Tech Tips You Should Know, But Don't

Our keyboards need that tweak and a few others

(NEWSER) - The computer keyboard may be an essential tool of daily life, but everybody is driven nuts by at least one aspect of it, writes Matthew J.X. Malady at Slate . He offers some suggested tweaks: More»

Economists try to put a value on PCs in America

(NEWSER) - You can scope out the price tag of a Mac or PC at any given electronics hawker, but how much are computers really worth to us? Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta actually tried tackling that question, and they came up with $500 billion—or, on average about $1,700 per person. That's equal to about 5% of total consumer spending in 2009, reports the Wall Street Journal . More»

...and other lessons David Pogue learned in 10 years of writing about tech

(NEWSER) - David Pogue has been writing a personal-tech column for the New York Times for a whopping 10 years. As most of us give thanks today, he gives us a list—of the biggest tech lessons he's learned in the last decade.

• There's no such thing as the iPhone killer: "Listen, dudes: the history of consumer tech is branching, not replacing." Don't believe him? Has the TV killed the radio? Has the DVD squashed the movie theater? He sees a future that includes both printed books and e-books. "Things don’t replace things; they just add on."

Esquire : Sites that were before their time

(NEWSER) - Everything old is new again, especially on the Web. Some of today's tech darlings owe a lot to websites of years past. Here are some of Esquire's 15 favorite, and mostly kaput, Web 1.0 pioneers:

1. Dodgeball (2000) "A location-based social network for mobile devices, and the Internet's gift to stalkers," says Esquire. Today's Foursquare was co-created by one of its founders.

Can "9.9.09 — A Day Without Cats on the Internet" possibly fly?

(NEWSER) - Let’s face it: Cats own the Internet. But it’s getting a little much, and that’s why the Urlesque blog is organizing “9.9.09—A Day Without Cats on the Internet.” The master plan calls for cats not to be mentioned, emailed, viewed, nor blogged about. Urlesque is even polling readers about their other furry friend fetishes so it can run exclusive coverage of another animal. “Why only one day? Well let's be honest, that's probably only as long as we'll last...” More»