Daily Update: Time Wasters, the iPad Refuses to Save Publishing, More

Good morning.

Short Takes is up. I guess Short Takes is the spiritual predecessor of this blog.

ZDNet wastes your time today...

Where will those Windows 7 tablets go? Think verticals. Or think the trash, which is more likely.

1 second Linux boot! The good news: 1 second boot. The bad: It's Linux.

I, for one, welcome our Linux Penguin, Jeopardy Overlords. This may be the closest we're going to get to a "2011 is the year of desktop Linux" story this year, since those who believed in such a thing for the past decade have finally given up it. But they keep plugging away, of course, and now the message is don't worry, Linux runs just the truly impressive stuff." Sure it does. I, for one, would just welcome some common sense, instead of dreaming of penguins. Or overlords.

OK, enough of that. I'm sure it's hard coming up with stuff to write about every day. Speaking of which, remember how the iPad was going to "save" publishing? And then remember how that never happened and electronic magazine sales on iPad fell off a cliff by the end of 2010? And then remember how Apple teamed up with News Corp. to launch a new electronic newspaper, The Daily, that was going to go live next week? Yeah, that's not happening either. Apple and News Corp. delayed the release of The Daily in order to "work out some kinks in the subscription platform," according to The Wall Street Journal, which is, of course, owned by News Corp. and sells its own electronic subscription online. Maybe the iPad will save publishing next quarter.

The Mac Observer reports on What’s In Store For Attendees at Macworld 2011. Yes, it's a cricket chirping.

Microsoft has released a new version of its Web Matrix web development tool. Because when the world thinks "open source web development," Microsoft is usually right at the top of the list. To be fair, there's a bunch of proprietary software in there too, so relax.

Shh... The release candidate version of IE 9 could be released on January 28, 2011, according to various sources online.

B.K. Winstead asks, Is the iPhone Really All That? Yeah, it really is.