Links for 03-03-2009

• 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits - Some interesting thoughts about taking unusual portraits.
• The Netbook Models You Love (And Don’t) | Smarterware - Cost really seems the big thing here. If you're willing to pay for an ultraportable that costs 2-3x, I don't find the relative form factor, weight, and performance of netbooks especially attractive tradeoffs.
• Gadgets Greet Business Travelers - Business Travel Column - Joe Brancatelli - Seat 2B - Portfolio.com - ""If you had the answers, you'd be the next Bill Gates," one long-time computer executive told me last week. "We're all struggling with devices, concepts, pricing, computing platforms. There are lots of cross-currents and no consensus."" Today's mobile world is hard to figure out--and I don't expect it will gel into something simple anyway. (I tend to agree with the ultimate comment that we tend towards at least a pocketable device and a lightweight (but non-pocketable one).
• Twitter / Werner Vogels: remember that the key driv ... - Which is a problem for pure cloud-based backup.
• Twitter’s public/private space design, aka “How to find girls on Twitter” | Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen - "Private spaces are better for scaling across different demographics long-term, since it keeps different audiences segmented from each other. The downside is that you need to conquer the critical mass problem over-and-over again Public spaces are better for getting to critical mass once, and generating fun. But the downside is that if you randomly get a bunch of Portuguese-speaking members, then your entire site might become known as “that Brazilian social network.”
• Allen On Travel - "There's no substitute for person-to-person human contact, and most businesses, including mine, will have to figure out what is the right balance between the new tools and capabilities and really being there. However, I don't see myself or any colleagues reaching the 200,000 mile mark via air in a single year ever again."
• Andrew Lark: Kindle This - I suppose it would be very old school of me to wonder whether Amazon simply doesn't care about having a social media strategy for the Kindle.
• What Fonts Are Websafe in 2009? - SitePoint Forums - Discussion of font alternatives for Web design. (It has somewhat of a Vista/Windows 7 flavor because of the new fonts included with these.)
• At work - The Big Picture - Boston.com - An especially good edition of an awesome feature.
• The Coming Cloud Computing Wars | SYS-CON MEDIA - Cloud in the context of what it means from a vendor perspective--a struggle for relevance. Good piece.