Welcome Back, Old Fruit

The Apricot brand for computers goes back a long way - I was there, unfortunately. Remarkably, it consistently managed to misread the market at just about every turn - from choosing a daft name that was so obviously modelled on Apple's, to the decision to offer only MS-DOS rather than PC-DOS with its PC line ("good enough" we were told at the time), to the hopelessly premature voice-controlled portable system (I'll never forget the sight of Apricot managers shouting, red-faced, into the weird microphone in a desperate attempt to get it to recognise something - anything). And don't even ask about the dancing girls at the launches of their business machines....

Well, Apricot is back with a bang:

Apricot has pulled the plug on its Linux-based netbook, choosing instead to offer the pint-sized Picobook Pro only with Windows XP.

...


"Apricot will not be selling with Linux variants," a company missive revealed, which suggests it's not merely dropping SuSE for Ubuntu or another netbook-friendly distro.

"Apricot has made this decision to ensure customers have a smooth installation of their operating system," the company told Register Hardware.

"The Linux version proved too complicated with initial testers, who would opt to purchase and install XP any way.

"Apricot believes that this will be a more attractive product offering for their target customers, because as soon as it is switched on, it is ready for use."

Strange, then, that Asus has managed to make GNU/Linux ultraportables that are not only "ready for use" as soon as you switch them on, but extremely easy to use, too; and strange that Asus is so successful with these models. Just a coincidence, presumably.

Real-time, voice-activated blogging

By their very nature, blogs have a real-time element (the "log" in "weblog"). The reverse chronological nature of them means that as they are updated every day or two, you are aware of time passing.

I've noticed that beyond this common kind of daily blogging, another significant element for some sites is a schedule based on hours or even minutes. These are typically when an important event is breaking, and represent a new kind of online reporting. A good example is the coverage of Steve Jobs' MacWorld announcement.

What is particularly interesting about this - aside from the sense of excitement that it can generate - is its dependence on a good wireless connection. You can't really follow events if you're plugged into an ordinary network. This explains why many of these up-to-the-minutes blogs make reference to the presence, absence and quality of the local WiFi connection.

Taking this a step further, it occurs to me that mobiles will be even more suited to this kind of blogging on the move. All that is needed is some good voice recognition software that can transcribe your words - and ignore the extraneous noises - as you pursue your topic, both literally and metaphorically.

What we need is a name for this kind of real-time, voice-activated blogging: any suggestions?