TechnologizerSony
I’ve been getting a lot of urgent messages from major companies I do business with lately. Urgent messages telling me that information I gave them has been stolen by unknown parties.
Yup, I’m not only a PlayStation Network member–and therefore a victim of the current Sony security breach–but also a customer of at least three …
TechnologizerSony
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
I’m not a PlayStation Network member, or much of a gamer at all. But I’m kind of fascinated by Internet outages–and the one currently affecting Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity service is one for the record books. In fact, it may be the worst one of all …
TechnologizerComputers
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
A little over a week ago, I wondered whether the world needed tablets that were significantly less costly and significantly less fancy than the iPad and its most prominent rivals. A couple of commenters said that such a beast already existed: Barnes & Noble’s …
TechnologizerTablets
My TIME.com Technologizer column this week looks at RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, a new tablet that’s frustrating in its initial incarnation: it’s full of promise, but feels like RIM simply didn’t have time to finish it before getting it out the door.
Despite the PlayBook’s software issues, the hardware is quite pleasing. With one …
TechnologizerRumors
This is a cross post from our partner site Technologizer.
For years, there’s been a persistent, as-yet-unrealized rumor that Apple will start making HDTVs. Received wisdom, however, has generally argued that it’s not going to happen. TVs are too commoditized; TVs would have to come in too many sizes; TVs are too off message for …
TechnologizerTechnologizer
For this week’s TIME.com Technologizer column, I took a look at personalized-magazine apps–Flipboard, Taptu, and Zite (all for the iPad) and Genieo (for Windows PCs and Macs). Each one is a bit different in its technology and emphasis, but the core notion is similar: They grab stories from all over the Web that are likely to interest …
TechnologizerMicrosoft
Over at TIME.com, my Technologizer column this week is about growing debate over the question of whether Google’s dominance of the search engine market raises antitrust concerns. It’s reminiscent of the debate that went on for most of the 1990s whether Microsoft was a monopolist–a debate that eventually led to the court case known as …
TechnologizerSocial Networking
How does Facebook serve up its social network to more than half a billion people around the world–and do it with surprisingly few outages and glitches? It started out seven years ago by leasing servers in data centers as it needed them. Eighteen months ago, it built its own massive data center in Prineville, Oregon–and decided to …
TechnologizerComputers
Sad but true: We have no national holidays in this country that pay tribute to our great technological heritage. But if we did, April 3rd would be a good candidate. On that day in 1981, at a trade show in San Francisco, a startup called Osborne Computer Corporation announced the Osborne 1, the first mass-produced portable computer. That …
TechnologizerSmartphones
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
Research firm IDC–a sister company of my former employer, PCWorld–has released its latest estimates of the current and future marketshare of major smartphone operating systems. The headline news: It’s predicting that Android will continue to boom and that …
TechnologizerSamsung
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
At CTIA Wireless earlier this week, Samsung announced a new 10.1″ Galaxy Tab tablet–one which it said was thinner and lighter than the iPad 2, with the same starting price of $499. After the press event, I scurried over to the Samsung booth in hopes of …
TechnologizerGoogle
For this week’s TIME.com Technologizer column, I wrote about Gmail–a service which I find both indispensable and frustrating. In that story, I didn’t account for all of Gmail’s pros and cons, though. And one major pro is that there are an array of third-party tools that teach Gmail new tricks.
Here are four of my favorites:
1. …
