Columnist’s corner: A recent trip to the Big Apple has David Margulius confessing that he finds infrastructure — as in bridges, buildings, elevated trains — to be downright beautiful. “I wish there was a better way to visualize the virtual infrastructure that wraps the world and everything we do in equal majesty, because it doesn’t get the same respect. And it should. It’s amazing … just invisible.” Then again, it tends not to last as long and, often, is coded by some teenager who finds pre-fab tools on the Web and creates a mashup. “Those same adventurous and masterful genes that built the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1870s and the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s are still alive and well, just working in a different medium.” Building a bridge to the future. Green IT: Telepresence technologies might not quench wanderlust as much as those plush travel budgets of days gone by, but they do bring travel-weary workers cause for celebration. “Telepresence technology has, by many accounts, achieved a level of quality, reliability, and affordability such that it’s truly a realistic alternative to in-person face-to-face meetings,” Ted Samson reports in Telepresence breaks down communications barriers. Meet the players: Cisco, HP, Polycom, Teliris, and Telanetix. The news beat: Updated Apple Web pages give iPhone details. IBM and Microsoft both fess up to feeling the heat from Google apps, even going so far as to call Google “a great competitor in this space.” And Amazon, Apple and eBay rank low on yet another environmental advocacy list, this one by Climate Counts. Software Development