Lighter than air: Steve Jobs elicted oohs and ahhs with last month's unveiling of the MacBook Air, the world's thinnest laptop by Apple's estimation. Test Center Contributing Editor Paul Venezia has taken the machine for a test drive to assess just what the trade-offs are for the nifty form factor: "There are sacrifices, to be sure, such as the single USB port and the lack of an internal optical drive, but they' Lighter than air: Steve Jobs elicted oohs and ahhs with last month’s unveiling of the MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest laptop by Apple’s estimation. Test Center Contributing Editor Paul Venezia has taken the machine for a test drive to assess just what the trade-offs are for the nifty form factor: “There are sacrifices, to be sure, such as the single USB port and the lack of an internal optical drive, but they’re minor when the Air’s size and weight are taken into consideration.”Playing with Cobra: Strategic Developer Martin Heller spent part of his weekend dabbling in Cobra, an open-source language that blends Python and Eiffel — with other influences on top. His advice: Give it a try, and “expect an interesting language for console applications that’s on the verge of becoming useful.”5 things SOA vendors are missing: Real World SOA blogger David Linthicum has compiled an insightful list of points that seem to evade many purveyors of services-oriented architecture wares. Among them: Your product has to work (yes, he’s picky that way), and you have to know what SOA is. Technology Industry