John Markoff Steve Lohr of the New York Times has a good piece on an interesting product that you and I won’t be buying: IBM’s new mainframe computer, which Big Blue announced today. The story explains why these ginormous …
Confessions of a Left-Handed Technology User
When it comes to computers, southpaws are faced by a vast right-hand conspiracy.
Think Evernote’s Interface Could Be Better? So Does Evernote
Many, many tech companies hold conferences here in San Francisco. But Evernote’s Trunk conference, which I’m attending today, is unique: The 700 people here include not only developers and journalists (the typical conference …
The Experts on Microsoft’s New Logo: It’s Good! Or Bad!
When you’re a journalist, the experts want to talk to you — about every possible topic, and mostly in hope that you’ll quote them in articles. So I wasn’t surprised when I got two pitches concerning folks — both identified as …
A Few Thoughts on Microsoft Logos New and Old
My colleague Matt Peckham already wrote about Microsoft’s new logo, which the company unveiled today. Its defining attribute is that it’s extremely consistent with the “Modern UI” (formerly known as Metro) which is rolling out …
The Inevitable Phyllis Diller-Apple Anecdote
When I heard that Phyllis Diller had died at the age of 95 — here’s a tribute by my colleague Richard Zoglin — I mourned the loss of one of stand-up comedy’s few true legends. But I also thought back to the conversation I had a …
Talk to Your Community, Twitter
If you want to know about the future Twitter’s attempting to build for itself, the best source is the company’s own developer blog. On Thursday, it featured a post by Twitter’s Michael Sippey outlining some changes. The piece …
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Review: This Tablet’s Mightier with a Pen
When Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphone went on sale in the U.S. in February, two things made it, um, noteworthy. At 5.3″, its display was the largest one ever offered on a phone. And the Note came with Samsung’s S Pen, a precision …
The New Klout: A Warmer, Fuzzier Bottom Line on Your Online Reputation
People tend to have strong opinions about Klout, the Silicon Valley startup which analyzes online influence and boils it down to a credit-score-like single number on a scale of one to 100.
Some folks check their Klout scores …
App.net Made Its Goal. But Can It Make It?
When I last (and first) wrote about App.net — an ad-free, developer-friendly, would-be Twitter competitor — I was wondering whether it would meet its goal of raising $500,000 via a Kickstarter-esque crowdfunding system by …
Technology in the 1990s, as Captured in Obsolete Computer Store Signs
On Saturday, my wife and I went to run some errands at a shopping center in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. As we pulled into the parking lot, we let out simultaneous little startled gasps: Micro Center, …
App.net: Both Twitter Clone and Anti-Twitter
Dalton Caldwell is a San Francisco entrepreneur who founded iMeem (a music-centric social network which was bought and then shuttered by MySpace) and Picplz (which lost the iPhone photo-sharing war to Instagram). Back on July 1, …