The Guardian:

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s remarkable single is arguably the perfect protest song: moving, memorable and perfectly timed. Shortly afterwards, the NME’s Ritchie Yorke predicted: “There will almost certainly be a trend towards very politically oriented pop acts in the very near future. Entertainment for the revolutionary troops, so to speak.” But Ohio turned out to signify the end of the fertile period of political songwriting that had begun with Bob Dylan, rather than a thrilling rebirth.

I keep reading stories like this about the iPad:

I was always going to enjoy using this device, but I confess to not having been prepared for quite this sort of transformative experience. I truly wouldn’t want to be without it from now on, and (work notwithstanding) I’ll be making a concerted effort to use it as my sole travel/portable device whenever possible.

Creative Space & iPad (via kottke.org)

They’ve all been largely obsoleted (at least at my home) by a sleek $499 device that doesn’t really have any right to be called a “computer” in the traditional sense. 

Sure, there’s a handful of tasks that I still would prefer a real computer, but — amazingly — that list has now shrunk dramatically. In less than a week.

What iPads Did To My Family (via Daring Fireball)

Two similar perspectives from very dissimilar writers (a Mac coder vs a CTO at EMC). Question is, is this just the glow of a new toy, or is it truly a “transformative” moment in tech evolution?

Tim Bray on HTML5:

But the best case doesn’t help the Web, as such, all that much, and the worst case doesn’t really damage it. Because every interesting application, more or less, is already a Web application.

Understatement:

The game itself was fantastic - I’m glad I bought it either way - but I have to say, this is a nice return on my investment.

Buzzword alert:

I reached out to [person] to buy him a coffee

You reached out? What?

I was in JB Hi-Fi at lunch, and they had Avatar playing from Blu-ray on a high-def screen. The amount of detail was staggering - I literally stopped in my tracks. It was almost too much in fact - it made me focus on the Navi and try and pick holes in the animation, rather than watching the movie itself. I’d love to see it side by side with a DVD version.

Is too real a problem with Blu-ray/HD, or is it just a matter of adjusting your eyes/brain/expectations?

Owning your online self. I wonder if it’s time to emerge from pseudonym-inity. Or at least consolidate behind just one.

Fontfest on the way:

While most designers are excited about the opportunities all these new font options will afford, not all of them are convinced that it will lead to beautiful Web design. “It’s great, but it’s also horrible,” Lai said. “Now if people want some random handwriting site, they can have one. It’s going to go through growing pains, there’s no question about that.”

Introduction of such poorly manufactured products into [workplace] will only serve to create a lot more work for the support departments and therefore increase general user downtime.

Apple is NOT a corporate quality product!

email rant (accidentally?) sent to a LOT of staff at my work in reply to an invitation to an iPad demo. Wonder if they’d have been as vehement if it was a demo of a ‘high quality' Dell notebook, or a Google Nexus.

Festival of the Book on Radio National, 702, and Digital Radio channel ABCSydneyWriters.