Bitcoins are nominally worth $113 as of this very moment. That means very little in the real world. As Forbes writer Kasmir Hill notes, it’s pretty difficult to go up to the McDonald’s cashier and offer an invisible cryptocurrency that resides entirely on the Internet in exchange for a Big Mac. She’s survived a week using nothing but Bitcoins and, although she’s still alive, her experience wasn’t… → Read More
We all make mistakes, but for the AP and Twitter to futz up a phishing attack so royally is an embarrassment. As you’ll recall, the Associated Press’ Twitter account was compromised due to a phishing attack yesterday during which a tweet went out that said “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” → Read More
Sim City, EA’s beleaguered sim game that, for a time, was probably the most cursed title in the blogosphere, now allows players to place Nissan-branded® solar® recharging® stations® in their cities®. The cha®ging stations add a boost of happiness® to surrounding homes and businesses. You can download it here for free. (All Rights Reserved, While Supplies Last) → Read More
In light of the recent PyCon debacle in which an offended party publicly shamed two developers at a conference for discussing dongles, I thought it would be interesting to address the problems of “lad culture” on the Internet (and, partially, the Silicon Valley/Alley societies) where wizards stay up late and make dick jokes over IRC. → Read More
Apple doesn’t need a miracle, but clearly the marketing department thinks the company needs to step things up. To wit: Apple’s latest iPhone web page which touts “There’s iPhone. And then there’s everything else.” It’s a brassy, ballsy statement worthy of Steve Jobs himself and it seems to show an Apple undaunted yet clearly aware that it can’t just say nothing about the competition. → Read More
Although I, like many of you, suffered through Sony’s interminable and boring press conference last night, I came away less concerned about the PlayStation’s future as a platform. What I saw, in short, was a company that has finally embraced the network to a degree that forces its competitors to play catch-up and, barring a horrible blunder on Sony’s part, could guarantee some modicum of success… → Read More
Every few months I’m reminded of the intensity of feeling some technologies – be they physical objects (they usually are) or web services – engender in a certain subset of the human population. It’s a well-documented effect: The object of desire is courted for months before launch, then at launch it is defended to the death, and then, when it is obvious that said object is a success or failure… → Read More
There is a certain kind of Silicon Valley striver that I find abhorrent but, being separated by them by a full continent I feel I’m far enough removed to perhaps understand their wild-eyed efforts at self promotion and I often give the weirdos out in Palo Alto a pass. This time I can’t. → Read More
I’ve tried to avoid chiming in on Blackberry 10 but the past few days have brought us an excellent set of reviews and assessments of the platform and, now that I’ve had the chance to play with the device first-hand, I’m ready to say it: Blackberry did a great job, but it won’t be enough. → Read More
It’s easy to hate CES. It’s a vapid, broken wunderkammer filled with booze, waste, and gadgets no one will buy for months if not years if ever at all. The show floor is a crass place where marketers try out ways to get into our wallets and manufacturers, caught in a spiral of “design-build-trash” have to pump out new hardware just because they have to pump out new hardware – like a toothless… → Read More
When I was growing up, my dad taught me that potassium nitrate, sulphur, and charcoal made gunpowder. He told me that you could add iron to the mix to get a red flame and that acids wouldn’t eat through your test tube. Then he sent me into the basement to make whatever I wanted while he read the paper. → Read More
In the great, wide world of journalism, games journalism is a weird animal. Those who “practice” – and practice it well – face a barrage of PR perks, free trips, and angry houses. Access is given and taken away by marketing folks on a whim. There are a few great news sources (Polygon is one as is Rock, Paper, Shotgun), a few silly ones, and a few horrible ones. But on the whole, not many folks… → Read More
Writer and “Media Inventor” Robin Sloan wrote an interesting book called Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore about an out-of-work web designer in San Francisco who goes to work at a bookstore. The only things fantastical about his novel, I suspect, are that the web designer, named Clay, is out of work and that he can find a book store in which to work. → Read More
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: most of the reviews you read online are performed in a manner that you, as an intelligent consumer, would find abhorrent. I’m not naming names nor am I pointing fingers, but aside from a few very specific cases, your vision of a highly-experienced tech journalist sitting down at a workbench next to a Faraday cage and a drop test station is pretty much… → Read More
I wanted to take a moment to pour out a little Club Mate in honor of Flash on mobile and to point out that it wasn’t two years ago that the Flash/iPhone wars were top of mind for most people. Heck, even Steve Jobs chimed in when it looked bleakest.
But, as we learned last year, mobile Flash was dead. Kaput. Deceased. No longer. Ex. → Read More
Remember netbooks? Exactly. Two years ago netbooks could do no wrong. They were the future, a way to get work done on the go on a laptop the size of a paperback book. In the end, manufacturers saw them as a great way to squeeze profit out of a moribund product line.
