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Is there an Apple/Dell merger in the near future? Although they have comparable market caps (approximately 55B and 70B respectively), most people would probably say no…why would Apple want to lose the premium they get from selling hardware? What would Dell gain out of the deal?

But I am not so sure that it would be a bad fit. The thing is, Apple is rapidly becoming a content company. Sure, they make a tidy profit on hardware sales such as their award-winning laptops and iPods, but their future lies in content distribution (iTunes, etc) and making world-class, easy-to-use software (Mac OS X, iLife, iWork, etc).

Now, Apple’s problem is that despite their raging popularity in the social sphere, they have yet to break into the business market. In fact, their worldwide PC market share over the last 10 years has declined significantly. This is where Dell comes in: they are tired of being tied hand and foot to Microsoft and would love to find an alternative Operating System and Productivity Suite.

Dell is the king of selling business machines. This is exactly the market segment where Apple has failed to make inroads (and a big segment at that!). Now, combine Dell’s powerful distribution channel and distaste for the Microsoft monopoly with Apple’s legendary software and desire for the business market and you have a perfect match.

There are a number of other factors which make this a good deal. The first is that Dell controls their own hardware. Apple’s software requires good control over the PC hardware to provide a seamless, headache-free user experience. Most often, this is voiced as “it just works” on a Mac.

The second factor is that Apple is currently making the switch of their entire codebase to Intel x86 hardware. This transition is somewhat painful, but will eventually lower the adoption barrier if they ever did want to work with Dell. In fact, hacked versions of Mac OS X run almost perfectly on modern Dell machines.

The third factor is that the next version of OS X (Leapord) will likely have the ability to run Windows applications natively without the need for Microsoft. My guess is that Apple intends to achieve this through some enhanced derivative of Wine. Having direct application compatibility would be critical for Dell to support its existing customer base while still being able to transition them to a new operating system.

Finally, if Sun and Google get together, it will add a serious new challenger to the PC market. Both Apple and Dell will need the support of each other if they are going to try and fight against this sort of competition.

The biggest negative in my mind is that it would be highly unlikely for both Michael Dell and Steve Jobs to enjoy holding the reins together. Something would have to give for a merger of the two companies to go through. Perhaps then we will not see a full merger, but rather we will see a strategic partnership where Dell sells business PC’s and servers running ‘Mac OS X Business Edition’ complete with the iWork productivity suite. Meanwhile, Apple still sells their hardware to the consumer market and tries to build the next-generation software needed to take on Google.

Has Paypal finally figured it out?? They recently launched a new service called Paypal Mobile which allows you to easily exchange money using simple text (SMS) messages on your mobile phone.? All you have to do is create a text message to PAYPAL (729725) with the amount you want to send and the number where you want to send it.? The money is then instantly moved from your account to whoever you sent it to.

This certainly has the potential to revolutionize interpersonal, small-money transactions.? Hopefully retail stores will also get on the bandwagon and we can easily pay for that Happy Meal with a simple text message!

VagaBlog is a mobile, palm-based application which allows for the easy posting of stories from any location. I am currently running VagaBlog on my Treo 650 and must say that I am quite impressed with its capabilities.

Be prepared for many more postings from random locations!

Prediction: Windows Vista will never be released…well it will never be released in its current bloated form.

Instead, I think Microsoft will finally realize that it is ok to break backwards compatibility…at least in some situations. Furthermore, I think they will actually see the deep threat posed by Google and will respond with a preemptive strike on building next generation services (and no, I am not talking about the crap that is currently called Windows Live).

What I think they should really be focusing on is a slim and speedy version of Vista which truly embraces the WebOS programming model where additional functionality and services are offered through an internet connection. Of course, there will always be a need for some offline applications, but with the growing ubiquity of (high-speed) internet access, the old thick-client model is outdated. Instead, people want the ability to access and manipulate their data from a number of locations, devices, etc. Microsoft has the talent to implemement this futuristic vision, if only they would break of packaged software mindset.

So I wanted to get Tivo, but did not really want to pay the monthly fee. Instead, I found the poor man’s solution (well, poor if you already have a computer). I ended up getting a Plextor PX-TV402U converter which encodes the cable signal into MPEG4 format and passes it to the computer over USB. On my computer, I use EyeTV 2.0 which allows for easy recording, viewing, and editing of live television.

If you are in the market for a PVR and have a fairly up-to-date computer, I would highly recommend this setup for it’s flexibility and ease of use!

In case you have not already seen it, you should definitely check out Netvibes. This site is implementing a basic version of what I consider to be the next generation of human/computer interaction. The web-desktop offered by Netvibes is user-friendly, functional, and aesthetically pleasing.

What I have done is set Netvibes to be my desktop wallpaper through Microsoft’s long forgotten Active Desktop feature. Because the site uses AJAX, there is no need to set a manual page refresh schedule (one of the many reasons that Active Desktop was a flop). Instead, various portions of the Netvibes page will periodically update themselves using asynchronous javascript.

With Active Desktop, the Netvibes page has no borders and is locked to the desktop background so that it never gets in your way. You can, however, still click on the various parts of the page as if you were in a standard web browser. Take a look at this screenshot for a better idea of what I mean:

Sitting at my desk all day is about to kill me. I need exercise. I need movement to keep my blood flowing. Ok, so how about this. What if I kept pedaling all day while sitting at my desk? I think it would at least keep me more alert. It might even burn a few calories!
Well, I searched the Internet a bit and found the perfect solution: a pedal exerciser.

Now I want to take it one step further…what if the pedal power actually generated electricity? Then I could plug my computer into it so that I would have to keep pedaling all day in order to keep my computer on. Whew! Now that could cause some serious sweat!

My preferred work setup right now is a Dell PC running a version of Mac OS X (10.4.5). While this has been treating me really well, much of the work I do requires a Virtual Machine environment. Unfortunately none exist for OSX86 yet….at least not until I came across this today:

Q is an virtualizer/emulator based around Qemu, but specifically built for OS X. It is similar to VMWare but also encorporates some of the features of Bochs.

I tested it out today on my work machine and was very impressed with it. Q is a bit slow since the Qemu Acceleration kernel extension has not yet been ported to OS X, but it is certainly usable. Hopefully the kernel module will be available soon!

Racing around a mid-air track in a mini-fighter jet? Sounds fun Take a look at the next big sport which may leave Nascar in the dust!
X-Racers: Start Your Rockets!