I was in the downtown library yesterday with my MacBook (which doesn’t get out much anymore, now that I have an iPod Touch).

Some dude I’d never met before came up and started talking to me. At the downtown library, this happens rather often. But this guy wasn’t trying to sell me a bus pass or tell me a long story that would start by asking for directions and end by asking for money.

He just wanted to alert me to something he’d seen on an Apple rumors site. It was another variant of the long-rumored Apple tablet device. “It’s like a MacBook without the keyboard, or a big iPod Touch. It looks great!”

Now I’ve seen one of these new rumor articles. And I must say I like the specs the article mentions. This is almost exactly the device I’d dreamed of earlier this year, when I speculated that the future of the online written word (including journalism) lay in .pdf documents formatted for tablets and netbooks.

(My caveat: While I’m intrigued by the concept of an Apple tablet as a full-page-size iPod Touch, I suspect many users will also want to use it for more traditional home-computer functions, including functions at which the iPhone OS and its available apps are still insufficient.)

Meanwhile, closer to home, other tech rumor sites are spreading an internal Microsoft video, demonstrating the features of what might be that company’s next-gen tablet computer concept, code named “Courier.” Like the rumored Apple device, the rumored MS device wouldn’t run a regular home-computer operating system. Instead, it would operate its own integrated suite of apps, based on the metaphor of an “infinite journal” where the user could clip and paste anything from/to anywhere.

The warning here is that MS has whole teams of “futurists” and conceptual designers working full-time on the personal-tech version of “concept cars”—items that, in their initial iterations, will never see a sales shelf, but which are used to work out ideas that may eventually find their way into real products. Courier might be one of these.

At first, the concept of a true Microsoft rival brings to mind the early days of the Web, when Netscape (remember them?) speculated out loud that web browsers could become the “platform” of all personal computing, not replacing Windows but displacing Windows’ status as the foundation upon which the entire computer-using experience stands.

Specifically, Google’s announced (but not yet released) Chrome OS would be a combined OS and browser, intended initially for smaller notebook and netbook machines. Instead of “shrinkwrap” software, it would mostly act as a portal to online applications, including (but not limited to) Google Apps.

This begs the musical question, what would you do when you’re not connected?

Call me a relic of the floppy-disc era (which I am), but the term “personal computer” once meant a wholly functional device of one’s very own, not a mere “dumb terminal” that couldn’t work without a central network to plug into.

As the laptop concept emerged in the early 1990s, the principle of freedom from the office joined that of freedom from the mainframe.

But today, “wired” has given way to “wireless,” and the notion of the Big Brother central mainframe has given way to Internet server farms.

With cell-phone company data service, one can go anywhere (within the more populated zones of North America, that is) and be always “plugged in,” for a price.

For the rest of us, there’s WiFi, when and where we can find it. (Hint: If you’re buying a latte every weekday to get coffeehouse WiFi access, you’re not saving much over a phone company’s $60/month data plan.)

Still, my data (writing, pictures, music, work info, etc.) is my data. I want to have it, not just have access to it for a monthly fee.

Maybe I’m being “PC” about this instead of being “net-centric.”

Or maybe I’m just possessive.

I don’t care. I still want to have my backed-up hard drives, my digital “stuff.” And I want to be able to work and/or play with it whenever (even when there’s not a good wireless connection) and wherever (even on buses and planes).

But I’ve a less hectic day-work schedule this week, so let’s try to catch up on the recent news:

• Microsoft’s new on-campus mall includes a miniature, officially licensed “Pike Place Market” area. Like all of the MS “Commons,” it’s open only to MS employees and guests. This is wrong on more levels than I want to enumerate here, but I’ll settle for just a few concerns: Does it include the Athenian Inn? Farmer-run produce stalls? The magic shop?
• 
  Can you dig it?: It’s official. The Alaskan Way Viaduct will be replaced by a tubular hole in the ground beneath First Avenue, a hole which won’t have exits to downtown or Belltown. Bah.
• 
  Otherwise, our Democratic-controlled Legislature behaved very GOP-esque. It passed an all-cuts budget, decimated social services, and quietly shut down any talk about making our state tax system less regressive.
• 
  Sand clogs the pipes at the Magnolia sewer plant, due to all the sand put on city roads last December. Hey, let’s make a new artificial beach!
• 
  GM to dump thousands of jobs, hundreds of dealers, and the whole of Pontiac. (Oh yeah, Saturn and Hummer are gong away too; but my urban-hipster conditioning prevents me from mourning Hummer, and I’m too old to have any teenage memories of cruising the strip-mall roads in a Saturn.)
• 
  Sounders FC’s off to a smashing start; while the Mariners approach their ‘01 glory days. Nice.

