Eubie's notes

JoeyDivilla.com: Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck

I’m going to explain my belief that while netbooks have a nifty form factor, they’re not where the mobile computing action is.

ReadWriteWeb: The Emerging World of Real-Time Cellphone Data — in aggregate it can tell us how many people are attending an event to warning us about trouble spots up ahead on the highway.

LifeHacker: Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads

ReadWriteWeb: How One Teacher Uses Twitter in the Classroom

ReadWriteWeb: Study: iPhone Users Recall Mobile Ads Better than non-iPhone Users

The Raw Story: Cookies, not torture, convinced al Qaeda suspect to talk, FBI interrogator says — comments from Ali Soufan, former FBI interrogator on why interrogation is better. In the The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, Soufan played a key role in connecting the pieces to Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden through his skillful interrogation of Abu Jandal, a lieutenant of Bin Laden. At times, in the book, it sounds as if Soufan was the only person at either the FBI or CIA who could correctly connect the pieces and find the wheat among the chaff.

WSJ: The End of the Affair –P.J. O’Rourke writes a witty essay about what’s happened to our love affair with cars.

WSJ: Weighing a Crusader’s Legacy — a new biography on I.F. Stone, including allegations he worked closely with Soviet intelligence prior to WWII.

WSJ: Crime Novels in a Cold Place — More Scandinavian mystery novels on the heels of “Wallander”

WSJ: The Secrets of Independent Retailing Success — “Retail Superstars” tells how the maverick, eccentric or just plain detail-oriented independent retailer can still flourish in the era of big-box stores. One sure-fire crowd pleaser: Make sure your restrooms are nice.

WSJ: Startling Spy Story —Eric Ambler ‘s espionage novel “A Coffin for Dimitrios,” whose protagonist is a mystery writer, was postmodern back in 1939.

WSJ: Charlaine Harris on ‘True Blood’ and Vampires

New Yorker: New Yorker iPhone Cover Lifts Sales for Brushes App — I was tempted too, and I can’t draw

Scott Rosenberg: How charging for articles could hobble the future of journalism

I fear that if our newspaper publishers take the collective charge-our-users approach, they will not only doom their own enterprises but will also make the transition we are currently facing — from a paper-and-broadcast news world to a purely digital one — longer and more wrenching.

All Things Digital: Little Laptops With Linux Have Compatibility Issues — XP is old but it’s still kicking.