links for 2009-03-11

Now really Austin? Look we are in a recession and beginning part of a depression. Spending 8.4 million on these new parking kiosks is stupid. The old ones cost you 500,000 in fines because they were broken, but who cares? How does that justify getting new ones for that amount of money now? Also, you want to make people pay for parking later in the day, so instead of free parking after 5:30pm it will be Midnight and also no more free parking on saturday. All this will do is make people who come out to eat on a weekend in downtown basically stay in North Austin and this will create money losses for the local businesses and retaraunts, which make the ustin culture in the first place. It seems liek lately that since Brarack Obama has been in office every state, city, banks and Government have been spending stupid ammounts of money. This will not help anything at this time, so get it together idiots!

I think this article brings up a great point in usability and the many netbooks out there. I was thinking of purchasing one lately for a family member, but as much as I love the price and cool size, it seems just too small to do certain work on it even if someone is on a budget. To me if these developers are going to create custom OSs for these netbooks no problem, but wouldnt that just make the netbook a bigger version of a mobile device like the iPhone, blackberry and etc. Most people want to use it as an extension of their desktop to get work done on the road, but in a much smaller package than most laptops. I still think they are usefull for some students and etc, but from the picture above I just see mobile and that to me is a turn off when it comes to any for of computer system because I already have a phone than can do that. I know the Netbook isnt a Notebook, but its still supposed to offer more to me than just a bigger screen and storage space.