New Devices Augur Decent Mobile User Experience (Alertbox Sept. 2000) Nielsen discusses the usability (or more accurately, the lack of it) of current mobile internet devices. He also reviews a few new entries which may indicate where it’s headed.

NewsMaps.com – Explore Landscapes of Information Pretty cool concept. “Thousands of news articles, press releases and discussions, all mapped by topic onto a visual landscape.”

Doc Searls writes about AOL, Instant Messaging, and the open-source movement to “free” it from anyone’s ownership.

CNET.com: Will P2P companies thrive or die? Some insight into the possibilities and market pitfals of the latest “computing paradigm of the future” – peer-to-peer computing.

Amazon backs away from test prices Apparently, the sticky business about Amazon’s goofy pricing “policies” won’t happen again. It was only a “test.” mmm hmmm.

Since we’re all talking about OS X it seems, here’s Tog’s take. AskTog: OS X, a First Look. He’s smart.

Weird, the guy who started fuckedcompany.com (Philip Kaplan) put the site on eBay this morning. He says, “I was bored this morning so I put FC on eBay. Bidding starts at $1.” CNET has the story.

A (suprising) article on flazoom.com titled A Cancer on the Web called Flash has some good advice, The best way to combat the stereo-types that are developing is to be smarter about how we use Flash. Think about the problem that you are trying to solve before you open Flash and start working. Is Flash the only solution for that problem? Is Flash the most effective solution? Can you solve the problem with HTML?

The Great Flash Debate continues to spark interesting conversations. I’m sort of walking the fence on this one. I love the idea of Flash, but so far hate 95% of the implementations. It’s still unusable in most cases and doesn’t behave as it should. Most Flash use is still in the “look what I can do” category. I’ve got no use for that. Most other normal people don’t either. The above article says:

The personal computer is going away. It’s being replaced by a whole bunch (that’s any number more than 5 or 6, in case you were wondering) of other types of devices. Phones, PDAs, Clothing and hell, even furniture. Don Norman uses the analogy of an electric motor. Way back before computers, electric motors were invented. They were so cool, that really bright engineers attached them to everything (the motors, not the engineers.

CURRY.COM – Formats – What Napster Really Needs Adam Curry (yep, the one from MTV so many years ago) writes about Napster, broadcast formats, playlists etc. In some ways, he’s describing what launch.com is trying to do.

Apparently, Amazon changes it’s prices based on how many times you look at an item, or how much you’ve bought before. Either way, it sucks. Here’s a thread discussing the issue