Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007.
Some posts he’d like you to read:
The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin
His personal website is coldewey.cc.
The dispute between Apple and Proview over the “iPad” trademark has just gotten a lot more domestic. Proview, which owned the “iPad” trademark in several countries until they sold the rights to Apple, has been alleging shenanigans, specifically that part of the company never authorized the sale. Apple, for their part, says that everything is in order, and they have the signatures of the… → Read More
An interesting patent application from Apple has just been made public, and it looks like one that may actually get some use (and seems like a “legitimate” patent, to boot). It has to do with a new mechanism for keyboard keys, one that loses much of the depth necessary in mechanical or scissor-switch mechanisms, yet purportedly doesn’t sacrifice the tactile feel we all crave from a keyboard. → Read More
Mr. President, I’m glad your administration has taken the time to craft what looks like a fairly forward-thinking and potentially globally influential policy towards consumer privacy on the internet. No doubt it will have to be snipped here and built up there and the fast pace of the technology world may make some of its provisions quaint after a few years, but overall it seems strong, and fair to… → Read More
You’re probably familiar with OnLive, the company that made its mark by streaming brand new console and PC games to whatever devices could support a high-bandwidth video stream. Many doubted its technology to begin with (including yours truly – Is OnLive OnCrack?) but they’ve more or less delivered on their promises, and have also been expanding the services they offer. Most recently they… → Read More
The browser wars are in a tense state of suspension right now. The once-obvious advantages of one and disadvantages of another can’t be counted on as much as they could a year ago, and fast-changing standards and interaction methods have produced a sort of uneasy détente while everyone awaits the browser equivalent of the Manhattan Project to catapult them into the atomic age.
Tom’s Hardware… → Read More
As you probably know, bistable or passive displays like the E-Ink ones in e-readers focus on battery life and readability rather than color and interactivity. The latest devices have been optimized for fast page refreshes and touch operation, but generally you’re still waiting a half a second or so for the screen to flip over to the next page, menu, or what have you.
But that’s not all they’re… → Read More
Upstart photo-sharing service 500px is bringing some significant changes to the site that should be going live right now (although they’re being hammered, so be patient). The site was already one of the frontrunners as far as design and user uptake, and these new features should help that right along.
There’s a new curated and social photo stream called “Flow” and a new layout for photo sets… → Read More
When Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and several others in the organization were arrested in raids a month ago, it was noted by prosecutors that Dotcom’s rather wild lifestyle and propensity for spontaneous international travel, combined with his vast wealth, constituted a serious flight risk. He was denied bail at the time, at least until February 22nd, when the US was to turn in its extradition… → Read More
Moral ambiguity, thy name is advertising. How are we to parse this advertising campaign in London in which an intelligent bus stop billboard only displays its content to women? You read correctly: the billboard has a camera that scans passersby and if one stops to look, it determines their sex and shows them a 40-second video if they are female. Males only get a link to the advertiser’s… → Read More
Are you enough of a photo geek to build your own camera? Maybe. But are you enough of one to build it out of LEGO and some spare bits you had lying around the house? Probably not. But Carl-Frederic Salicath over in Norway is. And he did. He calls it the Legoflex B1. → Read More
Yahoo’s management of Flickr has been something of a mystery. The photo-hosting service, once far and away the frontrunner and choice of pros and casual shooters alike, has seen few improvements in recent years — an eternity in the fast-moving online photography space. Many (including myself) cling to the service out of a kind of inertia, but it’s hard not to be jealous of the whiz-bang… → Read More
Apple may have seen $13 billion in sales in China last year, but apparently those numbers could have been higher if they’d had a bit more faith. The iPhone sold in huge quantities in the markets served by China Unicom, which since October of 2009 has been the only carrier over there to offer it.
Adding a second major carrier to the mix should expand the market and the sales, as it has here in… → Read More
Word got around way back in the middle of 2010 that Apple was building a monster data center near Maiden, South North Carolina. Later, it was shown to be hosting a ton of Nuance software, for obvious reasons. Less widely reported was the fact that nearby, scores of acres were being cleared for a solar array.
Now, it turns out that solar array will be the largest “end user-owned, onsite” one in… → Read More
Among the expected changes to the next generation of iPad is an improved processor. Seeing as the original iPad had the A4 and the iPad 2 had the A5, it was logical to guess that the iPad 3 would have an A6. As it turns out, that’s not the case: a leaked picture of the iPad 3′s logic board (or what is claimed to be so) shows not A6, but A5X written on top of the chip.
In a way it’s totally… → Read More
MacRumors has done something very bad – they went and got themselves an iPad 3 display module. Actually, it’s not so bad when you can apparently just order one online. Normally this part even being online and available ahead of launch would suggest it was a scam, but what matters isn’t the name of the part (could easily be a scam) but the part itself.
