XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Friday, April 21. Today’s theme is onward and upward!, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — BusinessWeek has this good overview of the money that is being made from Second Life. And, speaking of making money, Sony has decided it wants to increase sales of its aging PS2 console. That means a lower selling price. Get yours today for only $129.
• Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations — Renee Callahan over at Corante has an insightful article about Blogging as a form of open source knowledge management. Good stuff here.
• Handhelds – Nokia’s global share of the handheld market has increased form 32% to 35% thanks to strong sales in North America and Asia. Strategy Analytics said total mobile phone sales worldwide could top one billion in 2006 for the first time. Bill Gates sees a world in which Tablet PCs replace textbooks for students. Well, he and I agree on the fact that textbooks will go the way of the DoDo bird, but I’m not sure Tablet PCs will be the winning answer.
• Social Networks – AOL is continuing to make noise about becoming a major player in the social networking space. Scripting News has a rumor that AOL is getting ready to launch a new site aimed directly at MySpace and Facebook. Time will tell. Also, Mashable! gives its take on a couple of new social networking sites. Check out Yuku (a slickly designed MySpace competitor with cool AJAX scripting) and SocialPicks. Finally, according to Om Malik, Skype continues to grow but not at a rate that will help eBay make back its $2+ billion investment anytime soon.
• Technology Talks — Well, it looks like Microsoft is going after the consumer storage space as well with a new product called Live Drive. The goal is to connect everything Microsoft as well as all out our personal items. Google and Microsoft are as hard to differentiate as the men and the pigs these days.