The Internet is one of the coolest inventions ever. The online world has brought us closer to each other, keeping us connected.

It is supposed to be the greatest equalizer, envisioned to provide equal access to information and opportunities to everybody. With fast and unfettered flow of data, with everybody supposed to have equal access to information, the Internet is supposed to be neutral and politics-free.

But things have not turned out that way.

Today, politicians of all stripes use and abuse the Internet. Freedom fighters of all religious, political, and moral persuasions use the Web to communicate and teach each other the worst and most effective ways to maim and kill.

And so far, only a handful of people have become billionaires courtesy of the Internet.
 
Coolest Mac

It’s not the iPhone 4, or any of the latest Mac computers. The coolest Apple product right now is the Apple-1. Born in 1976, and probably one of the 200 computers made by Apple co-founder Steve Wosniak, the Apple-1 was sold without a keyboard, monitor, and power supply; and it came with 8 kilobytes of RAM.

Heck, your vanilla-type scientific calculator has got more computing power than this Jurassic Mac. But it would cost you some $242,000 to have.

Christie’s in London will auction off an Apple-1 on November 23. The auction will also feature some papers and manuscripts by Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, and other IT pioneers.

The Apple-1 computer, which lacked a floppy drive and used cassette tapes to load programs onto its memory, was sold for $741.66. Two months ago, another Apple-1 was sold on Ebay for $22,766.66.
 
JooJoo Busted

Fusion Garage said it will discontinue manufacturing the JooJoo, one of the most controversial tablet computers ever in history.

TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington sued the company in 2009 after the collapse of planned efforts to manufacture the CrunchPad, a low-cost tablet computer for surfing the Internet. Meanwhile, Singapore-based Fusion Garage plans to release Android-based devices in 2011.
 
Social eMail

Facebook, the world’s most popular networking site for the past few years, is reportedly planning to launch its own Web-based email service. And several technology bloggers are asserting that a Facebook email service would make give Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google executives some sleepless nights.

But more significantly, such a move by your favorite networking site could only worsen its tiff with online search giant Google. The Internet giants have already drawn blood over personnel hiring (or piracy, the more apt term?) and data-sharing, er, misunderstandings.
Let’s clear some space, shall we? When two gorillas are about to go mano a mano, it makes the most sense to get out of the way.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.