Oh dear, so Apple has released a new product, and the techie blogosphere has gone crazy. The early verdict seems negative, with various people pointing out the many features that it does not have, but to me Hitler sums it up nicely when he says that it is an over-sized Read more…
As usual, xkcd makes an excellent point: With sizes of up to 64GB contained in a tiny card the size of a coin, I wonder why the content industries are not concentrating more on such storage devices, and continue to insist that the war on piracy is an online endeavour. Read more…
I have been spending perhaps too much time recently engaged in what one could call the war between old media and the Internet. As an avid cybernaut and proud card-carrying member of the social media revolution, I am often puzzled by the level of vitriol directed against the blogosphere, Twitter, Read more…
Much digital ink has already been spent on commenting on Judge Richard Posner’s bizarrely reactionary proposal that the only solution to save newspapers is to ban linking. I usually try to avoid stories already heavily covered because most of the times I end up repeating things that some other people Read more…
There are a lot of threats to society as we know it, some more worrisome than others. Were I to draw a list, I would include things like climate change, political apathy, racism, xenophobia, and social disengagement, just to name a few. Nonetheless, I try not to worry too much, Read more…
Anyone who studies technology knows about the tiered nature of its adoption. Whenever a new technology or application is invented, you get the early adopters, the trend-setters, the cool-hunters; these are people who are usually clued into new applications and have a knack of joining winning technologies at the very Read more…
I have read with interest Henry Porter’s scathing indictment of Google in yesterday’s Observer, an article generating some heated discussion online. While I often enjoy his writings, I have to say that on this occasion he has written a thoroughly misinformed article that seems to conflate concepts and technologies. I Read more…
The unveiling of Google StreetView UK is being met with that uniquely British mixture of outrage, amusement and derision that I can never quite get right (much like the intricacies of the English language I suspect, but I digress). On Wednesday the village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire blocked the StreetView Read more…
Before being attacked by the Lynne Trusses of the world, the title of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End is not missing an apostrophe. The book is named after a retirement community which was chosen by either “an everyday illiterate or someone who really understood the place.” Vinge is part of a Read more…
The Guardian has an excellent post on the Amazon Kindle controversy. The Author’s Guild threatened legal action against Amazon because the Kindle’s read-aloud function “is not paying anyone for audio rights”. Neither does my sister when she reads books to my nephews, but I digress. What a sad state of Read more…