Benchmarks are good, when they report something meaningful, but benchmarks are often optimistic numbers having little to do with actual use. For instance, laptop battery life is calculated as if you don’t do anything.

First it was flaming laptops. Then scorching iPhones. Now there are reports of iPods overheating, even burning people. No recall has been started and problem devices have not been specified.

The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC), February 22-24, 2010, in New York City will explore trends in digital publishing. Proposals will be accepted through September 1, 2009. Early registration will open in November.

Another new e-reader, this one from Plastic Logic, will use AT&T’s wireless service and Barnes & Noble’s e-book store. The new reader will have a very large display suitable for business documents.

An “update” to Blackberrys in the United Arab Emirates was not authorized, developed, or tested by RIM. The application was developed by American firm SS8 but why UAE telecoms firm Etisalat wanted to install it is unclear.

Wikipedia hosts information on thousands of subjects, not all of it contributed by experts in those subjects. Recently some experienced volunteers taught a “Wikipedia Academy” course to scientists at the National Institutes of Health.

Atlantica Online is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game that Heather Wardell says has “utterly hooked” her. To find out why, you’ll need to read her review.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Intel’s new X25-M SSDs, for laptop and desktop PCs, doubles the write performance of current devices while halving the price. A change in the manufacturing process is credited.

Many companies have experienced problems with sensitive data when computer hardware is lost or stolen. Now researchers at the University of Washington have come up with a way to make electronic messages disappear.

MEDL Mobile announced the first completed apps generated from The App Incubator – an iPhone application and web-based service that allows non-programmers to create applications for sale.