Before the dawn of Facebook, the notion of organizing information into never-ending feeds of terse status updates would have sounded like gobbledegook. But Facebook proves that when it comes to keeping track of your friends’ …
Dear Facebook: Here’s How to Not Screw Up Instagram
First, an important disclaimer: I’m not predicting that Facebook is going to ruin Instagram, the wonderful photo-sharing service for smartphones which it is acquiring.
True, when I think of startups Facebook has acquired, I …
Toshiba’s New Tablets Loom Large (and Small, and Medium-Sized)
In their never-ending, so-far-unsuccessful quest to give the iPad a run for its money, makers of Android tablets have produced models in a dizzying array of sizes. It doesn’t seem to be helping, and the novelty is wearing off. …
Improbable PC Pioneer: Commodore’s Jack Tramiel, 1928-2012
The PC industry is so young that a remarkable percentage of its most significant figures are still with us. But it lost a key one on Sunday when Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, died at 83. Commodore was one of the first …
TiVo Gets Comcast’s Xfinity on Demand
I have a gazillion boxes of various sorts connected to the two TVs in our household, but the longest-serving one is my TiVo DVR. I got it when I moved into my present home and signed up for Comcast cable TV — and I still …
The Story of the Death (and Rebirth) of Polaroid Film
In 2008, Polaroid discontinued a product that seemed to be pretty much obsolete in the digital age: instant film. Except that it wasn’t obsolete at all. A lot of people still liked taking Polaroid photos and found things in the …
Hipmunk’s Mobile Travel Apps Can Now Check Your Calendar
Hipmunk, the clever tool for searching for flights and hotel rooms, just got a little more clever. It’s adding a new feature to its iPhone, iPad and Android apps that sucks in your calendar appointments and visualizes them, so …
Nest’s Learning Thermostat Gets Its First Software Update
When Silicon Valley startup Nest started shipping its first product — the iPod of thermostats — last November, it explained that the intelligent, Internet-connected gadget was designed to automatically download and install …
Bad News: Google Is Doing the Corporate Future-Vision Video Thing
Next Issue Introduces Its All-You-Can-Eat Digital Magazine Smörgasbord
Next Issue Media is a startup jointly owned by some of America’s biggest publishers: Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp and TIME’s parent company, Time Inc. It’s been busy building and testing a newsstand/reader for digital …
Maybe You’d Be Better Off Without Filters, Instagram
I’m not sure if I have a favorite smartphone app, but I can’t think of one which has given me more pleasure than Instagram.
I like using it to take photos with my iPhone 4S; I like sharing them; I like seeing the photos which …
25 Years of IBM’s OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System
Big Blue’s next-generation operating system was supposed to change everything. It didn’t. But it’s also never quite gone away