"Around the same time as Kodak was introducing its Advantix APS film system, a fairly new company called SanDisk had just IPOed, and was promoting a new standard for portable digital storage known as CompactFlash. When I set out recently to do a CF card round-up, I found in my collection a nice old relic: a 24MB Delkin Devices CompactFlash card, circa 1998. Unlike sports cars or fancy dishwashers, CF cards all tend to look almost identical. Therefs no easy way to judge their speed just by examining their exterior. So, instead of doing a standard round-up, I figured, why not test the relic against some of the newer cards across the temporal gamut?"

AOL and Yahoo! are to start charging for sending emails. Both companies will still accept free emails but are offering the chance to pay to avoid their spam filters. By paying between a quarter and one cent per message companies will get preferential delivery of their messages. So a "business class" email will go straight to an AOL-subscriber's inbox marked with a stamp saying "AOL Certified Email" while a free email will have to run the gamut of AOL spam filters. Free mails may also have images and web links removed.

"Over the last six months I've received email from all manner of folks from all over the world relating to ODF. In virtually all instances, the senders were ODF proponents, many asking how they can help, or offering their personal experiences or thoughts. I've also received email from, and gotten to know, many of the other journalists and bloggers following the issue, as well as the principal vendor advocates, and some of the community of the disabled that have voiced concern, as well. Early last week, I received an email from closer to home, with a 'subject' line that read, "Maybe it's time we talk..." I was happy to get the email, because the sender was none other than Alan Cote, the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records."

One of the biggest reasons for many people to switch to a UNIX desktop, away from Windows, is security. It is fairly common knowledge that UNIX-like systems are more secure than Windows. Whether this is true or not will not be up for debate in this short editorial; I will simply assume UNIX-like systems are more secure, for the sake of argument. However, how much is that increased security really worth for an average home user, when you break it down? According to me, fairly little. Here's why.

IBM is expected to demonstrate a blade server next week based on the Cell processor the company is developing with Toshiba and Sony. The Cell processor, which also is the brains of Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 videogame console, has a PowerPC processing core supplemented by eight special-purpose cores to boost the chip's calculation abilities.

"Once it became clear that Nicholas Negroponte, one of the key originators of the One Laptop per Child initiative, was going to insist that the device use open source software, Linux provider Red Hat became the most likely provider of the device's operating system. Mike Evans from Red Hat discusses his company's involvement in the One Laptop per Child project, which aims to develop and distribute a $100 PC to millions around the world."