Remember Sony’s Walkman? 25 years ago it was the cat’s meow. I started a commercial audio recording business lugging around a Walkman so customers could hear what I could do. That was then and this is now. The BBC invited 13 year old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Sony Walkman for a week.

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

The iPod is a click or two to any of thousands of songs. The Sony Walkman was revolutionary—one cassette tape at a time.

The need for changing tapes is bothersome in itself. The tapes which I had could only hold around 12 tracks each, a fraction of the capacity of the smallest iPod.

The Walkman was nice and the article brought back memories, but I prefer my iPhone. It’s too bad that eight years after the iPod that Sony still hasn’t figured out how to make a music player for the 21st century work with a cell phone.

From the National Weather Service and AP:

Forty-nine states have snow now, from the Gulf Coast’s Redneck Riviera to the skyscrapers of Dallas. The lone holdout? Hawaii.

That works for me.

Some people recommend that your computer be restarted every day. Derek Kessler in Pre | Central recommends daily restarts for both Windows PCs and Palm Pre smart phone users. Why?

As I’ve often recommended for my friends sporting Windows-running machines, rebooting every day or so is good for the soul. Well, it’s good for the stability of the operating system, and the same can be said for webOS.

Kessler points to Reboot Scheduler, a Palm Pre app which automatically restarts the Pre according to a schedule.

My MacBook and iPhone run 24/7 and are restarted only when the operating system is updated (every few months). No sluggishness. No slowdown. No problem. Whatever disease Windows has, maybe Palm has it, too.

Car sharing. Is this an idea whose time has come, a way to reduce expenses and still get to work on time, or is it the automobiles for socialists? It’s like renting a car for a few hours or a day or with others.

Zipcar… charges $50 a year for a basic membership but makes it easy to make an online reservation for a specific car parked in your neighborhood (Mini Coopers, Mazdas, and Toyota Priuses are popular). You pay an hourly or a daily rate; the price varies depending on the city, car, and day of the week (the daily rate starts at around $60). Insurance and gas are included—up to 180 miles daily—and the car feels as if it belongs to a friend.

It’s Netflix for cars.

My favorite blast from the arcade games of the past lives again in the iPhone’s App Store. Galaga remix is a decent recreation of the original, plus a 21st century version, perfect for wasting time and enjoying it the process. Macworld’s review:

Galaga was the sequel to Galaxian—a next-generation Space Invaders, if you will. The screen swarms with waves of insectoid alien spacecraft you must shoot down with your space fighter. Galaga built upon its predecessor by introducing more colorful aliens that flew about the screen in eye-catching (and dangerous) patterns, along with bonus waves and a “dual-fighter” power-up that let you rescue fighters captured by alien motherships, to double your firepower.

$6 or free in the Lite version.

First, big newspapers, now another print magazine on the rocks. This is the changing of the guard. Analog vs. digital. Atoms vs. bits.

“Advertising is down, circulation is down, there are alternatives like the Internet where people are getting their information”, said Richard Mikels, a partner with law firm Mintz Levin. “It’s a tougher industry than it used to be.”

It will only get worse. Online advertising revenue for media entities is not as prosperous as print and broadcast advertising revenue used to be.

Tonight is Conan O’Brien’s last night on The Tonight Show and he exits with a $45-million parachute. Meanwhile, Jay Leno and David Letterman have renewed their long quiet feud. Letterman:

I’m telling jokes and making fun of Jay Leno over and over and over, relentlessly, mercilessly simply for one reason. I’m really enjoying it.

Leno:

Letterman has been hammering me every night. You know the best way to get Letterman to ignore you? Marry him. He will not bother you. He won’t look you in the eye.

The real losers? NBC. They screwed up late night on NBC back in 1992 when they bypassed Letterman for Leno as host of The Tonight Show. Letterman skipped to CBS but Leno won the subsequent ratings war. This time, NBC loses O’Brien and $45-million.