My favorite World of Wonder in Civilization was the Colossus. Whoever built the Colossus first enjoyed the ability to move an extra space per turn and could sail across Ocean tiles with Tremes. It seems that Greek ships will have this benefit once again:

Twenty-three centuries after craftsmen carved the legendary statue that has inspired legions of painters, poets, playwrights and politicians, a new world wonder, built in the spirit of the original Colossus, is about to be born on the Aegean island.

After decades of dashed hopes, the people of Rhodes will fulfil a long-held dream to revive one of the world’s seven ancient wonders

Hurray!

Some people are pessimistic about the potential for wireless internet. The only reason cell phone data is “unlimited” is because no one actually uses it. When they do, they are charged until they don’t:

China Mobile recently changed the way users are charged for sending and receiving data on their phones by no longer allowing unlimited access to the mobile Web and data downloads. While promoting content on its own wireless Web portal, called Monternet, China Mobile has been sending users a message as they try to connect to sites outside the portal, telling them they will be charged for data use outside Monternet. The result is dramatically lower traffic for those sites.

Until multiple information currents can travel inside the same slice of spectrum, separated by distance, there are fundamental limits to wireless bandwidth.

Files, files, files… people seem obsessed with the desktop metaphor. Might as well make it complete:

In all honesty, I think the biggest achievement for computing over the next 50 years will be finally retiring the start menu. I’m not getting my hopes up though…

Apple has had some great advertisements recently. I love Vista — it is a major step forward compared with Windows XP — but that doesn’t mean I cannot recognize flaws; LUA (Limited User Access) is one of them. Both Mac OS and Vista have a variety of scenarios where you must give applications authorization before they can perform tasks that may compromise your computer’s security. However, Vista — due to the flawed architecture of Windows (especially the registry) — requires this authorization almost every time you want to do anything remotely interesting. Apple (rightly) pokes fun:

They also have a great time talking about the advantages of the built-in iSight inside every iMac and Apple laptop, one of my favorite features of the Apple platform:

Microsoft also has a long way to go with their movie authoring application:

Apparently Nintendo fans have their version of the ads:

Internet Explorer 7 was released recently. You should go and download the new version, even if you use Firefox. It is a vast improvement over IE6 (hello? tabs?); Microsoft finally released software capable of rendering this site correctly.

Ugh. Cut it out!

Ars has a terrible habit of trotting out the tired line, “no matter what happens, the real winner is you”. Here is the latest offense:

I really don’t know who to root for, but I am comforted by the fact that no matter who loses, the viewer wins

Enough already. Please!

Ars Technica has a piece talking about whether adding ever increasing amounts of realism into games is a good thing. Warfare enthusiasts want developers to add clacking sounds when bullets pass nearby the user, invoking the sonic booms people will hear in real gun battles such as the following one from Abu Ghraid in 2005: