Stories by Mike Elgan

I believe that someday most buildings, vehicles and devices will be solar-powered. And that includes our personal gadgets -- phones, laptops and digital cameras.

Only 30 million people have used Facebook Places, one report finds. If that sounds impressive, consider that it represents just six per cent of Facebook users. And that's not the number who use it. That's the number who have tried it.

HP released its Slate 500 tablet this week. Immediately, everyone started comparing it with Apple's iPad. But the two devices have nothing significant in common. They are in entirely different device categories and can even be thought of as opposites.

We live in an age of invention and scientific discovery. But there are things about some inventions that science simply cannot explain. Here are 10 things that I simply do not understand about consumer technology:

Conventional wisdom says people don't wear wristwatches anymore -- especially young people. The story goes that because we now have cell phones, we no longer need to lash anything to our wrists.

Augmented reality, long a staple of science fiction, is here, there and everywhere. A search on Google News brings up nearly 700 recent stories about the technology and the companies that claim to offer it.

"India unveils $35 computer for students," says CNN.com. "India unveils prototype for $35 touch-screen computer," reports BBC News. "India to provide $35 computing device to students," says BusinessWeek.

Suddenly, there are two kinds of people. The first kind loves location-based social networking services like Foursquare. They speak in an alien language about "Mayors" and "Badges" and broadcast their locations to the world.

Have you ever tried to get an older person to use Facebook?

You've heard the case against Apple's iPad. It's a media consumption device for mindless couch potatoes. It's a step back in the evolution of computing, because it turns users into passive consumers of content, rather than creators.

Steve Jobs is such a great salesman that he can actually give us a sense of familiarity with something we don't know anything about.

An insurance expert told the Britain's Telegraph newspaper that using location-centric mobile social services like Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare could raise your home insurance premiums, or even result in the denial of insurance claims.

Everybody's talking about Google Buzz. Most of that chatter is centered on how to use it, and whether it's better or worse than Twitter or Facebook. Almost all the talk is about using Buzz from a PC.

Google may have threatened to leave China to keep us all from concluding that "the cloud" cannot be secured. If that's true, isn't that precisely what we should conclude?

Do you remember where you were the day they unveiled Facebook? No? How about Twitter? Amazon.com? Google Search?