ReadWriteWeb

Ah, yup. Between the price point, the locked-down App Store approach, the spiffy design, the tech specs, the lack of camera, the lack of multitasking, the lack of phone, the cool iBook Store, the corny iBook shelves, the impending transformation of personal computing, the impending collapse of Apple stock, the green light for 3G voice-over-IP apps, the telco deals, the publisher deals, the rumor fact checks, the comparisons with Windows, the Kindle-killing, the not-Kindle-killing and the just-have-to-wait-and-see, all of the good points are taken.

Okay, except maybe pointing out how disappointed cartoonists are that there's no pressure-sensitive stylus. But That Would Be Self-Serving, so I won't say it.

Jolie O'Dell sparked a fascinating thread on marketing to geek women - specifically, marketing cutesy pink stuff to them.

Okay, so maybe there is a long-tail market for Barbie's Dream Server Farm. But my experience in shopping for consumer electronics says there's plenty of room for folks who sell technology of all kinds to get a little more savvy on how gender relations have changed.

It's getting to be a joke: the magic things cops can do with computers. "Wait - there's a reflection in the teakettle! Magnify! Enhance! Now pull a DNA sample from the image! I don't care, just do it - boost the power if you have to! Crossmatch it with every person named Brent in the continental United States! Damn, this new version of GIMP rocks!"

Annnnd... DING! Three seconds later, up pops the photo of the perpetrator, out go the cops to haul him in and America sleeps a little more soundly tonight.

From the election of the first American social media president... to a nod to social media from the mainstreamiest of mainstream media (Oxford Dictionary, for god's sake!)... it's been a big, tumultuous sprawling toddler of a year, prone to tantrums and potty accidents but adorable nonetheless.

Here, then, is 2009 the way it was meant to be remembered... in doodles.

'Tis the season and all that, and this time of year I find myself thinking a lot about my parents. This is exactly the sort of thing they'd have said (if my childhood had been, oh, 20 or 30 years later), and it would have driven me CRA-ZEE.

Funny thing: It's also exactly the sort of thing I find myself saying to my own kids.

The debate rages on over whether social networks (and Twitter, and YouTube, and, and, and) have any legitimacy in the workplace, fueled in no small part by people who sell tools to block them.

But employers who turn their noses up at Facebook et al. may well discover that their coveted Millennials (a.k.a. Generation Y, a.k.a. those damn kids who won't get off your lawn) are happy to return the favour when recruiting time rolls around. Blocking access to Facebook looks a lot like those IT departments that wouldn't install web browsers on your computer a decade ago... or external email access a few years earlier.

You have to wonder how often this happens these days. High-speed coverage (or at least coverage that's advertised that way) is now widespread, and there have to be times when a solid 3G connection can beat an understaffed checkout line hands-down.

Which means customers are bringing the competition into the bricks-and-mortar stores with them -- and they can switch allegiance as easily as point, click, swipe, call up the keyboard, tap tap tap, dammit, backspace, no, that wasn't it, tap tap (repeat eight or nine times)... submit.

A while back, a friend of mine wondered about LinkedIn's somewhat limited options for indicating how you know someone. ("I vomited on their shoes at the office party" isn't on the list, for example.) We had a back-and-forth on her blog, and I came up with a list of some potentially useful additions to LinkedIn's categories.

You'll find them below... but they're only a starting point. Kindly add yours in the comments, and maybe - just maybe - they'll be coming soon to a form field near you.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to someone who had finally reached the end of her rope with an obdurate boss. Having suggested a series of social media initiatives, only to see them wither on the vine as he refused to either push them forward or cancel them, she was ready to move on - not just to another job, but a whole different organization. (Possibly the mob. She has recently dreamed up some innovations on the homicide front that she's eager to try.)

Those of us who manage online communities have learned to crowdsource a big chunk of our work: identifying user contributions that deserve a higher profile - and those that deserve to be dropped in a deep, dark hole.

But there has to be something more nuanced than just thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. And so...