(Credit:
CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

The mascots of Web 2.0.

The two mascots seen below are for wildly different products. The one on the left is for eXpresso, an Excel spreadsheet sharing service that takes your Excel spreadsheets and gives them tags, online histories, and a really neat feature that lets you tweak which areas of a spreadsheet other users can make edits to.

Sorely missing were any walking cell phones, despite the heavy presence of mobile-centric services. I was also hoping to see Coghead, (whose mascot is a walking gear) make the jump from vector art to velour sweat suit. Maybe next year.

I’m always interested to see what a company chooses to represent the look and feel of its products. On a day-to-day basis, we bloggers rarely see anything besides the service and its WebEx presentation. However, when conference time comes, they pull out all the stops with crazy booths, over-the-top swag, booth babes–and in extreme cases: the mascot.

The rabbit on the right is from MindTouch Deki Wiki, a hostable wiki service that lets you create all sorts of mashups to other Web services such as Google and Flickr.

The messages said, in part: “I love you;” “we need to be together;” I will see
you every day;” and “I will never stop trying to talk to you.”

The words “we need to be together;” “I will never stop talking to you;”
and “I
love you” are not threats, but appear to be merely the symptoms of
unrequited
love–the same hopeless affection that, among countless others, Dante felt
for
Beatrice; Don Quixote for Dulcinea; Cyrano for Roxane; Quasimodo for
Esmeralda;
Young Werner for Lotte; Jay Gatsby for Daisy Buchanan; and that Charlie
Brown felt
for the Little Red Haired Girl. While these romances do not usually end well
for
the pursuing party, the People have cited neither statute nor case law that
might
punish the communication of unrequited love, even if such is undesired.

The annals of history are replete with examples of teenage angst and unrequited love. It took the state of New York to make those a crime.

Although the court didn’t go there, another problem is that the state law violates the First Amendment and New York state’s constitution. That’s because the First Amendment protects even annoying speech–otherwise some overtly political Web sites, let alone sites like Annoy.com, might not even be able to exist.

State prosecutors decided to charge Isaiah Rodriguez, 18, of aggravated harassment and endangering the welfare of a child over a series of MySpace.com messages professing his ardent devotion to a 14-year-old girl.

Fortunately, the New York City criminal court thought otherwise. In a ruling on April 4, Judge Michael Gerstein in Brooklyn wrote this, which I’ve excerpted (thanks to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman for the tip):

That, according to the solons in the New York state attorney general’s office, amounts to a violation of Section 240.30 of the state penal code. It says: “A person is guilty of aggravated harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person…causes a communication to be initiated by…electronic means…in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”

Teenagers are especially vulnerable to the “madness most discreet” that
makes
sad hours seem long. Mere pages before he met Juliet, Romeo pined for
Rosaline;
Adrian Mole longed for Pandora Braithwaite in volume after volume of his
“secret
diaries;” and Dion implored of the skies up above, “why must I be a
teenager
in love?” vowing, just a few verses later, that “if you should say goodbye,
I’d
still go on loving you.” When teenagers fall in love, as song lyrics and
studies
show, they are more likely to exhibit almost manic behaviors, take risks,
act
compulsively, and sometimes pursue, with reckless abandon, the objects of
their
affection. While the actions of a love-struck teenager may well be foolish,
reckless, or otherwise acts which might not be expected from a mature adult,
they
are not, without more, elevated to crimes.

Here is the gear you should take with you. We evaluate clothing (Kombi, North Face, Spyder, Mountain Hardwear, Arc’Teryx, and more), skis (Volkl, Rossignol, K2, and more), and boots (Tecnica, Nordica, Lange, and more). Where possible we link to Backcountry.com, for two reasons: 1) We know the management team there (It’s a Utah company) and 2) It runs on open source.

What better place to review the latest and greatest in ski technology than here at CNET, the world’s #1 source of technology news? But rather than muddle through the technical details of the newest ski technology, I gathered a group of expert skiers to determine how that technology translates into everyday, real-world experience on the slopes.

