I have a simple rule when it comes to what's OK to do while driving: If you wouldn't want your surgeon doing it while operating on your brain, don't do it behind the wheel.

Period.

That's why I'm appalled at Pioneer's announcement of a dashboard system that keeps drivers connected to social networks and local searches while they're driving.

It's tough enough to keep people from texting while driving. Do we really need a system that gives drivers real-time Facebook and Twitter updates?

More in my blog post on Computerworld.com: Utterly irresponsible technology.

It's That Time of Year again, and even if you don't celebrate The Holidays, chances are you have other people in your life who do. There's so much to get done as the end of year approaches, it can be hard to keep track of it all. And while paper might work for your own holiday wish list, there are free Web apps can help organize the rest. Check out my article "Free Web apps to help organize your holidays" on Computerworld.com to find out how.

Is there really a time when someone should be looking at a screen and typing while operating a motor vehicle?

My hands-on review of Posterous posted last Friday on Computerworld.com. In general, I like the service, but I do wonder at the wisdom of single, un-modified broadcasts out to all social networking platforms at once. For instance, if you use the same title for your Posterous post and Twitter tweet, either you're not taking advantage of the specific Twitter culture (@ to refer to people, hashtags when mentioning popular subjects) or you've got an odd looking post title elsewhere.

How can the Economist -- expensive, few ads, limited online presence -- be thriving in the digital age when so many other weekly news magazines are in trouble? The Atlantic makes an intriguing point about the value of insight as opposed to simply offering lots of info:

Now that information is infinitely replicable and pervasive, original reporting will never again receive its due. The real value of the Economist lies in its smart analysis of everything it deems worth knowing—and smart packaging, which may be the last truly unique attribute in the digital age.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. Someone still has to go out there and do original reporting. But "original reporting" is not stenography. The task of relating informaiton from a press conference or event has become commodity news, and that field is overcrowded. Now that it's so easy to see reports from so many sources about, say, a presidential press conference or major vendor product announcement, you can find hundreds of similar stories about such things. How many are actually needed? Some, without question. But I doubt we need the number we have now.

Successful publishers must either find less crowded niches or more useful way of serving broader markets. Those who want to play in the breaking news space must also deliver authoritative, useful analysis. That's also "original reporting."

The biggest favor we can do for our audience is to help them deal with information overload. People already have plenty of random acts of information. Ultimately, we need to respond to the same questions I was asking reporters to answer 20 years ago:

So what?

Who cares?

Why does this matter?

Those are the questions the Economist helps its readers answer, and what those of us publishing in any format must address if we expect our audience to invest their time in what we do.

So Google is jumping into the operating system business, taking on not only nemesis Microsoft but also the idea that applications are typically made to run on the desktop.

But while much coverage is focusing on the looming battle between Google and Microsoft, Apple is likely to be the company hardest hit by a Google OS, at least at the outset.

Those looking for a desktop OS alternative to Windows typically consider two options: Mac OS X or a traditional Linux flavor. Linux, despite advocates' claim to the contrary, is still daunting to most non power users due to issues like networking and peripheral drivers. Mac, meanwhile, has two chief drawbacks: fewer available applications (not an issue to many consumers) and costly hardware. It's no accident that Microsoft's most successful Windows ad campaign doesn't even talk about software anymore, but rather comparative hardware costs.

If there were a version of the Mac OS that ran on non-Apple hardware, I'm not sure Google would have seen the same market opening for a new operating system. But there isn't, and Google Chrome OS is likely to be targeting the same audience as Mac OS X -- those looking for a Windows alternative -- while offering a platform that runs on more affordable hardware.

For more on Google's OS announcement: Google Operating System: 7 Thoughts.

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I'm a big believer in bringing order to the chaos of text. Even if you only bring a smidgen of structure to that information, you add so much more reader value. In fact, it's become a joke around the newsroom how often I use the phrase "structured data." My boss, editor in chief Scot Finnie, keeps urging me to come up with something catchier. I'm thinking "mashup-ready" might work.

The classic case is the old Chicagocrime.org, one of the first mashups. Instead of simply posting a lot of local crimes news as individual plain-text stories ("There was a house break-in at 123 X street Tuesday...."), online journalism pioneer Adrian Holovaty got all the information into a database where site visitors could search and sort by neighborhood, type of crime, day and more. Holovaty has since gone on to work on the grant-funded Everyblock.com.

Rob Curley is another well-known name in the field of onine journalism. One of his biggest areas of expertise is so-called hyper-local coverage online. In a recent interview at Media Bistro, Curley said:

We now geo-code every story on our site, every piece of content. We either add an exact latitude and longitude to it or, if we don't have that, then we try to at least get it down to the zip code. Soon, if you give your zip code you can have all of those stories now on one page. You can have all of the home foreclosures and homes that have been sold on that page; you can have all the crimes. We can show you all the rotary club meetings, all the high school shows that are in your zip code, the movie listings that are closest to you... We've build the page so that it works very much like iGoogle does, so you can move all the boxes around in any order that you want.

That's adding value to your content -- something all of us in the media business need to be doing. At Computerworld, it's why we have our Best Places to Work in IT sortable by a dozen criteria such as training budget and percent of staff promoted, as well as by company size and region. It's why we now our product reviews in a (very simple) database, so site visitors can search and sort by product and product category as well as see story headlines. And it's why so many people are starting to pay attention to the intersection of journalism and technology.

Of the $336 million in federal transportation money Massachusetts received from the federal stimulus program, one-fifth is being spent on building new roadways, according to a report from Smart Growth America examining how transportation Stimulus funds are being spent. That’s the second highest portion in New England (only New Hampshire is using more).

On the plus side: A solid 14% will be spent on “non-motorized” projects, and another 17% on transit-related programs.

Massachusetts ranked 29th in the portion of money being used to repair existing roadways as opposed to build new ones, but third in the percent of funding being used on public transportation and “non-motorized projects” (District of Columbia was first and Delaware 2nd).

Overall, Smart Growth America concludes that “states failed to make as much progress as possible on pressing transportation needs.”

In addition, the group claims, the billions in federal transportation stimulus money will create and save jobs but not “as many or as quickly as they could have,” arguing data show another $2 billion on repair would have created 4,300 new jobs more quickly. And while the funds will help shore up crumbling infrastructure, there will now be “$6 billion more miles of roads to maintain ... When they could not afford to maintain the ones they already have.”

The report also says spending falls far short of providing a more balanced transportation system, improve public transportation, help reduce energy consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or not contribute to additional sprawl.

More than half of the roads in Massachusetts were not in good condition as of 2007, costing the average driver about $300 a year. In addition, 345 bridges and roadways in the state were “structurally deficient” last year, the report says.