Sadly, I fear that’s where we’re headed in the tablet market. → Read More
Vanity Fair is one of my all-time favorite magazines — it publishes loads of incredibly well-written stories about fascinating topics and people. Its regular features, like My Stuff and the Proust Questionnaire, are always entertaining.
So, I was pretty excited to get an email from one of Vanity Fair‘s publicists this morning, offering an advance copy of a story that will run in the August… → Read More
It’s been a while since I came to Google’s defense but I think it’s time to talk about what an absolute downer it is to dig through a lot of tech commentary these days. The most recent example came after the launch of Google’s Glass project, a HUD for future travelers that will let us connect to our world in a fairly non-obtrusive way. Arguably, the product is pretty pie-in-the-sky, but all things… → Read More
Last week, our writer Devin Coldewey wrote a 3,000-word essay on Google+. It got 114 comments. Comment numbers are a wildly inaccurate metric for popularity in general – some posts get 100 comments because they’re poorly written, sensationalistic, and/or just strike a nerve – but in this case 114 is a good number for a long piece on a relatively boring subject. On the same day we posted a video… → Read More
Remember Highlight? That app that everyone thought was hot stuff back at SXSW? I used it for a few days and then deleted it, discovering quite quickly that the app, despite some utility, was an absolute battery hog. But what Highlight did was prove that, given the proper scenario, check-in works and is important. What frustrates me most, however, is that we keep doing it wrong.
Take this new … → Read More
They say news is what happens to the editor on his way to work, so here’s some news: podcast distributor Mevio has apparently pivoted right out of the game. The company hosted a number of well-known webcasts including, for a long time, the late GeekBrief.tv. I used the service for about two years to host my own podcast and was quite happy with the service, as were a number of other users I spoke… → Read More
Rather than do a CES pre-round-up of exciting products I’d like to address this interesting slant on the whole “massive electronics trade show in the middle of the desert” concept that has kept the Gadgets crew here up for the past few weeks. MG said Apple won CES. He was being snide, but, in a way, honest because, in the end, nobody wins CES.
The Consumer Electronics Show is, as its name… → Read More
While laughable in scope and reach (not to mention ridiculous in terms of potential enforcement) the Stop Online Piracy Act is seen as a very real threat to our freedom to, in short, surf the Internet. Although its ramifications are far more draconian than I’m letting on here, I posit that the government is the least of our concern when it comes to online freedom. Let’s catch up since our last few… → Read More
It’s the holiday season, when a webmaster’s mind turns to thoughts of love and charity. Take Regretsy, for example. The site collected a bit of money and began buying and sending gifts to the kids in the Regretsy community whose parents were having financial problems. In this economy, that could be just about anybody and, the Internet being the Internet, there was an outpouring of affection and… → Read More
Here’s a little inside baseball for you all but I wanted to get a pet peeve off my chest: all these darned watermarks on gadget imagery. It got pretty egregious this morning over at BGR where they posted some pictures of some purported iPhone 4S parts that (surprise) look very much like iPhone 4 parts. I was struck, however, by the plethora of watermarks boldly slapped onto the face of the image… → Read More
In Japan, a multiple-megabit Internet connection costs pennies. I pay $99 for 50-mbps (and that’s really about 1 mbps (when it’s not raining) in Brooklyn. But why, you ask? Well, to hear cable companies (and carriers) tell it, it costs a pretty penny to get all that data to your door. Providers have to lease connectivity from the backbone and, as such, they’re forced to add caps to prevent us… → Read More
For most of the last decade, the carriers have called the shots. Likened to “Soviet ministries” by Walt Mossberg, carriers had full control of their environment, from billing to customer service to device availability. There were four carriers and each competed on different platforms but generally handset manufacturers went to them, hat in hand, and showed off a crop of new devices. Like mad… → Read More
Hello, fellow movie-theater patrons! I’ve got something to say to you. Not all of you, of course — but it seems the number of you that need to hear this is increasing at a ridiculous rate. You ready? Shut the hell up. → Read More
So I had to go pick up a new wireless router yesterday, and picked up a plain $35 Netgear one. Checking the back, I noticed this amazing, amazing panel, full of the most misleading garbage I’ve seen in a long time. Netgear should be ashamed of themselves. Let’s just take a look at what’s wrong with this panel. → Read More
Comic from the great NatalieDee The Grube talks about an Apple-less MacWorld and how it will be a pretty sad show without the regular one-ring circus that is the Steve Jobs keynote but that it won’t be absolutely horrible, with smaller companies actually getting some attention this time. My thinking? Nah. Big trade shows are going down and here are a few reasons why: → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
