| Jonathan Takiff: That special Valentine's gift? Color it high tech
The Gizmo: Fashion-conscious high-tech gifts from the heart. Shop Til You Drop: You could buy her a sweater or some sexy underwear, if you dare, or maybe some flowers. But what fun is it for a guy to shop for those kinds of Valentine's Day presents, when he could be hanging out instead at his favorite electronics store, and buying his honey something that he feels comfortable with, and that she could really use and (effectively) wear, day in/day out? That seems to be the thinking behind some of the high-style, colorfully wrapped, high-tech gift items that manufacturers are now promoting for guys to give their girls - or for women to get for themselves. Gizmos as Art: Tech gear has been "worn" as a mainstream fashion statement as well as for practical purposes ever since Kodak first strung a neck strap to its leather-clad Brownie box camera at the turn of the 20th century.
Mixed signals for job seekers
And that may be good news for the Class of 2008. With rosy employment predictions from fall meeting recent speculation of a recession, career directors at universities everywhere are getting mixed signals. If their worst fears are realized, it could mean that students who received offers in the fall might find themselves jobless on graduation day. "What I suspect will happen is that opportunities will be offered -- this is a little scary to say, because I would hate for our students to think about this. But offers will be made, and offers will be accepted and, by and large, all of those will be honored," said Donna Cassell Ratcliffe, director of career services at Virginia Tech. "But it's not unusual around April, May, June for those companies, some of those companies, get back to their students ...
What Laura Bush said about Condi.
Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she's an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job." Yikes. Single women can't be president! Move over, Barbara. ... P.S.: Does Laura Bush's intra-party sneer get Sen. Barbara Boxer off the hook? Or--by suggesting some powerful subconscious urge of married mothers to condescend to single women--does it make it even clearer that Boxer is guilty? Bush's comment certainly doesn't make the Boxer incident seem like a better episode for feminism. ... 1:04 A.M. Against the War, For the Surge: I was throwing out some newspapers and came across something I'd forgotten: Michael Gordon's November 15 NYT piece describing how General Anthony Zinni, a trenchant and consistent critic of the decision to go to war in Iraq and of the prosecution of the war, supports something that looks an awful lot like President Bush's surge: Anthony Zinni, who used to head the U.S.
T-Mobile 2008 Roadmap Calls for 3G, Android
T-Mobile is planning to finally launch their 3G network in the United States some time this summer, finally offering customers a speedier way to get their mobile data. They're a little late to party, seeing how Sprint is already working on some 4G connectivity, but it's good to see T-Mo moving in the right direction. The 3G network for T-Mobile was originally supposed to launch in 2008, but they underwent a series of serious delays that have pushed the deployment to Summer 2008. CEO Hamid Akhavan is confident, though, that the upcoming deployment will bring about a network that is quite "robust". The initial launch will be for major metropolitan areas only, of course, but that's how you build the "best 3G network in the country." In possibly bigger news, T-Mobile also plans on having a Google Android-based handset among their fold by the end of this year.
Grown-ups have long way to go to rival teens' technology grasp
In type that scrolls up the screen like the preface for Star Wars, a YouTube video reads, "For years, parents could not text message. They could not figure out how to record a voice mail. They could not even connect to the Internet without using AOL." .
Review: 'Vantage Point' doesn't add up
Vantage Point: Drama. Starring Dennis Quaid, William Hurt and Forest Whitaker. Directed by Pete Travis. (PG-13. 90 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/movies.) "Vantage Point" has a fractured and frustrating narrative. It presents a colossal terrorist attack in Spain, in which two bombs go off and the president of the United States is shot. We see this happen once, and then the clock is wound back and we see the same events happening again and again, each time from the perspective of another character. There should be a reason for filmmakers to tell a story in this way, and for a while the temptation is to look for one. For example, if all the recollections contradicted each other, then the movie could be a commentary on the faultiness of memory, particularly in recollecting moments of crisis.
Review: This notebook is all business
My demo unit was running Windows Vista Business, which for some reason doesn't ship with the common Codecs needed to play DVDs. Only consumer editions of Vista do; I guess Microsoft figures business people don't need to play DVDs. I didn't discover this until onboard my transcon flight, which meant four hours reading the in-flight magazine instead of enjoying the hilarity that is Superbad. Once on the ground and on the Web, with some searching I was able to download the needed codecs from a third-party Web-site; Microsoft had wanted me to pay them for an upgrade instead Woe is Vista That's not my main Vista beef, however. That lies with their overzealous anti-piracy practices. When I first received the demo notebook I unpacked it, flipped it on and began the initial automated install.
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