Well, after about a week of using SharpReader, I'm giving it up.  It is a fine application, I didn't have any problems with it.  I just don't like viewing websites this way - it is like reading Reader's Digest, or something.  Plus, it creates pressure for me to read "everything".  I don't want to read everything, I just want to surf around and find interesting stuff.  The best way for me to interact with the blogosphere is to make a pass through my blogroll, picking sites I feel like looking at and clicking around...

The weekly Carnival of the Vanities is up.  This is a good way to find new blogs, check it out.

Solonor comments on, well, comments:  "The main way we introduce ourselves in the blogosphere is by commenting on someone's writing.  It seems a little rude at times.  We walk in the door of a stranger's house, criticize the furniture (even if it's a good comment), and invite ourselves back over whenever we feel like it."

Congratulations to Lee Hood, the smartest person I ever met, for winning the 2003 Lemelson-MIT Prize.  (Dr. Hood was my pre-med advisor at Caltech, in 1979, two or three lifetimes ago.)  "No single person has done more to create the genomics era than Leroy Hood."

C|Net has a feature on "the cars of tomorrow".  But they totally miss the most important feature - the ability for cars to spontaneously organize themselves into caravans, speeding traffic flow.  A few high-end cars have this technology now - some Mercedes have it, and some Lexus' - but it is positioned as a safety feature ("smart cruise control") rather than a traffic optimizer.

Just in case you thought the dumb "throw money at anything" attitude of the late 90s was gone forever, Shazam Entertainment just closed a $6M funding round.  What they do: if you're walking around and you hear a song you like, you dial Shazam from your cell phone, and their music recognition service will tell you what the song is.  Now that is a terrific business, isn't it?  (Almost like automating pathology, but different.)