Status-Q

Apple have released their own remote desktop system for OS X, at a price. But there are good versions of VNC for it too.

Peter Martin in the FT: ruup4 multimedia messaging?. The service-providers' enthusiasm for the new MMS phones is because "At least in its WAP form, there has been very little public appetite for third-party content. Meanwhile, user-generated content, in the form of SMS messages, continues to grow. " Will this apply to multimedia?

"After 2.5 years of Linux, I've finally found joy in a Unix operating system", writes John Hummel about his conversion to Mac OS X.

Computerworld: Wireless LANs gain over cellular. "A growing number of U.S. localities, including the California cities of Glendale and Oakland and counties of Orange and San Diego, have embraced Wi-Fi technology as the high-speed wireless backbone of their networks." [Tomalak's Realm]

Wi-Fi (802.11b) really isn't designed for this kind of deployment but, hey, if it works, then I guess that's already an advantage over 3G. I'm dubious about covering a county, even a very small one, with just 12 base stations, though.

Excellent New Scientist feature on Open Source ideas. [from John Naughton's weblog]. I hadn't come across the Wikipedia before. It's rather good. Topics for discussion in your coffee break:

• We all know that you should take everything you read on the web with a pinch of salt, but we're used to reading things in reference works and assuming they're fairly authoritative. Does presenting information in that form make us more likely to believe it?
• Is an encyclopedia which anybody can update more or less likely to be 'authoritative'?

John Hiler produces some good stuff. He wrote an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about the effect of weblogs on search engines. In this latest piece he discusses weblogs in terms of Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point".

Hywel Williams has a fascinating site about the Disused Stations on London's Underground.