Square, the tiny credit-card reader for smartphones and tablets, is the most interesting thing to happen to payments in a long time. Among the people who think it’s interesting are the executives at payment behemoth PayPal. And …
Yes, I’d Pay to Turn My DVDs into Digital Movies
All Things D’s Peter Kafka is skeptical about Walmart’s new Disc to Digital service, which lets you take one or more DVDs into a Walmart store and pay a fee to unlock digital access to the same content. That lets you stream and …
SXSW Watch: A Disruptive Conversation
Moderating panel discussions, I’ve found, tends to be either a challenge or a cakewalk. It’s tough when you’ve got a panelist who’s a blabbermouth, or one that’s shy. The audience is just as important as the people on stage: If …
No More Dead-Tree Encyclopaedia Britannica: Sad, But Not That Sad
It’s the end of an era that began in 1768. The Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced that it’s terminating publication of its 32-volume print edition. It’ll continue online. But for those of us who grew up on those thick …
Greetings From SXSW (and a Final Plug for My Panel)
I snapped this fuzzy photo with my iPhone at SXSW Interactive, and the intensity of the crowd isn’t some weird aberration — the conference, associated events and parties are often that mobbed. Especially the parties.
I’ve had …
SXSW: The Fate of Libraries
Carson Block, who gave a SXSW Interactive talk on Saturday titled “The Great Library Swindle,” says that he’s passionate about libraries and technology. But he didn’t really need to tell his audience that. The intensity of his …
SXSW: The Man Who Live-Tweeted the Bin Laden Raid
South by Southwest Interactive may be bursting at the seams with serious Twitter users, but as far as I know, there’s only one guy here who made history on Twitter — and he came to Austin all the way from Abbottabad, Pakistan. …
SXSW: Dropping In on Dropbox’s Drew Houston
For a service that’s beloved by so many people, cloud-storage and syncing service Dropbox is surprisingly controversial. On one hand, venture capitalist (and Dropbox investor) Bill Gurley talks about the company someday being …
iWork.com: Headed for Retirement
In a move that I’ll bet surprised absolutely nobody, Apple has e-mailed users of its iWork.com service — a cloud-based collaborative complement to its iWork productivity apps — to alert them that it’s doing away with the …
Next Up: New iPad vs. Windows 8
Apple CEO Tim Cook spent much of Wednesday’s new iPad event reminding everyone in the audience of just how wildly successful the iPad has been. It was hard to accuse him of hubris, though. As Dizzy Dean said, it ain’t bragging if …
Uh Oh: Microsoft Is Unhappy with OnLive Desktop
OnLive Desktop turns Windows 7 into a speedy Web service that runs on iPads and Android tablets. It’s both an impressive technical feat and just plain useful. But at least one Windows expert isn’t so thrilled with it: …
iPad-Related Tweet of the Day
This kind of says it all.