Kurt D. Lynn

Amidst all the recent hoopla over Amazon's proprietary Kindle reader and the 90,000 ebooks available for it, the popular press has overlooked an product using more than 15 times the number of ebooks being made available through Amazon. The Million ... Book Project, led by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, now offers through its Universal Library the complete texts of more than 1.5 million digitized books, with all available over the Internet for free. With a complimentary text reader, no less. (Source: ulib.org ) To understand how large an effort that is, keep in mind that a typical high ... (view more)

Couch Potatoes are becoming YouTube "tubers". Males in the 18 to 24 year old age group are redirecting their time; a 2007 Harris survey discovered that 1 in 3 of the frequent visitors to YouTube claim to be watching less TV as a result of watching ... YouTube and 66% were sacrificing other activities to watch YouTube. Among their sacrifices: 20% were pre-empting their email and social network time, 19% were deferring their work or homework, 15% sacrificed playing video games, and 12% were substituting spending time with friends or family. (Source: lostremote.com ) And we're not just ... (view more)

Whenever the term "artificial intelligence" comes up, it tends to make some people nervous. It reminds them of the wayward computer, HAL, in the movie "2001 Space Odyssey" or cars that tell you in an annoying tone that your door is open. But, little ... by little, artificial intelligence is creeping into our day-to-day lives. Soon it will be on your desktop. A new product called "Smart Desktop" will shortly be released from Seattle-based Pi Corporation. Designed to work with Microsoft Windows, Smart Desktop will aid the user by attempting to "understand" what they are working ... (view more)

Intuit, the maker of well-known products such as Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax, has purchased Homestead Technologies, a provider of small business websites. (Source: www.techcrunch.com ) At face value there's nothing odd about this; Intuit has ... acquired more than 19 companies in the last decade. And yet, all of these previous acquisitions were directly related, in some way, to small business financial needs thereby complementing Intuit's focus on finance functions. Acquiring Homestead is out of character. Does it mean that Intuit has finally run out of room in the financial market? Maybe ... (view more)

In 1975, Rock Bottom Productions introduced a product called the Pet Rock. It was cute and it was novel. Pet Rocks sold for $3.95 each, were the rage for the 1975 Christmas season, and they made its developer, Gary Dahl, a millionaire. The following ... year, you couldn't give a Pet Rock away. On November 26, 2007, Newsweek announced Amazon's new wireless reading device: the Kindle. According to Amazon, when it was made available for sale, Amazon's complete stock sold out in 5-1/2 hours. (Source: www.newsweek.com ) Any way you look at it, the Kindle is a bold move by Amazon, and could change all ... (view more)