The MacBook Air will get a lot of ink for being so thin and so light, but the revolutionary thing about it is that it's the first notebook from a big manufacturer that's got just two moving parts: the keyboard and the hinge. Instead of a hard drive, the top-line MBA has 64GB of solid-state memory. It can't crash, it can't get jarred in a crash, it can't wear out and die (well, it can, but it's way more rugged than a spinning disk).

No one will use the thing as a desktop replacement, but if you've got the $3000 for a travel machine (hey -- memory's not that cheap), this one looks like a real sweetie. It ships in about two to three weeks, and expect a lot of people to line up and try the thing at the Apple Store.

I was blown up last Tuesday. Luckily I can write about it. Many others who've shared the experience can't. They're dead, or their bodies and brains are so messed up by shrapnel or concussion they can't remember the details.

It takes a special kind of person to be a war correspondent. I know three: Jon Landay of McClatchy, Marie Colvin of The Times of London, and Robert W. Worth of the NYTimes. I'm glad I know them -- and proud to have worked with the first two early in my career -- but I'm even gladder I'm not one of them.

But if you're going to cover the war in Iraq, and Lord knows we need good coverage, this is a hell of a way to do it.

What makes it almost credible is the a) degree of detail and b) the modesty and probability of the products presented. No flying cars; just stuff like a thinner aluminum Macbook and a preview of the iPhone SDK.

Is it genuine? We won't know until noon ET tomorrow (Tuesday). In the meantime, what fun to speculate!

Update: Computerworld debunks this and other show rumors. Maybe....

From the NYTimes:

Forgive the piggish Latin. The geekier among you know that although Thomas Edison gets all the credit for the light bulb and municipal power and all that -- Consolidated Edison, anyone? -- he actually came out the loser on a big standards war: AC vs DC. Edison was a big proponent of direct current. It was Nicola Tesla (and his backer George Westinghouse) who invented alternating current, which allowed electricity to be delivered over distances unimaginable by DC fans.

But by the time AC's superiority was demonstrated -- in spite of some nasty competitive shenanigans by Edison -- there was a fair amount of DC infrastructure in place. For about 100 years in New York. a small but stubborn set of clients demanded and got DC from Con Ed. (It was true in Boston, too; less than 15 years ago, I worked in a large-ish downtown building whose elevators ran on DC.)

Finally, ConEd pulled the plug on DC, closing the last direct current generator in the city. If a building wants DC, they'll have to put a rectifier on site. From the NYTimes:

The direct current conversion in Lower Manhattan started in 1928, and an engineer then predicted that it would take 45 years, according to Mr. Cunningham. “An optimistic prediction since we still have it now,” he said.

The man who is cutting the link today at 10 East 40th Street is Fred Simms, a 52-year veteran of the company. Why him?

“He’s our closest link to Thomas Edison,” joked Bob McGee, a Con Ed spokesman.

But look at the photo. All the place needs now is one of those little crocodiles that adorned the Izod shirts, and the look will be perfect. (I'd even forgo the pink or green color. So not Jersey.)

And yes, I know that the croc was because of the long-standing and now-ended licensing deal with Henri Lacoste, the tennis player. Gimme a break.

FORT WORTH, TX (AP) -- A 47-year-old insurance company worker accidentally fired his gun in his office cubicle, shooting himself in both legs, police said.

The man, who hasn't been identified, had put his .45-caliber gun into his jacket pocket and then draped the jacket over the back of his chair Tuesday morning, said Brett McGuire, Lake Worth police chief. The gun discharged as the man settled into his chair.

I'll keep you posted -- if I can

Alan's a legit internet pioneer and visionary. He parlayed a print newsletter about library IT systems into the Internet World magazine and tradeshows -- one of the most successful expos of any kind in the world. He sold them at the peak, keeping the internet.com domain, then got into the stock photo and imagery business, where he's now one of the world's most successful purveyors of art. Alan's been quite forthright and pleased about the crazy-high profit margins in the stock art business, but his recent business activity shows a continuing affection for tech and the trade show business.

Then he went and shelled out $23 million for mediabistro -- big money for a site that pulls 50,000 unique visitors a month. The online consensus is that he's lost his mind.

I worked for Alan and I've competed with Alan. I like the guy. But Alan has never spent a nickel more on anything than he absolutely had to. I don't know what he saw in mediabistro that was worth that kind of money. I'm sure he likes the busy job board and the likelihood that a trade show or industry association could coalesce around the site. I'm certain he likes the seminar business. I doubt that he cares about the buzz that mediabistro's blogs work so hard to generate, with the probably exception of TVNewser, which is a must-read in that business and probably drives tons of traffic.

Alan's careful but not shy about posting on his blog (by the way, one of the first CEO blogs), and he's been silent about the purchase as of this writing. I'd like to know what he's thinking....

I couldn't get particularly close because of a signicant NYPD presence (including an anti-terrorism van complete with a comlink disk), but the ship was flying a Union Jack at the front, sported an impressive array of communications gear at the top, and looked for all the world -- from street level, anyway -- to have a flight deck. Didn't catch any ship name or number, though...