They took a microscope to it, see &mdash… → Read More
It’s a tense time for Google: controversial policy and user-experience changes are combining with a growing distrust of tracking and advertising to produce something of a toxic atmosphere. Not the moment, then, you would want a minor scandal to erupt in the form of Google circumventing, intentionally or unintentionally, the privacy settings of millions of Safari users.
The allegations have… → Read More
In a move that demonstrates how cleanly Microsoft intends to cut itself off from the last 20 years of its most widely-used and widely-recognized products, they have given the Windows logo its most significant redesign in 20 years. Ever since Windows 3.1, the slightly curved, red-green-blue-yellow panes have greeted millions on startup, or at least peeked out from the corner of the screen.
No… → Read More
California may be the 800-pound gorilla in the automotive legislation world, but their neighbor Nevada seems to be taking the initiative when it comes to self-driving cars. They’ve adopted a number of regulations into law, and are pushing the state as a legal testing-ground for companies preparing such vehicles. These changes were telegraphed last summer, when the state legalized driverless cars… → Read More
We were recently able to pose a few questions to Ren Ng, founder and CEO of Lytro, and the person upon whose research the whole product is based. Their camera, which allows the shooter to set the focus after taking the shot, among other things, is launching soon. But there is still much to learn about it, as the company has been fairly close-mouthed about the its specs and capabilities. → Read More
A reader of Geekwire has sent in what he claims is a shot of Google Drive, which apparently has activated early for him. It’s entirely possible that the shot is fake — Google’s stark interface isn’t exactly difficult to recreate. There are no obvious red flags we can see, though, and it jibes with the presumably legit screen seen briefly at a Google-sponsored event back in 2011. → Read More
There’s a good reason Apple let Mountain Lion out of its cage this morning with no fanfare or event. Like Lion, the improvements are minor at best and some less than useless. Lion hasn’t sold particularly well, and few of its “improvements” have caught the attention of the public, except when they try to scroll down and it goes up. Personally, I thought being able to resize windows from any edge… → Read More
Things are going smoothly for Tesla. Their big Model X debut was a success, their cars are pre-ordered to capacity, and new business opportunities are presenting themselves. They’re still posting a net loss, of course, but that was expected and will continue for another year or so.
Here are the most salient points from their latest earnings statement, released today. → Read More
Last year I locked up my bike over on Pike street for an evening out with my friends. When I came back a few hours later, both my headlight and taillight had been stolen. What a crackhead was going to do with my budget headlight I don’t know, but the real problem was that I had to ride home in the middle of the night with no lights.
Brad Geswein and Slava Menn had a friend in a similar… → Read More
Android was doing voice recognition for a long time before Siri came around, but the truth is Apple’s implementation of voice commands made Google’s look limited and out of date. And that hasn’t changed in the last few months, despite a few Siri-like apps that have attempted to cash in on the “talking at your phone” craze.
This app, called Utter!, is the first one that actually makes voice… → Read More
First, a word of caution: the Manhattan Research survey that yielded this data was performed online, so that’s going to skew the results straight away. But even taking that into account, it’s powerful data.
According to the survey, just over a quarter of all doctors in the EU — primary care and specialist — use an iPad for professional purposes. That’s a big number for a device… → Read More
Seattle-area startup Puzzazz began as a creator of online, mobile, and e-book puzzles. But they’ve established a new core technology that might end up being a bigger draw than their Sudoku apps. They call it TouchWrite, and it lets you draw letters and numbers directly on the screen instead of tapping them on the on-screen keyboard.
A modest achievement in some ways — basic handwriting… → Read More
When Siri was announced strictly for the iPhone 4S, the mod community likely took that as a challenge. Before long, the service had been hacked and shortly thereafter ported to a number of potentially compatible devices.
The problem, of course, is that Apple gets to decide what devices are compatible, not the users. So they’ve taken steps to undo the work that hackers and jailbreakers have done… → Read More
India’s Information Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, has gone on the record to say that “once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media.” This must come as a surprise to the companies and individuals that have been blocked, sued, or antagonized by the government in months past.
Many social media websites, as well as larger indexing services like… → Read More
In what may, in a couple years, be remembered as a telltale remark of overconfidence, Samsung’s AV product manager said today in an interview “TVs are ultimately about picture quality. Ultimately. How smart they are…great, but let’s face it that’s a secondary consideration.” Pride goeth before a fall, Samsung!
It’s true in a way. But only in the dumbest possible way. Yes, TVs are about… → Read More
Tools cannot judge of their own use. The hammer does not rebel at striking pavement, the brush recoil at distasteful composition. This is true of the internet and its tools as well. What is bittorrent? A way to easily transfer large files between peers. Used by many people in legitimate ways, by pirates for illicit purposes. Bittorrent can’t choose to allow one and deny the other. If it could, it… → Read More
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