Word: laptopping
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...Clarissa.” There are several places in the novel where the characters are in the same place at the same time and both narrate the scene; when we wrote those we did that together at one another’s house. We’d share a laptop and pass it back and forth. 5. FM: It seems like you’re trying to reinvent the genre of historical writing to make it more relevant and imaginative, as opposed to dry and traditional. How much of your genre do you think the market can bear...
First hurdle first: Online video has gotten much better since the days of watching a jerky postage stamp over the din of your hard drive whirring like an espresso grinder. While my plasma monolith sat mute, I watched 30 Rock in high-quality video on my laptop through Hulu.com My iPhone doubled as a wireless video device. (My kids were already using it to sample YouTube's vast library of homemade Lego Star Wars animations.) By downloading free apps like Joost and Truveo, I could use its brilliantly lit display--a munchkin plasma screen--to watch last night's Daily...
Here's the important physical fact that separates online from off-line TV: you're holding something. Watching old-school TV, you flop on the couch and let the medium wash over you. New school, you hold a screen in your hand, balance a laptop or sit at a desk. There's a small but constant effort, the tiniest bit of physical feedback...
...some ways it's more social. There's no online-video TV Guide to rely on--though some start-ups, like eGuiders.com are trying to create one--so your social connections become your TV guide. And the same interactivity that enhances regular TV-watching is even more immediate with laptop in hand. When I watch Lost, I rush to write a blog post--not so much to get my thoughts out as to see the comments fill and find out what other people thought. When the show is over, it's just begun...
...meantime, some school-district administrators have come up with creative solutions. Superintendent Jerry Vaughn of the Floydada Independent School District in Texas - which has 900 or so students - says he is working toward a partnership with a local wind-power company that would pay for a laptop for every kid in grades 6 through 12. At the fast-growing Forsyth County Schools District in Cumming, Ga., Bailey Mitchell, chief technology and information officer, recently opted to use free open-source software instead of purchasing expensive software licenses from vendors like Microsoft. Mitchell says the decision will save $1.1 million over...