On-hands demo (Cycling computers and more)

A year ago I bought myself a new cycling computer (I wanted one where I could see altitude meters as I've begun bringing my bike to some mountains around Europe and riding up these mountains). I ended up buying a Sigma BC 2600 (price was a factor too - otherwise I would probably have gotten myself a Garmin, which would - in theory - ensure that I didn't get lost). Anyway - Sigma has this cool feature where you can "try" the computer in your browser - click various buttons and see what happens. Pretty nifty.

So I'm wondering - given that many of the mobile devices we use are built on some sort of platform, how hard is it to port this to the web for us common folks to try out before to see if we like it? I'm thinking mostly of the plethora of new touch screen devices. It would be so cool to actually try out how it works before buying it (and not in some store with a sales clerk breathing down your neck). I realize that some of the more quirky motions would be hard to emulate using a mouse (e.g. "pinching" an image), but just to give the general idea it would be great.

Writing for the web?????

In a recent series of articles Jared Spool & Co. (www.uie.com) has given useful tips and tricks of Breaking up Large Documents for the Web. They are a much more hands on "how to guide" of Jacob Nielsens by now age-old research findings of how people read on the web (and on computers), but not much new is seen (as far as I can see).

I find myself reading my news of the web more and more (rather than just the newspaper). But I *really* miss the more thorough articles from the newspaper on the web. In Denmark we have two national broadcasters who just so happens to also be worthy news sources, but they (like the newspapers online versions) have taken the short and sweet motto to the extreme (I've got a feeling that they just get a feed from Reuters and publish this completely unedited). When reading news I want more. Not 7 pages more, but definitely more than 5 lines. Am I the only one?