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Last night, Comcast customers in Illinois, Indiana and other states experienced an Internet outage. We have a triple package with the cable conglomerate, and last night, as I diligently worked on items for Monday morning, I discovered that my Internet was out.

As someone who makes a living working from home, I understand that much of my work involves using the Internet. I use it for researching articles, contacting clients via e-mail and sending my work from place to place. I was actually finishing up a project when the Internet went out.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. I called the cable company and wasn’t able to get through. I kept getting a busy signal. I assumed it must be a pretty widespread problem to knock out their phone lines, so I just hunkered down, watched some television and thought it would be up in an hour or two.

I was wrong. By 11 p.m., I was officially in panic mode. There was no way I was going to be getting the money for the project I was working on by the morning. If the Internet was still out in the morning, then there was no way for me contact anyone to let them know my articles would not be coming.

The answer:

The Z1 is considered to be the first modern computer. It was designed and built between 1935 and 1938 by Konrad Zuse, a German engineer. It was the first programmable machine that used Boolean logic & binary floating numbers, and it contained almost all the parts of a modern computer including a control unit and memory. The Z1 was privately financed by Zuse’s family.

The Specs:

• 64 words of 22 bits
• 1 Hz clock speed
• four basic operations – add subtract, multiply, divide
• It weighed 1,000
• It completed basic calculations in an average of 5 seconds. Multiplication problems took up to 10 seconds

Where Is It Now?

The Z1 was destroyed during World War II during the 1934 Allied air raids. A replica is on display at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin.

Today’s headline and gadget sound, in many ways, too good to be true. But it is true, amazingly enough. Here in the United States, those wishing to be early adopters of the upcoming tablet computing trend have only one option: the Apple iPad, which costs the user a pretty penny in both initial cost and data plans.

While other devices are still in development, none has emerged as the front-runner to challenge Apple’s place at the top of the world.

Tablet computers, if they are indeed the future, remain elusive to the market in both the United States and Europe. The high cost of these devices makes them impractical for the average citizen of many other countries in the world. India’s solution? Design a better tablet and sell it for a jaw-dropping price.

The tablet, which was unveiled as a prototype earlier this week, was the child of a joint development between the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science. With an estimated retail price of approximately $30 USD (about 1500 Rupees), the tablet is intended to find a home in the Indian education system, providing a computer to everyone from grade schoolers to graduate students.

Google recently made waves in the Internet world by introducing Google TV. The service, which would be directly implemented into a television or delivered via an external router, brought web-based multimedia straight onto your HDTV. It’s an issue that has plagued television and media enthusiasts for some time now.

While a variety of content is available online, crowding around a laptop or computer screen is a less-than-ideal viewing environment. Google’s idea is one possible solution, bringing the Internet to the television via some intense hardware intervention. Intel, however, apparently shrugged their shoulders and came up with an efficient solution.

Any serious piece of computing is a serious investment, which is why such a strong market for gadget-protectors exists.I personally have my MacBook fitted with a plastic casing to protect it from scratches. My iPod, however, has a far more personalized case. My friend Jessy, for my birthday several years ago, knit me a multi-colored pouch that has kept the iPod safe from harm for quite some time now.

While not everyone has the patience or skill required for a personalized gift of that caliber, the company GelaSkins has upped the ante for protective gear, allowing the customer to select from a wide variety of artwork, or to submit their own photo for use.

The process of selecting a case at the GelaSkins website is straightforward and shows off the remarkable variety in store. First, you can browse through pre-existing artwork, finding cases specifically made and designed for your sought piece of hardware. Laptops, phones, and cameras are all included, and it’s a breeze to hunt something down, even for some obscure gadgets.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

At this point in time it would be endlessly redundant to discuss the hype building up to the release of this, Apple’s newest foray into the world of tablets. There have been press conferences, Internet flame wars, and countless borad stereotypes of who will be first in line to get their hands on one. It’s all moot now, though. It’s here. The iPad is here.

So now what? Reviews have poured in from around the Internet, detailing every in and out like the folks over at Engadget did. Yes, the iPad is good. It has a gorgeous screen, Apple’s iconic minimalist design, a bevy of intuitive features, applications that can do all sorts of things, compatibility with the iPhone, strong battery life, and so on and so forth. It does everything Apple promised it would. It even comes bearing the signature Apple price tag. But what does this all mean? Comparing the iPad to other forms of computers almost seems counterintuitive. Is it a computer? Yes, but it’s not like any other computer.

Herein is the true beauty of what the iPad does for computing. This is, in so many ways, the most significant development in computing we’ve seen since the widespread use of the laptop and wireless internet. With other manufacturers rushing to create tablets akin to Apple’s child, it’s clear that this is a game changer.

But there’s more at stake here than shifts in supply and demand of computers. The iPad represents a new way to use a computer. The hands-on interaction is something that will be present in computers of all shapes in sizes. While a keyboard is excellent for precise typing and speedy wordprocessing, the iPad’s touchscreen provides an interface that can be used for all other types of activities. Through the development of applications, the iPad can be a book, displaying pages in high-definition on it’s vivid screen. The iPad can be a video player. The iPad can be a glorious new way to surf the Internet, touching links to open them, making hand gestures to move forwards and backwards. Touchscreen technology is still relatively young in terms of personal computing. The iPad is the first gadget to take those innovations and make something new of them.