the passage of time. Already, the island had been doomed to turn into an enormous graveyard.

Eventually, the mines faced an end, and in 1974 the world’s once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its people disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.”

My buddy Greg points me to this page explaining why you should never put your picture on the Internet. Gotta love it.

UPDATE:
Hrm. It looks like too many people found this site, and my guess is the added bandwidth caused them to password protect it.

Would you think that a Mini would be safer than a Ford F-150 pickup truck in a 40 MPH collision? Although if it were a head-on collision, it’s pretty clear the truck would win, in a collision with a static object (the far more common variety of collision), the Mini wins, hands down.

Asperger’s Syndrome is a mild form of Autism that manifests itself in ways that can cause one to be known as a “geek”. (Note that this doesn’t mean that everyone with Asperger’s is a “geek” in the generally accepted computer nerd meaning of the word, but it’s not uncommon.) This article about Asperger’s at kuro5hin very nicely describes the syndrome, and what kinds of struggles people who have it go through. If you know a geek, or (God forbid) love a geek, give it a read. It might not completely apply to your geek, but it may help you to understand some of the decisions he or she makes.

Didn’t ever think that you’d see Mac OSX running on a Windows PC? Think again. Granted, it’s very slowly, and so far with more than its share of bugs, but hey - you gotta start somewhere, right?