Analyst Opinion - A couple of months back, I raised a bit of a ruckus with my column – Kindle shmindle – that suggested the high up-front cost of Amazon’s book reader would be its ultimate downfall. As Amazon prepares to launch an even bigger-screened version, supposedly to cater to the newspaper market, my original thesis still stands. Consumers don’t need yet another expensive, limited-function device to buy, maintain and keep charged.

A former Intel CEO has criticized the US patent system for "limiting" the reach of invention. Andrew Grove, who led Intel from 1987 to 1998, made the scathing remarks after receiving a lifetime achievement award at the 37th annual National Inventors Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

A senior European Union official has demanded that the Obama administration relinquish its control over the Internet. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which operates under the auspices of the US Commerce Department, is currently tasked with regulating critical aspects of the Internet - including the assignment of domain names.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has agreed to settle a controversial federal piracy lawsuit with the Santangelo family for $7000. The Santangelos already remitted half of the amount on April 20 and are expected to make six additional payments by October.

Often, single men find themselves at the local laundry emporium, a fistfull of quarters in hand, and very often, they find themselves hoping that the experience will be more fulfilling than merely removing skid marks and ketchup stains. They dream of finding single, lonely lingerie models in the same predicament. However, that is never the case so, thank the stars above that someone came up with HE detergent. High efficiency detergent to those unclear on the concept. It promises to change the laundry experience and your life. I kid you not.

A recently conducted Harris Interactive poll indicates that most Americans believe technology can help solve complex social issues, including the country's failing education system and a stalled auto industry.

Researchers from Lehigh University, IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center and at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia said they have found a way to cool notebook chips much more efficiently than it is the case today.

According to a recent study conducted by a neuroscience group at the University of Southern California, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook harm and cripple the moral values of their users. Why? The study claims that those sites do not provide the necessary room to feel compassion or admiration.

A study from Ohio State University, based on a study of 219 students, suggests that the more you use Facebook, the less you study, and the worse your grades get. However, the report’s author does say the report only shows a possible connection between Facebook use and lower performance in your studies. Sure, we all know the truth: Facebook makes you dumb, among other things.

Analysis – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 has been available for 18 days and remains the company’s weakest web browser at launch since version 3. While the software now seems to be close to 4% market share, it appears to be unable to stop the bleeding of other IE versions. Since the beginning of the year, Mozilla’s Firefox has picked up more than half of the users IE lost; the other half went to Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome. This trend is evident in new market share numbers published by Net Applications and StatCounter, which show that Firefox hit a new record market share in March.

Which car would out you as a geek these days? The Tesla Roadster? The Lexus LS? Perhaps, but if you value gadgets on four wheels (and have the necessary cash on hand), you should be driving BMW’s 2010 7-series, according to iSuppli. No other car is technologically more advanced than the new BMW flagship sedan.

Yesterday, Intel Research Berkeley held its 2009 open house with some truly amazing people on hand to demonstrate their latest ideas and wares. Some of the presentations would amaze most anybody, but one in particular caught TG Daily's eye. Have you ever read something on the web and knew for a fact that it was false? Or maybe there was something you had personal knowledge of and would like to expand upon the original author's thoughts by adding your own knowledge to the article -- even when comments aren't available? Confrontational Computing affords web surfers the ability to do just -- it's like Wikipedia for the whole web.

Netcraft and Symantec’s Message Labs released several new interesting numbers about the Internet today. Apparently, the internet is still growing at a record pace, spam is on the rise again and more than 2700 websites hosting malware are going online every day.

On Saturday, in over 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in individual's respective time zones, the lights were turned out in observance of Earth Hour. The message: conserve energy and become more environmentally aware. The event, environmentalists say, was a great success.

One hour without any electricity. Do you think Earth is ready for it? Well that's the question that will be asked and answered as this year's Earth Hour is expected to draw global participation. Individuals and companies are urged to turn off their lights, PCs and cell phones for one hour on Saturday with major technology companies participating.

A Twitter user named kevinrose was able to post some apparently leaked photos of the all-electric Tesla Model S coupe. The white sports car is not quite finished yet, as is evidenced by slide #2 in our slideshow; however, the car is not without powerful merits. EXTRA: SLIDESHOWChicago (IL) - A Twitter user named kevinrose was able to post some apparently leaked photos of the all-electric Tesla Model S coupe. The white sports car is not quite finished yet, as is evidenced by slide #2 in our slideshow; however, the car is not without powerful merits.

Facebook recently underwent a major website and user interface redesign (its second within a year) and changed the layout and feature access significantly. The changes were dramatic enough to cause users to rise up with fury and frustration and a strong desire to bring the "Old Facebook" back. Finally achieving a victory of sorts, Facebook has announced that some of was changed will be reverted.

3D on the Internet is about as old as 3D graphics acceleration itself. But all those ideas often disappeared quickly after their release, because they always required a special browser plug-in. Now there is a new idea to enable 3D web graphics that do not need a plug-in, but are enabled via JavaScript acceleration. Conceivably, this could hand Firefox and Chrome yet another advantage, while Microsoft will feel even more pressure to work on JavaScript acceleration for its Internet Explorer.

Google is working hard to deliver the highest level of quality where their search results are concerned. The company is now employing a semantic search technology, altering the existing algorithm in an attempt to make Google's suggestions more relevant.