I'm talking about phones specifically in this note. I wonder what the reasons are. I would assume that the culture is more gadget oriented but there must be more to it... the U.S. has a stronger economy (I think) and more bodies for sure. Is it the different communication standards we have out here which splits our market size for any given phone product vs. a near-universal standard in Japan? I wonder. I'm jealous too. I need to meet more Japanese folks so I can get the first-hand skinny on how good the products are and more importantly, when they're going to make it over here, if ever. If I were Joi, I would never travel to the states - I'd just stay home and tinker, negating the need for a drink at all.

Dear Santa, can I have one of these please? Found as an advertisement on Gawker.

NYNewsday.com has some pics up of the proposed Freedom Tower. One cool feature will be "windmills" built into the structure which will harness natural air flow and provide 20% of its electricity. Full story.

I wonder how long it will take before a new attribute to the "A" tag in HTML will support a target of a new "tab". With Mozilla's tabbed browsing and (likely) inevitable support from IE, this would be a welcome feature and replacement for popping a new window when clicking on a link. I typically middle-mouse-click to accomplish this sort of thing but sometimes I forget and don't care if my current page is replaced. This does not help if the site author has chosen to pop a new window for every link on their site. Perhaps a setting within Mozilla to force "_new" targets into a new tab would suffice.

For this I would pay the same price as a new laptop. Carrying a laptop with wireless net access and a camera and a phone everywhere is not something I want to do. I'd love to get it all in one place. I would like to ssh into my boxes from [virtually] anywhere to check/fix things without having to carry a laptop around all the time. The camera and PDA are optional of course but the phone and shell access would make life so much easier. I would guess something like this exists today but I can't seem to find anything reasonable with U.S. based phone service. The Treo 600 looks very cool but I don't know that I want to be locked into PalmOS - Nothing against Palm, I just don't know it like I do *nix. Anyone know of carriers in the U.S. who offer such a device?

I'm flipping through my latest Ping! Zine and realizing how much I enjoy reading these sorts publications. I don't read most of the articles but the advertising often carries a hidden gem or two. I can't believe how many sub $100/mo dedicated server offerings are out there... my goodness!