We’re not professional reviewers. We don’t have anything to gain from a positive review and nothing to lose from a negative review.

We’re not reliant on the ski companies’ advertising dollars. What we do have is a love of skiing and the best mountains on the planet to test out the industry’s best gear.

I ski all the time. At least once per week during the winter, but usually twice (or more). This past 10 days I skied four (or was it five?) times. Heaven.

commentary (Credit:
Matt Asay)

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting our reviews. We’re halfway through the ski season (or, given the amount of snow that has been falling, really just one-third the way through), but I’ve heard from a surprising number of you that you expect to hit the slopes this season.

Also new today is an envelope-tracking system that will keep a history of all your sent and received receipt envelopes alongside a live status indicator that gives you the heads-up on when a new envelope has been sent out. If you’re a user of Netflix or any other shipper of goods this tends to be more important, but in Shoeboxed’s case it’s a nice touch if you want to make sure someone didn’t steal the envelope full of financial goodness from your mailbox.

Mint.com, which also does this (sans the paper receipt scanning) can be incredibly useful in this regard, but it goes the extra mile by tapping in to your credit card and bank account information to itemize these purchases for you. Shoeboxed’s solution is slightly more low tech, with a special e-mail address you can CC to get your payment confirmation sent from online retailers. It will automatically figure in those payments and add them into your total spending.

The site launched in July of last year, and this morning it is unveiling two new useful features. The first is a new analytics engine that will break down your spending habits with svelte-looking charts and graphs. What makes this particularly useful is that it can track both your on and offline purchases, which is shown in one of the new graphs.

Shoeboxed has a free service where you plug in all the information. The plans that will scan your receipts and actually send them back start at $10 a month, all the way up to the $60 express plan, which guarantees same-day scanning and processing.

(Credit:
Shoeboxed)

The MSI Wind news release does reveal that there will be two configurations, one based on Novell Linux and another based on Windows XP Home. Both models will feature a 10-inch, LED-backlit screen with a 1024×600-pixel resolution, the Intel 945GMS chipset, and an 80GB hard drive. Common features also include three USB ports, a card reader, an integrated Webcam, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.

The Linux version serves up 512MB of RAM and a three-cell battery, which MSI estimates will run for 2.5 hours. The Windows version doubles the memory to 1GB and the battery to a six-cell unit, which it equates to 5.5 hours of running time. The Windows version also adds Bluetooth. With its smaller battery, the Linux-based MSI Wind weighs 2.3 pounds to the Windows version’s 2.6-pound weight.

MSI put out a vague news release today that details some, but not all, of the specifications of its upcoming and unfortunately named Wind mininotebook. At the top of the release, it states the 10-inch notebook will “feature the new Intel Processor,” but it fails to explain what that processor might be. An Intel Atom processor is a safe bet; the chips are expected to be released this summer.

Asus offers the both versions of its Eee PC 900 at the same $549 price, but it supplies a larger hard drive in the Linux version–your bonus for skipping the fee for the Windows license. MSI is taking a different approach, outfitting the Windows version with better specifications and more features, which means the sub-$500 price it quotes will almost certainly apply to only the Linux model.

The only mention of pricing in the release states that MSI Wind configurations will start at less than $500 in early June. The MSI Wind is available, however, for preorder at Expansys, which lists a $560 price for a Linux-based model and a $605 price for a Windows model (and a ship date of June 24–decidedly late June). Expansys lists the processor as a 1.6GHz Intel processor. I’d hazard a guess that the Wind will use the 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 chip. Available colors for the models on Expansys are white, black, and pink.

(Credit:
Expansys)

The MSI Wind comes in white, black, and, pink.

In case you were wondering, it’s able to skirt copyright regulations by calling itself Blu_ray rather than Blu-ray.

(Credit:
Cargo Cosmetics)

HD DVD, just in case you didn’t get the word, you’re toast. The cosmetics industry says so, and would like to blow you a high-definition kiss goodbye. Mwah.

However, unlike with word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations can only be viewed, not edited, according to a post by marketing manager Andrew Chang on the Google Docs blog Friday. That’s still useful, though. Chang gives the example of giving a slide presentation without having to worry about network access.

