Beliefnet is back online. Last time I looked, it wasn’t there. Good. It’s the type of experiment I personally want to succeed: a shared space for talk about religion that tries to be respectful of differences. Getting that balance right is difficult — or, put technically, impossible — but there’s room in the world for lots of attempts.

I found out about the rebirth of Beliefnet because Steve Waldman, the editor in chief, has a diary (Remember diaries? They’re like blogs but more tied to daily events) in Slate, recording his group’s comeback from bankruptcy. Informative and charming.

I was on a panel with Steve a couple of years ago and liked him immediately. My respect for him has only grown.

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Greg “LinuxMan” Cavanagh points out this tidbit from the December issue of Linux Journal:

…the PC speaker in post-2.5.31 kernels may now be used as a microphone. This is new and weird. As Jos Hulzink put it on the linux-kernel mailing list, “2.5.32 will go into the history books as the kernel that implemented voice recognition for all AT class computers ..”

Greg comments: “Umm, you mean every machine broken into is now a listening device. Wow.”

If he’s right, this is spooky. Fortunately, our Republican government is fiercely committed to civil liberties so there’s no chance this could be abused.

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Dan Bricklin writes up his thoughts about his new Toshiba tablet PC. He’s excited about it, on the whole. Amy Wohl, on the other hand, thinks that the genre won’t take off until they machines are much cheaper and lighter.

Steve MacLaughlin at Saltire sums up his reaction in one word: “Fantastic.” Details follow. He sees a big future for it in hundreds of niche applications: hospitals, sales people, etc.

I personally am not feeling the familiar surges of technolust when contemplating this device in the privacy of my office. If it had a screen with twice the resolution, I’d feel differently.

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Want to see the message box of the future? It’s here today at Rageboy’s blog.

SPOILER: RB bought an online copy of his own article in Harvard Business Review only to find that his computer has been blocked from copying from it.

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