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Tech: Pick-and-Drop: Sony is still working with pen tablets. “Pick-and-Drop is an extended concept of the commonly used drag-and-drop. With this technique, a user picks up an object on one computer display with a stylus, then drop it on a (possibly different) computer display. For example, a user can select or create a text on one’s own PDA and pick-and-drop it at the desired location on the whiteboard. From the implementation point of view, the data is transferred through the network, but from the user-interface point of view, this technique allows a user to pick up digital data as if it were a physical object. ”

Internet: I’ve been using Gmail for a week now. Rave: It’s the fastest e-mail interface I’ve ever seen. Very quick message retrieval. Single keystroke navigation. The conversation view is like threads with tabbed messages.

Rave: The Gmail spam filter works great OOTB. I had to write a few hundred lines of config code to make SpamAssassin work that well on my own mail server.

Rant: I do get related links on the right side of most e-mails. Sometimes these links are a good guess. Most of the time they are annoying. When I am reading a news alert from the New York Times, I don’t need to see related links about that newspaper.

But Gmail is free, so I’ll live with these tiny ads.

Idea: If Gmail would omit the related links, store my contact list and give me IMAP access to my messages, I’d pay a few bucks a month for the service.

Imagine a Gmail appliance… Google already sells a lemony-yellow rack-mount search appliance. Just hook a storage cluster into the back of your Gmail box, and you’ve got instant, scalable, web-enabled corporate e-mail.

Gmail could destroy Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

Java: Version 1.4.2 is available now, with some interface and programming tweaks to help reduce the pain.

IT: From the Economist, sentient computing sounds like pervasive computing with a European twist:

By adding sensors to today’s computing and communications technology, sentient computing seeks to take account of a machine’s environment in order to make it more responsive and useful. Sentient computing systems are always on, ubiquitously available, and can adapt to their users. In short, they seek to become real help-mates. To quote a European Commission report, the aim is to create ‘convivial technologies that are easy to live with.’

… Similarly, Microsoft researchers have given wireless PDAs (personal digital assistants) new user interfaces by adding tilt sensors and accelerometers. Users can scroll through documents by tipping the PDA back and forth—as if they were controlling the ball-bearing in a toy maze. Lifting the PDA to the ear creates sensor outputs that cause the device to make a phone call. Researchers have even used the accelerometers to recognise walking patterns so that the PDA can decide whether to accept or divert a phone call.