Impressions of a Young Mac Geek. Ellen Feiss, the star of Apple’s Switch advertising campaign, was the subject of a look-alike contest in the Netherlands. See the gallery for the remarkable results. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

Domestic violence. The media is fixating on John Allen Muhammad’s Muslim beliefs. But the most relevant fact about him could be his record of terrorizing his family members — and how that didn’t stop him from getting his hands on guns. [Salon.com]

Googlism [Sam Ruby]
This is just pulling semi coherent data from google result contexts, but it’s cool anyways.

Implantable Chip, On Sale Now. No sooner does the ink dry on the FDA’s curiously quick approval of an implantable human chip than the company that produces it launches a national marketing campaign. By Julia Scheeres. [Wired News]

Tim Bray on XML in Office 11. This came up on the XML-Dev list as well as /., but Tim Bray spent some time looking at the ‘native’ XML format MS is promising for Office 11, they are baroque, but they are XML. [More Like This WebLog]
Yay?

AOL and MSN: Two Paths to Milestone 8. As it turns out, both companies’ Version 8 celebrations are wildly out of proportion to the mild changes in their services.  [New York Times: Technology]

Internet telephony revisited.  As part of my research, I solicited and am now using the Vonage IP phone. It’s an eye-opener, for sure. A little Cisco box (the ATA 165) jacks into your DHCP-enabled DSL router, you press a button, and away you go. Works right through my fully-locked-down NAT. Most folks I talk to notice the difference — especially if I clog up my 256-up/256-down circuit with a DSL speed test while I’m talking — but it’s darned impressive. The bottom-line savings on long-distance charges are of course the reason why most folks might be willing to ditch their POTS line for this solution. But I’m equally intrigued by the upside: applications that intercept and work with SIP signalling and digitized voice, integrate phone presence with IM, forward call metadata to Web services, and all the other CTI (computer-telephone integration) fantasies that may finally start to come true. … [Jon’s Radio]

Standards and Profits [Fast Takes]
A reminder that most standards are not usually created for pure altruistic reasons.

Tablet PC rivalry sets in. A start-up formed by a group of Dell Computer visionaries plans to release its device next month. Will it find the right formula for success? [CNET News.com]

Jon Udell: The publish/subscribe Internet. [Scripting News]