¶ Although there’s not much real news in today’s Times, there are lots of interesting items about personal technology, such as the really very intriguing story about the Polara golf ball, which is dimpled in a directional manner that reduces slices and hooks. It’s also “illegal” — not permitted in official tournaments. The substrate of the story is an anxiety about making the pastime attractive to young man who are inclined to play in cargo shorts and whose sense of the rules is flexible at best. Will golf develop a hardball/softball divide? ¶ After months of dithering, Condé Nast and Apple have finally come up with a subscription model for The New Yorker. Not that we’re excited. The great thing about the print issue is that you don’t need a connection to read it. And while the online archives make it unnecessary to stack unread issues or even to clip favorite articles, you still have to type out anything that you want to copy — cutting and pasting are not enabled. Makes you feel like it’s the Middle Ages! ¶ Further proof that it was the tablet, and not the personal computer, that would save trees (because reading a tablet involves the same body moves as reading a book) is forthcoming in Martha White’s story about Ativ Software, an outfit that packages conference materials in a tidy app. (Sell Staples!) ¶ Facebook 2.0: in which the Zuckerberg competes with a crowd of “anti-oversharing” alternatives.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 at 10:30 am.