For those outside the range of Internet spatter from in-fighting, you might still be interested to hear about today’s big fight: Google vs. Microsoft To regular readers of Internet news, it’s a lot like a scene from a classic Japanese picture-film where stop motion animation has one giant, city-crushing beast is bashing another over the head with a train station. It’s fun, it’s entertainment, survival matters dearly to the beasts, but really, the rest of us are just watching; there’s nothing we can do but oooh and ahhh and cheer on our favorite beast or the underdog.

Those of us at Dinarius have long seen tablet shaped, touchscreen personal computers as the next step in what most users would prefer. Our darling was the Gateway M280. Despite the sense that tablets make, few folks bought in to it. The industry swallowed R&D on tablets and UMPC’s (another brilliant next step that went largely unadopted) and instead found a public ga-ga for smart phones.

See Gizmodo’s YouTube sneak of Microsoft’s kick-ass Courier and see HP’s already realized tablet that left the gate long before Apple.

The other day, I was actually having a bit of a crisis when discussing with a friend just where the city-center for modern philosophers was. New York – art. DC – museums. New Orleans, LA, Nashville and Austin – music. Las Vegas – sin. The best I can remember is that historically, ancient Athens has been the only ever city-center for philosophy which would perfectly explain the likes of Kurt Cobain, some of my friends and, indeed, about 3% of the artists and bloggers and authors online. They’re homeless in a way. Could YouTube be our modern city-center?

I recently had a chance to play on some surface computers and developed some strong opinions that no one asked for. Just today, I read news that Microsoft is tipping their toes quietly in the market research area asking consumers what they think they might like about a Surface Computer they’re calling “Oahu,” or ‘the gathering place.’