Announce massive layoffs only if you have to, not simply to prop up the stock price.

You know when I said I wanted you more than anything else in the galaxy? I don’t anymore. Sorry. Really. It isn’t you. Well, yes it is you, but it’s not like I’m running off with somebody else or anything…

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

…could possibly resist the clarion call of Obamamania? Douglas County, that’s who.

In other nooze:

• As you probably don’t recall, the reason WashState has both caucuses and primaries is because Bush pere’s people cried foul after Pat Robertson’s people swamped our ‘88 GOP caucuses. This time, it’s Huckabee’s people crying foul.
• Your Museum of Flight: Singlehandedly bringing back the stewardess fetish.
• Note to KEXP main man John Richards: You can host a local Seattle show, or you can move to NYC. Choose one.
• Developers’ plans for the part of First United Methodist that won’t be saved: One of them angular, reflective glass towers you see in 60 Minutes segments about emerging Far Eastern capitals.
• Doesn’t anybody wanna buy Getty Images?
• Actual headline (for the print version of this story): “How far will Microsoft go to overcome Yahoo’s rejection?” Some handy tips: Chocolate, self-esteem classes, regular gym workouts, a ‘pity party’ with friends, a nice cry, then get on with your own life.

…bidding for Yahoo! only “serves as a confirmation that Microsoft’s glory days are in the past.”

…already got a list of five potential Microsoft/Yahoo! “enhancements:” “The new MyMicrosoft! offers features like real-time Web chat with Microsoft programmers who can explain how you’re using your computer wrong, and E-mail newsletters on how dumb the general public is. Unsubscribing costs just $9.95 per month.”

…a new month, and largely the same ol’ nooze:

• Ron Paul, in town for two quick speeches, brought forth some more of his right-fringe, anti-gov’t. talk. Then he and his aides drove off in a minivan to Spokane, presumably hoping the WSDOT crews had gotten the passes reopened.
• Microsoft offers a whoppin’ $45 billion in an unsolicited bid to take over Yahoo! (which, in turn, owns Flickr, HotJobs, GeoCities, and a bunch of other stuff).Of course, I remember when its name was a “backronym” for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” and its chief service was a categorized directory of other Web sites. For a couple of years, my daily morning routine included a quick glance through the “What’s New On Yahoo!” page, which told me everything that was new n’ exciting on that rapidly-growin’ World Wide Web. In time, as you can imagine, that became a too-cumbersome way to look for stuff online. Yahoo! expanded into other Web-based businesses—a lot of other Web-based businesses.

  Now, MS wants Y!’s search sites, and will pay big bucks to get ‘em. What would happen to the rest of Yahoo!’s sprawling network of sites? MS would likely keep (and rebrand) some, fold others into its existing MSN, and close or sell the rest.

• The former Harvey’s Tavern in “Freelard” (Leary Way, between Fremont and Ballard) is yet another ex-dive bar going upscale.
• Remember when Kroger/QFC wanted to take over the Metropolitan Market site on Upper Queen Anne (nee Queen Anne Thriftway), as part of a huge condo project? Now it’ll be a smaller apartment project, and the developers have invited Metropolitan Market back when it’s done.
• Joe Isuzu calls it quits, at least in the U.S. market. No more “millions of standard features.”
• Mayor Nickels hearts Obama.
• A former Bartell Drugs pharmacy technician pleaded guilty to filing fraudulant prescriptions on his own behalf.
• New border rules bring no big delays, at least in terms getting south from There to Here.
• Freak accident of the day: A truck, being towed by a crane, gets loose, rolls downhill, and runs into two bicyclists.
• Sound Transit might suspend plans to extend its still-under-construction light rail line all the way to Tacoma. Don’t stop now! Channel your inner Little Engine That Could!