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Months back, there was an interesting article from Bill Gates, the No. 1 richest person in the world. More interestingly, he figured out the biggest issue in the Internet age:

Staying focused is one issue; that’s the problem of information overload. The other problem is information underload. Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information ……

What we need is intelligence in the Internet age, which, IMHO, contains two faces:

One aspect is presented by a good article from CNet. Technologies make knowledge much easier to access and make collaboration across the world much easier. However, it still depends on human beings to make things happen. The partial answer to it includes social network web applications, which enhance collaboration among people across the whole world. There are plenty of successful stories already: digg.com, youtube.com, del.icio.us, and flickr.

The second aspect is still on the technology side. We need a smart information aggregator, which, based on our daily behaviors, crawls and mines information automatically. It would like our personal secretary, helping us focus on the right information and/or the right communication. I believe that search technology is only the start of the wave, and more will come, which will form the core of Web 2.0.

Finally, Mac has embraced the PC/Windows world. Fans have complained for years. Apple eventually listened, given the fact that it cannot get good CPU service from the PowerPC family, including both Motorola and IBM.

Of course, I am very happy about Apple’s smart move. To reward the change, I bought a Mac mini Intel myself.

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Though, every change has a loss embedded in it. First, all the Mac OSX softwares must be recompiled into universal binary to enjoy the power of Intel CPU. Second, there is still a missing link between PC/Windows and Mac OSX.

Apple’s answer to it is bootcamp beta, after hacker made Windows XP working on Mac Intel machines.

The second solution is provided by parallels, inc. The product is more similar to vmware instead of Microsoft Virtual PC. For example, CISCO VPN client only works within paralles guest OS. Another example is that parallels is faster than virtual PC. Further, in order to make parallels work on Mac mini Intel, one needs to upgrade the firmware to enable Virtualization Technology (VT-x).