- Retrospective on PARC from its outgoing chief
John Timmer at Ars Technica caught up with Mark Bernstein shortly after he announced his departure for a chat. It’s good timing, in terms of catching up on a little bit of history on the research facilities 40 years. The focus of Timmer’s piece is on the modern era at PARC, especially since it was spun out as an independent concern by Xerox. - Chrome adds background execution to its bag of tricks
As much of a Mozilla fan boy as I am, reading Klint Finley’s write up at ReadWriteWeb of this new feature overcame my initial skepticism and has me wishing Firefox follows where Chrome is leading. As the browser becomes increasingly more OS-like, something like this makes a great deal of sense to manage resources that can affect the browser regardless of a visible application. For now, a reasonable Firefox hack would be to have a Panorama tab group for such applications. The end result would be pretty similar if not as convenient. - Eliminating the laptop charging brick
Kevin Bullis at Technology Review has the story of a recently de-cloaked startup, with some impressive backers, looking not just to improve the convenience of today’s bulky power electronics like wall warts. The reduction in size accomplished through using a non-traditional semi-conductor also comes at a claimed 90% energy savings. If you’ve handled a power brick that’s been plugged in for any length of time you have a tactical sense of how much energy is wasted by these necessary components. - Study finds internet makes youth more engaged citizens, ReadWriteWeb
- PS3 hacker’s house raided by police, he retaliates by releasing hypervisor bible, Slashdot
- Android 2.3.3 picks up support for WebM/VP-8, The H Open
- A history of a near schism in the early days of the public internet, The Atlantic
Exploring digital citizenry as a creator and a consumer.