• Can Palm find its mojo again? As someone who's still rocking a Palm T|X--along with a BlackBerry and a 3G iPhone--I'm pulling for them. Thankfully, this Business Week story centered around ex-Apple guru Jon Rubenstein gives me hope. Peter Burrows writes: "On Jan. 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Palm is due to unveil the long-awaited operating system, code-named Nova, as well as the first of a family of products that will run on it. While Palm has protected its plans with Apple-like secrecy, Rubinstein and others say the goal is to create products that bridge the gap between Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry devices, oriented to work and e-mail, and Apple's iPhone, oriented to fun. 'People's work and personal lives are melding,' [Palm CEO Ed] Colligan says, adding that Palm is aiming for the 'fat middle of the market.'"
• Microsoft's Live Labs group has released its "deep zoom" mobile photo application called Seadragon first for the iPhone. Why? Says Alex Daley, the division's group product manager, to TechFlash's Todd Bishop: "The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit)....Most phones out today don't have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support." The article says that we can expect to see other iPhone apps from Microsoft next year.
• Just as video killed the radio star, Steve Jobs snuffed out the album. That's the word from Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, sort of. When interviewer Greg Kot asked Corgan if "Zeitgeist" was his last album, Corgan replied: "We're done with that. There is no point. People don't even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance and do the arty track to set up the single? It's done." This Smashing Pumpkins fan hopes that Corgan will reconsider.
• Looking to bring in some extra coin during "The Great Depression II: Electric Boogaloo"--and satisfy passengers who start jonesing without their broadband connections--Delta is rolling in-flight Wi-Fi service on a number of its flight. Here's how the Washington Post's Alejandro Lazo describes it: "The service will allow customers traveling with WiFi-enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones and personal digital assistants access to the Internet, as well as SMS texting and instant messaging services. Voice calls still will not be allowed. The service will be offered for free on local shuttle flights through the end of the year. Next year, it will be $9.95 on flights of three hours or less and $12.95 on longer flights." Once I get my hands on a gaming laptop and a copy of Left 4 Dead, I'll be able to train for the coming zombie apocalypse just about anywhere.
  

Welcome to the debut of our newest consumer tech blog, "American Geek." My name is N'Gai Croal, and I'm a senior writer for technology here at Newsweek who also pens the monthly "American Geek" column in our print edition. When my editors asked me to describe my proposed blog, here's what I told them:

The American Geek blog sits at the intersection of technology, culture and lifestyle. It will be accessible and knowing at once, clear without being condescending or appearing to dumb things down. The tone will sometimes be wry, sometimes playful, excited by the potential of technology but appropriately skeptical of individual product, with a bias towards products, services and culture that are a genuine fit with our lifestyles. Expect it to be somewhat tilted to the guy end of the tech and culture spectrum--notable Blu-Ray releases; geek-leaning films like "Watchmen" and "Star Trek," etc.--but not offensively so.

Looking this description over, I still don't think it captures everything that I'd like "American Geek" to be. My premise is that we are all geeks now, as we TiVo our television shows; listen to our personalized Pandora radio stations; and Twitter the day away by sharing snippets of our lives with a few hundred of our closest friends. That's the terrain that I and my colleagues who'll be joining me on this blog would like to map, bit by bit, day by day. So check back regularly for our updates, and be sure to let us know what you think in the comments.