Time for a New Calendar, They Say
by Tim Moran So the calendar page has turned, once again, to the beginning of a new year. Most of us did a little partying on 12/31 and got up--however happily--on 1/1 without giving the least bit of thou....
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Wednesday, January 04, 2012 00:01 AM
Wednesday, January 04, 2012 00:01 AM
Customer Revolt Succeeds, Again
by Samuel Greengard In late December, Verizon Wireless decided to institute a $2 "convenience" fee for one-time payments made online or over the phone. The company said that the fee was necessary to offse....
Monday, December 12, 2011 22:12 PM
Lowe's Social Media Fail
Lowe's, the big home-improvement chain, decided to use Facebook to explain its decision to pull ads from the television series All-Amerian Muslim. Issues of common decency and diversity aside, there was a....
Monday, December 12, 2011 21:12 PM
Fat, Dumb, and Happy on the Internet
by Samuel Greengard Pew Research Center's Internet & Life Project reports that 53 percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 go online on any given day for no particular reason. About 81 percent indicated that....
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 18:11 PM
Technotopia Doesn't Exist
From the Annals of Extreme Wrongness, here's Alan Greenspan in 2005: "But recent regulatory reform, coupled with innovative technologies, has stimulated the development of financial products, such as asset....
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 17:11 PM
Reasons to Be Thankful
By Samuel Greengard In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are seven technologies and products that aren't only cool, they've actually improved the quality of our lives: 1. A healthcare revolution. Research....
Monday, November 07, 2011 20:11 PM
Steve Jobs' Last Words
By Tim Moran "A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs," by Mona Simpson, proved wildly popular when published in the New York Times. Writer Peggy Orenstein said she wept when she read it because it demonstrated....
Wednesday, November 02, 2011 18:11 PM
Poor Reviews for Online Reviewers
by Samuel Greengard When user reviews first hit the Internet, they were hailed as a way to tilt the power structure toward consumers. Suddenly, you could click to a site, Amazon, Yelp or TripAdvisor, and ....
Monday, October 31, 2011 20:10 PM
We have redefined cloud computing to include everything we currently do.” –Larry Ellison, 2008
Sandy from the Cynics’ Squad helpfully points me to a 2008 interview Larry Ellison gave where he puts the cloud-computing hype marketers in their place in very entertaining and complete fashion. So,....
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 17:10 PM
The Multitasking Myth
By Samuel Greengard According to a recent study by Nielsen, 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners use these devices while they watch TV. They're checking e-mail, surfing the web, visiting social netw....
Monday, October 24, 2011 16:10 PM
Please Send Me Your Money
by Tim Moran So it turns out those Nigerian scamsters were on to something all along. Now, we're not suggesting you share your personal information or send money to the people behind those plaintive emai....
Friday, October 21, 2011 17:10 PM
A Good Day for Science
Major climate change skeptic, last seen becoming less skeptical, submits papers for peer review; press release says "Global warming is real," and, hey, climate scientists have actually been doing their job....
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 18:10 PM
All You Need Is Robot Love
By Tim Moran I am sure Hooman Samani, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Keio-NUS CUTE Center, a collaboration between the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Keio University of Japan, is....
Thursday, October 06, 2011 18:10 PM
If Only Monkeys Worked in IT
by Tim Moran We've all heard of the infinite monkey theorem. As Wikipedia explains it, this is the idea that "a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will a....
Monday, October 03, 2011 22:10 PM
Facebook and Netflix Test Appetite For Change
by Samuel Greengard The chorus of moans you heard over the last two weeks was the sound of 800 million people coping with yet another round of changes on Facebook. It seems like every few months, Facebook....