Eideard

Sharon, PA — A man apparently thought the threat of spreading an infectious disease inside a café would be enough to get a cashier to cough up cash.

Police Chief Mike Menster said the assailant then told the clerk if he didn’t cooperate, he’d touch him and infect him with the antibiotic-resistant MRSA staph infection.

“It’s our first case of robbery by threat of an infectious disease,” Menster said.

Fred L. Parker, 41, told the cashier he had a deadly and highly contagious disease and offered to walk away if the cashier gave him money, police said. The cashier refused, and Parker left. He was arrested a short time later.

What a dolt!

Barnes & Noble customers are about to see a lot more of the Nook.

In September, the chain will begin an aggressive promotion of its Nook e-readers by building 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all of its stores, with sample Nooks, demonstration tables, video screens and employees who will give customers advice and operating instructions.

By devoting more floor space to promoting the Nook, Barnes & Noble is playing up what it calls a crucial advantage over Amazon in the e-reader war: its 720 bricks-and-mortar stores, where customers can test out the device before they commit to buying it.

“I think that’s everything,” William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview. “American consumers want to try and hold gadgets before they purchase them.”

Barnes & Noble has already installed small counters in its stores where customers can test out the Nook. The new display space would be much larger, and it would be located next to each store’s cafe, to encourage customers to stop by the Nook space, coffee or tea in hand. It would also sell more than 100 accessories for the Nook, like padded covers designed by Kate Spade and Jonathan Adler.

While in the store, Barnes & Noble customers can read entire e-books free, just as they can with print books.

My wife thought I was practicing walrus noises while sorting the headline for this post. How many ways can you use “nook-nook”.

Just like the purchased .AAC music libraries that kept traditional iPod owners from straying to other MP3 players, the iPhone’s apps are likely to help Apple keep its touch device customers loyal to its products.

Apple announced the Billionth app downloaded this week and at the same time filed with the SEC that it had sold 37 million iPhones and iPod touches together. That means, on average, each device has around 27 downloaded apps. Some people haven’t installed any, while others have maxxed out their iPhone with 144 applications (soon to be 172 with OS3). Most of us are closer to the 27 in the middle.

That is an average two screens of Facebook, Amazon, Skype, NYTimes, WSJ and Google Earth for every iPod touch and iPhone out there.

More importantly, there have been a lot of paid applications that won’t go with users to the next smartphone platform. I say this as I contemplate moving to the Palm Pre or Android platforms next year (mostly just to escape AT&T, who charge way too much for substandard service)…

When the ZuneHD comes out later this year, it won’t likely woo many iPod touch owners who have a gaggle of games, utilities and other apps stuck on Apple’s platform. Conversely, when Apple releases its new touch products later this year, current touch product owners will be able to take their apps with them.

I’m in the same boat. Sort of.

Though, using two browsers ain’t as costly as owning two cellphones.

On the 16th floor of a nondescript building in lower Manhattan, a group of tech-savvy staffers clad mostly in jeans and T-shirts is changing the way Americans watch TV election coverage.

Perceptive Pixel is a high-tech startup company. You may not have heard of them, but you’ve probably seen their most famous product: an interactive, Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall better known as CNN’s “Magic Wall.”

Throughout the 2008 primaries and the general election, John King, CNN’s Chief National Correspondent, has stood before the now-familiar electronic wall map, zooming in and out of battleground states with a few pokes of his fingers. The big map allows King to instantly tally electoral votes, shift swing states from one candidate’s camp to another’s and highlight red swaths of John McCain turf alongside blue pockets of support for Barack Obama.

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Breakthroughs often beget other breakthroughs, and Apple’s slick use of touch technology on its iPhone has set touch-screen makers to salivating. An industry once relegated to niches now sees the potential for riches.

The market for touch screens has grown quietly for years, both in commercial applications like restaurant point-of-sale systems, credit card signature readers or automated teller machines, and in consumer devices like global positioning systems and game platforms. But touch screens haven’t created much excitement as the main way for people to use things like phones or computers or other consumer electronics — until now.

“Apple changed everybody’s mind about touch,” says Geoff Walker, global director of product management at Elo TouchSystems unit, a big seller of touch screens. That iPhone users can so easily resize photos with just a pinch or a flick of their fingertips is “supercool,” he says.

In particular, Apple changed minds about what is called multitouch technology. A multitouch screen is exactly what it sounds like: a screen that can accept input from multiple touches at once.

The problem isn’t doubts about the hardware, once costs drop. Instead, says John Jacobs, it’s a lack of software designed to work well with touch. For instance, few applications are written to support multitouch, he says.

I think multi-touch is cool, interesting. But, then, I thought HP’s original IR touch-sceen computers were cool over 2 decades ago – when I tried to sell them back in the day.

Personally, if I needed a smartphone, I’d buy an iPhone. Next time I’m buying a new laptop, I’d probably look for one with a multi-touch touch pad. That probably puts me in what? 1% of the market?