John Dvorak is hit-or-miss in his articles. This one's a hit, and articulates my bewilderment at the idea of online office apps like Google Office. Even if consumers used them, I can't imagine any business doing so.*

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2176192,00.asp

Excerpts:

I only use Google docs," a friend of mine told me. "It's as good as Word and easier to share files."

Easier to share files? So how hard is it to attach a doc file to an e-mail anyway? Cripes.

To analyze the illogic of certain trends, I like to employ a trick I call the "reverse timeline." . . . You can image the advertising push. "Now control your own data!" "Faster processing power now." "Cheaper!" "Everything at your fingertips." "No need to worry about network outages."

* Except, possibly, that they'd purchase a version from Google hosted on their own business servers, and be able to store all corporate documents. Of course, this can be done today, through thin clients, using Microsoft or Linux technologies.

Is any of these sentences more grammatically correct than the others? Will you provide references to support your claim?

Is any of these better suited to a particular use? For instance, which would be best on a flyer?

1. "All services are not available in all areas."
2. "Not all services are available in all areas."
3. "Services are not all available in all areas."

Here are links to a couple of articles about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The machine is quite impressive, as is the software. There are several features I wish were available on "grown up" computers. I think this represents the first real update to the graphical user interface in a long time. There seem to be many ideas taken from Jef Raskin's Humane Interface.

For an example of the OLPC's innovation, read about The Journal, a wonderfully thoughtful approach to working with files.

Links:
eTech article
Wikipedia article
OLPC Page

I also reprint from Wikipedia, below, Negroponte's response to the issue of theft/black market. He believes (and I agree) that one way to limit this problem is through social pressure. "Um, what are you doing with that? It's supposed to be in the hands of a child."

The grey market is a very serious issue. I don't want to be dismissive of it for a moment, and there are three ways of addressing it. Way number one is to have no market at all for it. I mean you can't sell it, who could buy it, and that isn't bullet proof. That's a little bit dreaming, but it's part of the equation. The second is to put the technologies into the device that help stop that. [The laptops distributed to middle schoolers in Maine are Apple iBooks] so they are not only great stuff to steal and we don't necessarily have corruption of that kind, but it's pretty transferable technology. They've put little things so the machine disables itself after a while if it hasn't connected to the school. You can put GPS in it, you can put all sorts of stuff. But then the third one, which I'm doing and I like is to make this machine so distinctive that it is socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a child or a teacher. Now you can obviously take it down to your basement, but I hope your spouse will even say: �Oh God! Honey! What did you do?� [...] So those three combined will I hope at least limit this to one percent or two percent.