Normally, Pier 7 only has the Casino St. Charles paddlewheeler docked there, so a warship was kind of odd. The usual news sources are silent about this. Anybody know anything else about it?

It tough to judge a restaurant's operation in its first week. When I checked it out earlier today, there about five times as many workers as were strictly necessary to serve customers. Because of all the training -- and some of the trainees looked like they'd never seen a kitchen before -- food was a little slow coming out. (At least, it had better have been slower than usual; tomorrow's July 4 and there'll be about a quarter million people walking past the place's front door.) But when the food arrived, it proved to be well worth the wait.

First, the fries. Freshly cut, skinny, skin-on, fried in peanut oil. There was about 1000 pound of fresh potatoes, packed in 50 pound bags, stacked in the dining room. The burger patties are thin, about four inches in diameter; the standard burger is a double stack. Also fresh; they claim to not use frozen meat, and it tastes it. There's no "secret sauce," the way there is at In-n-Out, but there's a full range of condiments as well as A-1 and hot sauce. No condiment bar; they prepare the burgers to spec.

There will probably be some traffic flow problems at this particular store. You order at the front (two registers) and pick up at the back, where the place narrows. That's where the drinks fountain is, too, so there will almost certainly be a lot of pushing as people wait for their food and then fill their soda cups, then have to push their way back to the front of the place. There are 16 seats at tables and about the same number at counters along the front window and east wall.

Five Guys is up nine steps from the street. It's worth the climb. The place is across the street from Grand Canyon, a neighborhood hamburger-based diner that's been there since 1983. I love Grand Canyon and all things being equal, I'd rather support neighborhood businesses. But Five Guys is awfully good stuff, and my days at Grand Canyon may be numbered.

If you're not in Brooklyn or Queens, take heart: the web site says they're coming to Levittown on Long Island soon, and are already in the Albany area in Niskayuna and Glenmont, with Rensselaer coming.

Rumors had been flying for about a week, but the companies announced today that Google bought GrandCentral. Congrats to Craig and Vincent; it's nice to see good work pay off.

But why did Google want GrandCentral, anyway?

Google's stated goal is to organize the world's information. Its ability to do that with textual information worries me not at all, and its ability to do that with mapping and video doesn't really bother me, either. I'm a little bugged that I've given Google permission to follow me around the Web, but I can rationalize that by telling myself that it will help Google help me search.

But GrandCentral, used to its fullest, can associate me with phone numbers I call, phone numbers (and -- when they're in the GC phone book -- people and addresses) who call me. GrandCentral stores voicemails; doesn't Google do voice-to-text transcription, too? And when I pick up an incoming GrandCentral call, Google can then tell where I am at that very moment.

Total Information Awareness, indeed.

Consider that when a company or governmental entity (or, for that matter, a matrimonial lawyer) wants dirt on someone, the first thing they try to do is pull phone records. Phone records are incredibly revealing.

GrandCentral is a great service that can revolutionize the way you use your phone. But Google's owning it just kind of creeps me out. Maybe some things are better left unorganized.

1. I want one. Ain't it just the coolest, slickest thing? On the one hand, I want it on my hip tomorrow. On the other hand, I could use the six months until it ships to save my pennies.

2. The visual voicemail is a killer. The ability to see a list of callers before listening to voicemail is a convenience that you have to use to believe. I get some voicemail through a computer or Web interface and it makes all the difference in the world.

3. Stay focussed on what the iPhone is: a combination iPod nano and cell phone. Other phones can play music; none has 8GB of storage or a decent interface. Other MP3 players (iPods included, by the way) have calendars and contact managers. But none allow data input. At $599 for a locked phone, it's way expensive, it's true. But an 8GB nano runs $250, and a Treo 750 from Cingular runs $400 (a 680 is $200). The iPhone suddenly doesn't look all that expensive any more.

4. The iPhone has Bluetooth 2.0, so expect wireless headphones. But the thing that everyone seems to be missing is that it also has WiFi. You can't use it to swap songs, so why WiFi? Count on wireless VoIP, or at least the ability to tap into WiFi hotspots to do some of the data work like Google Maps and weather reports.

5. Expect the iPhone interface to pop up on a bunch of Apple products. It's a slam dunk that there'll be a disk-based iPod with the same technology before the year is out -- maybe even with the cell phone capabilities. (This will be a big relief to me personally. 8GB is an order of magnitude too small for what I like to carry around.) I bet the gestural elements of the interface shows up in Apple TV and Front Row.

I worry about ruggedness of the iPhone; the first nanos got beat up pretty easily, and the display of the iPhone (unlike the nano) is kind of critical to its operation.

But oh my God, what a great gadget it looks like. The introduction couldn't have fulfilled expectations any better. Here's hoping the real thing measures up. Can't hardly wait.

The bag has audio and video equipment, honey, an oyster shell, and rub. Somehow, a screener mistook all this for something far more sinister.

As a freelance writer, I especially like this graf:

Coleman had come to Tallahassee to visit his parents, who live here, and do a story on the food of nearby Apalachicola, Florida's oyster capital.