The Coming HTML 5 Train Wreck | XML Today

Ambiguity is unfortunately one of the consequences of standards development - the larger the spec and more complex the task at hand, the more potential points need to be nailed down, so a certain level of ambiguity in a working draft simply indicates that it is, well, a working draft. However, HTML 5 is seemingly being pushed inexorably towards recommendation status with most of these ambiguities still intact, with almost no community feedback (beyond the half-dozen or so committee implementers) and with remarkably little rigor being applied to what is, without a doubt, one of the most important potential specifications to emerge from the W3C in a long time.
via xmltoday.org

"We are coming to the end of the information age." ☛ It's Sputnik, Stupid! - Forbes.com

Based on an 80-year economic cycle, we are coming to the end of the information age. The remaining 15 years of the current cycle will produce astounding changes far beyond anything we can now anticipate. However, we should also be looking at what technology will become the basis of next 80-year cycle. Continuing to focus on computers will be like producing buggy whips for horse drawn conveyances when Henry Ford started mass producing the Model T.
via forbes.com

The Dark Side of Leaving the Imperative Model

MF (Martin Fowler) Bliki: RulesEngine: 

"Even so, there's still value in a BusinessReadableDSL, and indeed this is an area where I do see value in this computational model. But here too lie dragons. The biggest one is that while it can make sense to cast your eyes down a list of rules and see that each one makes sense, the interaction of rules can often be quite complex - particularly with chaining - where the actions of rules changes the state on which other rules' conditions are based. So I often hear that it was easy to set up a rules system, but very hard to maintain it because nobody can understand this implicit program flow. This is the dark side of leaving the imperative computational model. For all the faults of imperative code, it's relatively easy to understand how it works. With a production rule system, it seems easy to get to a point where a simple change in one place causes lots unintended consequences, which rarely work out well."

Didn't See This Comming...

Some Shed Their Gadgets by Turning to One: iPhone - WSJ.com: 

"Lower-income households are turning in force to Apple Inc.'s iPhone and may be doing so to save the cost of a separate broadband connection and music devices, according to the media measurement firm comScore Inc.

A comScore study, set to be released Thursday, shows that the fastest growth in iPhone sales over the summer months came from households that earn less than the median income. ComScore noted sales to lower-income consumers accelerated since the July appearance of the iPhone 3G, which offers high-speed Internet access."

After Microsoft Stacks Vote - IBM Wants to Take its Ball and go Home

IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies - WSJ.com: 

"IBM and open-source groups that support collaborative software development said Microsoft had stacked the national committees that make up the ISO with employees and sympathetic voters. They also said Open XML is so complicated and obscure that only Microsoft could fully exploit it, cementing the software company's already-considerable lead in office-document software. IBM backed a rival format called Open Document that was already certified as an ISO standard."

Twitter Entering the Mainstream or "Jumping the Shark"

Ping - Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds. - NYTimes.com:

"...why when people who aren’t familiar with Twitter are told about it, they are “uncomprehending or angry.” His response (The co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey) was brief and unsatisfying: “People have to discover value for themselves. Especially w/ something as simple & subtle as Twitter. It’s what you make of it.”"