First iPhone Reviews Are In!

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The first reviews from some of the lucky journalists (insert professional jealousy expletive here!) to get an early-review Apple iPhone model are out in the US media! The overall impression is that the "Jesus Phone" may actually live up to the hype after all. Minus the blood to wine conversion of course, though, I'm told there's a nifty app for the phone that actually lets you .... anyway, lol, here are some quick links: Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal: "Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer." More David Pogue, New York Times: "... so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese." More Stephen Levy, Newsweek: "The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge." More ....

Owed Two A Spelling Chequer

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Computers have come a long way and while they can crunch data easier than humans, they still don't "get" the subjective stuff. Thats the reason why CAPTCHAS as we reported on the Tech 2.0 show last week, are mankind's best defence against spam. I got a regular Press Release today, from an Indian car-maker today, which had me scratching my head when I read this line: "17 youth are being trained at the company's Jamshedpur facility, while another 340 individuals have been placed in two select it is and the Ramakrishna Mission Shilpa Mandir." After some thinking I figured that someone had run the release through a Spell Check and auto-corrected ITIs (Indian Technical Institutes) to 'it is' towards the end of the sentence. Just goes to show that however good software gets, you still need a human to run a final check! This....

Techie Dropouts & Graduation Speeches

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Ah! The sweet irony of a college dropout delivering a graduation speech! Even sweeter if it's the richest man in the world coming back to take his degree and address students of arguably the most famous college in the world. When William H Gates delivered the commencement address to Harvard's Class of 2007 a few days ago, life had come full circle for the founder of Microsoft. He joked that he was leaving his job next year and a college degree would help on the CV. For those who don't follow Microsoft, Bill Gates is relinquishing all responsibilities at MS and will focus on his foundation full-time. If you read the speech without being told whose it is, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's probably some stereotypical leftist-activist 'jholawala' crusader. And yet it was the very man who epitomizes American capitalism exhorting....