Unlike TVs, phones, computers and the format we use to listen to music, books have been largely resistant to any technological advances. Books are still…books. Made out of paper and all the pages are bound together with glue.

Books have been resistant to change, that is, until now. Now there are all sorts of E-book readers flooding the market. (For the luddites, an E-book reader is a device that can store hundreds of books electronically. Like an iPod. For books.) The iPad has iBooks (surprise, surprise), where thousands of titles can be downloaded on the iPad and read at the owners comfort*. Amazon has also got their own E-book reader, Kindle. It, like the iPad, stores thousands of books. And it isn’t even twenty centimetres in length.

This all sounds like good stuff. Of course it is more practical to own an E-book reader than to lug around a handful of books. But do I need another screen to look at? I own a CrackBlackberry, which constantly provides reasons for me to look at it: text messages, emails, Blackberry Messenger messages (of which sixty-five per cent are nonsense) Facebook (more nonsense), Twitter updates and a growing number of apps. I’m currently staring at an oversized monitor, typing this out. Every so often my eyes flick over to the TV. After a night out I tend to flick through the pictures I’ve taken on my digital camera. Even in the mornings I stare at the screen that tells me when the next Underground train is arriving (this is mainly because on the London Underground a minute can last anywhere between thirty seconds to three or four minutes).

Owning an E-book reader would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I cannot bear having something else with a shiny screen to look at. @Dan_Gould (via @TarikF) summed it up perfectly (if you replace the word ‘computer’ with the word ‘screen’):

The traditional book is simple, yet effective. Sticking it behind a screen will not make me want to read any more than I do now. An E-book reader is just another example of how heavily reliant on technology the world is becoming.

*In my opinion, reading from screens is about as comfortable as having a pen jabbed into your arm. But that’s just my opinion.

If you solely relied on the media to paint a portrait of the British youth, you probably wouldn’t leave your house. And I wouldn’t blame you.

Whether we are reportedly stabbing each other to death, robbing old grannies, drawing on private property, or just simply being an unemployed nuisance, the newspapers are overflowing with negative stories about the youth. This, in turn, has led to older people fearing the younger generation.

Voicebox, by Vinspired, wants to change all of that. Voicebox aims to show what the ‘kids of today’ are actually like, based on questionnaires filled out by the kids themselves. But in order to create a detailed picture of young people today, they need as many people to take part as possible. So you, sitting there reading this, you need to take part. Even if you are just young at heart.

Another positive about this project is that it encourages people to use their data, instead of just locking it away in a filing cabinet, only for people in suits to see. Good stuff.

Voicebox. Get involved.

This I’m sure has been blogged to death, but I couldn’t really find anything wrong with Microsoft’s ‘witty’ response to the Mac adverts. Until now.

I’ve realise what is wrong with these adverts: they try too hard. Way too hard. These adverts are like the odd one out in the ‘cool’ group at school, the ones who were only allowed to hang with the cool kids because they were the slave, or were the pun of all the jokes. These adverts desperately seek attention, rather like Stephanie Pratt from The Hills, or a forty-seven year old woman in a mini-skirt. They try so hard to be noticed, they just end up looking ridiculous and terribly, terribly uncool.

The worst part of the television advert is the Asian man in the glasses towards the end. He says: “I’m a PC and a human being. Not a human doing, not a human thinking, a human being.”

This line pretty much sums up and proves every negative point that every blog is saying. I bet the people at Mac are rubbing their hands with glee, waiting in amusement as Microsoft seek new ways to destroy themselves.

P.S: Pharrell Williams and Eva Longoria, I don’t care how much you got paid; I just lost some respect for you.

(Image taken from here. Please don’t sue me.)