The offline access uses the Google Gears technology the search engine giant introduced in 2007 as an open-source project.

Google has broadened the number of online applications that people can use offline, adding spreadsheets and presentations to the mix.

People You May Know finds people within six degrees or so of separation and suggests them as potential friends. It appears that the threshold is set at four, meaning you are connected to four of the same people as the suggested “friend.” FriendFeed has taken a somewhat similar approach for recommending new people to “follow.”

The end result is that Facebook generates some exponential growth, creating more density in its web of people connections. And, Facebook members now have an easy way to find new connections based on relationship proximity, as well as a potential source of irritation as they get inundated with friends of friends requesting connections.

Along with the new privacy options, the forthcoming chat service, and People You May Know, Facebook is making some smart moves to stay ahead in the social-networking game.

This type of recommendation engine, which taps into the social graph, is like a Las Vegas slot machine that keeps on giving. Every time you pull the lever you get a bunch of new friend connections, which makes you want to keep pulling the lever until it runs out of recommendations.

Now, back to the news.

I don’t think so. It seems a news site called Inner City Press was delisted from Google News for about a week leading the site to speculate that the move was due to its articles exposing alleged corruption at the U.N. But a Google spokesman says it was because the company was under the impression that there was just one man working at the news site.

The latest Google conspiracy has the lava-loving Googlers removing from Google News articles critical of the United Nations. Does Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt have a back channel to the U.N.?

Google delisted Inner City News from Google News beginning February 13 following a “user complaint,” Stricker said. After Inner City News provided evidence of more than one staffer Google began re-listing the site’s articles on Tuesday, he said.

(Credit:
Google)

Google got into the open handset business with too much hope for the future. The company figured that because of its success online, it could expect to enjoy the same kind of success in an extremely competitive environment — the cell phone industry. Realizing that it’s probably not all it’s alleged to be, Google ran into trouble with software development and getting Android up and running on some of its partners’ devices. And in an attempt to reassure us that everything is fine, it has maintained radio silence.

I guess not.

Here’s my theory:

And in the end, it’s on Google to find a reason why we should care about Android and except for the boring updates on the company’s Android blog, Google has gone silent. If you ask me, it better wake up soon or there could be more trouble on that front than it may expect.

While I know that there are probably thousands of people right now that are anxiously awaiting an Android-based phone, I can’t help but wonder how many have stopped caring. Let’s face it — if something is announced towards the end of 2007 and it’s hardly mentioned by the middle of 2008, how many people can we truly expect to care?

Chances are, Google is being tight-lipped about Android’s progress for one of two reasons: it’s having more trouble than it originally anticipated or it simply doesn’t want us to know anything before it springs some major developments on us.

Even though the company promised it would be the cornerstone of its mobile plans going forward, Google’s Android platform has fallen off the radar in the past few months. Some say it’s because the company has had a series of issues with its SDK and companies are complaining about the difficulty of developing on the platform. All the while, we’ve been waiting for something from the Android camp to find out what’s going on.

A quick glance around the Web tells you everything you need to know about Android — nothing. I spent a good hour looking for something to discuss here and after giving up in disgust, the best I could come up with was some useless news about the top Android applications.

With that in mind, I can’t help but wonder what is really going on at the company. Is it simply trying to hide its problems so we think that everything is running smoothly or is it doing all it can to build up the hype? If it’s the latter, I don’t think it’s doing a very good job.

To make matters worse, I was perusing Google’s Android Developers blog and there has been little mention of anything important surrounding the launch and availability of Android.

Wake up, Google. We want to hear more about Android.

Disagree? Take a look at what Google has said recently about Android. If you notice, the company has stayed relatively tight-lipped about its plans going forward and although it may hint at interesting developments going forward, I’m not sold on the fact that anything big is coming out of the Android camp.

Regardless, I can’t help but wonder if things have gone awry. After all, in an industry where the
iPhone gets most of the attention, wouldn’t Google want to do what it can to remind us all that it has something of its own up its sleeve?