Anyone out there with a black Brain Bag willing to trade for a sapphire (blue) Brain Bag? Mine is in like-new condition, was originally sent to me as a review item, and hasn't been used in more than two years (mostly because I've been using other bags for review purposes). I love the Brain Bag, but would like one in basic black, and cannot afford to buy a new one. If you're interested in a trade, please e-mail me, and hopefully you're savvy enough to know what to do with that e-mail address.

No, that's not a typo. Richard "I-have-more-money-than-I-know-what-to-do-with" Branson is going to cater to his peers with the new Virgin Galactic, slated to rocket spaceward in 2007. As Dan says, the future is now. Well, almost now, at any rate.

I have some Gmail invitations to give away. All of my friends and online acquaintances already have accounts. It seems that Gmail4Troops has a surplus of invitations to give out. So, here's your chance to get in the club. These are the criteria, and you can leave them in the comments: 1. You must be a current Newton MessagePad or eMate owner. Not a former owner, not a wanna-be owner. It doesn't matter which model Newton you own. 2. State your Newton's model number, and provide a link to a picture of the device. A picture of your personal Newton, not a generic photo of your particular model. It can even be a crappy mobile phone shot. 3. Let us know if you still use your Newton every day, or is it more of a novelty you tinker with from time to time (like my 2100). Obviously, there is a certain amount of trust involved on my end, and a lot of honesty involved on your end. Don't be a lame faker. The first six (6) respondents get a Gmail account.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. (With a wave of the flipper to Lawson.)

Could this Berkeley project be coming to a future-soldier project near you? (Wouldn't that just tick the lefties at Berkeley off...)

DataDots are reducing auto theft in Australia, but have yet to make it in to the U.S. other than on Nissan headlamps.

The bulk of Paul Graham's essay Great Hackers is about dealing with and cultivating great hackers in the corporate environment. I found this very insightful as well:

I think what a lot of VCs are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for companies that hope to win by writing great software. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.

It's a mistake to use Microsoft as a model, because their whole culture derives from that one lucky break. Microsoft is a bad data point. If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. What VCs should be looking for is the next Apple, or the next Google.

I think Bill Gates knows this. What worries him about Google is not the power of their brand, but the fact that they have better hackers. (With a wave of the flipper to Michael.)

So today at Costco I picked up The Bourne Identity: Explosive Extended Edition, Widescreen, of course. I am seeing a trend in DVD releases lately. Release the movie as soon as feasible on to DVD after its theater tenure. Get the rental money back, then flood the retail market with copies. Nine months to a year later, release another version of the same DVD, only include myriad extras. This was done with the X-Men 1.5 edition, Black Hawk Down, and more recently with Saving Private Ryan. I had been keeping my eye on The Bourne Identity at Target, waiting for it to drop from $19.99 in to their $14.99 or even $9.99 line-ups. The new DVD version was $18.88 at Costco. So the lesson is becoming clear: if you really liked a movie enough to buy it on DVD, wait until the extras-filled DVD is released. Rent it from Netflix in the mean time.

Cryptologists and cypherpunks will note Phil Zimmermann's home page. For the uninitiated, Zimmermann is responsible for the wildly popular PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. You can even purchase PGP on Zimmermann's site, giving him a slice of the pie now owned by PGP, Inc., the company he founded but now only works at as an advisor and consultant.

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that the prices for superior-technology scanners continue to drop? Take, for instance, Canon's new CanoScan 8000F. It would be nice if the "F" stood for "FireWire," but we can't always get what we want. (Via MacMinute.)

Not that I'm in the market for a scooter, but if I were, the Scarabeo 500 would be it. In black and silver, please.

gCount: menu bar application for OS X that tells you when new mail arrives in your Gmail in box. So now you don't have to keep a browser window open all the time to see when you get new Gmail. Of course, if you're like a lot of the Gmailers I know, you're still trying to figure out how much you're going to use Gmail... I do like the menu bar icon, and how it lights up red when you get new mail.
When your three-thousand dollar suit can actually stop bullets...
I love the retro styling of Tivoli radios, and they now have a Sirius satellite radio model. Their web site, however, needs a lot of help.
Ben Hammersley has been busy:

XHTML Validator to RSS
Google to RSS
FedEx package tracking in RSS
Listing Installed Perl Modules in RSS
Links from MacUpdate, Wired, and Daring Fireball.

If I didn't already have my own server space for such usage, Dropload would be quite useful. Don't ruin it for everyone else.

If you have to fly 14 hours, it seems Jimmy Grewal has found a great way to do it. I simultaneously would love to experience such a flight, and would dread doing so.

The big tech news of the week has to be the first step toward space privatization, with the successful launch of SpaceShipOne on Monday. Pilot Mike Melvill took the craft into a suborbital flight 62 miles above the Earth's surface, and returned safely, landing at Mojave Airport, which Dan claims is the first certified and now operational civilian space port. Melvill had the plane in freefall weightlessness for three minutes, releasing, in now-famous video footage, a bag of M&Ms to float around in the cockpit. He landed SpaceShipOne on the same runway it had taken off from, under the launch vehicle White Knight, an hour and a half earlier. The venture is that of renowned designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, and was financed by former Microsoftie Paul Allen for a cool $20+ million. The flight marked the highest altitude ever reached by a non-government aerospace venture, and proves what commercial enterprise can do when left alone. Scaled Composites will now turn its attention to readying SpaceShipOne for another flight, as it pursues the Ansari X Prize, which will award $10 million to the first group to launch a resuable spacecraft with three passengers in to space, return them safely home, then do it again with two weeks. With the same reusable spacecraft. Scaled Composites' endeavor underscores some of what is wrong with NASA and the U.S. government's continued interest in space. The space agency is greatly interested in the SpaceShipOne mission, and is in talks with Rutan and company. There is room for healthy competition and co-opetition in the space race. Our nation has greatly benefited from space missions in the past, and this week's event could foreshadow greater government cooperation with private enterprise as we look beyond our own atmosphere.

Bruce Sterling spoke at Microsoft last week, and someone was nice enough to transcribe it for him, since by his own admission, Mr. Sterling had no idea what he said.

I'm not sure if it is really cool, or too geeky and too pricey.