March 4, 2013 at 1:15 PM by I must confess, I was neither surprised nor disturbed by last month’s announcement that the Opera web browser was switching to the WebKit rendering engine. But perhaps I’m
Tim Wu, writing for The New Yorker “News Desk”, has done us all a grand favor by penning a sort of grand unified theory on how the “open beats closed” axiom can be true in the face of Apple’s decade-l
Stanley Kubrick was missing. The office he was using at MGM’s West 55th Street world headquarters in New York to supervise the national release of 2001: A Space Odyssey was empty, and nobody knew wher
Children Toil in India’s Mines, Despite Legal Ban A young coal miner studied English during a break in Khliehriat, India. The few nearby schools teach in local dialects. Credit... Kuni Takahashi for T
Rat-Size Ancestor Said to Link Man and Beast Humankind’s common ancestor with other mammals may have been a roughly rat-size animal that weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long furry tail and
In January of 2008 some friends and I launched PackRat, an early social game on Facebook. Eight months later, in August, we gave PackRat a cash-backed virtual currency. By December we were turning ove
Editor’s note: Adam Rifkin is co-founder and CEO of PandaWhale , an online network of interesting things and people. You can follow him on Twitter @ifindkarma . Pop quiz: what is the favorite social n
iPhone 15 Pro: Release date rumors, news, and everything you need to know last updated 4 September 23 An Apple event has been announced for September 12, 2023, and we're likely to see the iPhone 15 Pr
I was enjoying my recent blog fame, sitting alone, doing nothing. I opened a new tab in Safari on my Mac and up popped the top sites page. I decided to go to CNN and I browse around the technology section until I see something that makes me scream. I read through it again and again, trying to make…
At the end of January, CNet News.com ran this story about the Mac version of Opera possibly being cancelled . The reason, ostensibly, is because Opera isn’t happy that Apple is now producing its own w
The year was 2004. I had just graduated college and my old Gateway mini tower PC was on its last legs. I was about to move out to California to begin my life. My parents asked what I wanted as a prese
When Marissa Mayer took over as Yahoo's new CEO, she was instantly beset with widespread calls to save Flickr . Traffic was steadily declining year over year. The mobile app was an atrocity living in
John E. Karlin, 1918-2013 John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94 John E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use. Credit... Courte
2 min read · Jan 31, 2013 -- In early 2007—during “Obvious 1.0”—I was thinking up a lot of product ideas. And, of course, naming was often the hardest part (at least of the conceptualizing). I’m obses
Inventor Labs - Blog What it's Really Like Working with Steve Jobs 2011-10-12 People who worked with Steve Jobs (I'll call him Steve) usually don't talk about it. It's kind of an unwritten rule, partl
COLUMN 16/01/2013 David Hepworth's regular column, in the January / February 2013 issue of InPublishing magazine. Should magazines have a bit more steak and a bit less sizzle? In November last year, J
Like any craftsman, I care deeply about my tools, because without them, I can’t do my job. But unlike a carpenter or plumber, my tools change constantly, putting me in the unenviable position of havin
Earlier in “Is Siri really Apple’s future?” I outlined Siri’s strategic promise as a transition from procedural search to task completion and transactions. This time, I’ll explore that future in the context of two emerging trends: Internet of Things is about objects as simple as RFID chips slapped…
I like to make apps look good. It’s what I enjoy most, and I think it’s a very important part of the app-creation process. In fact, so do users. “Probably the biggest impediment to this app’s success is how ugly it looks.” –Top review from a popular travel app While there is much to be said about…
The world got its first inkling of the quick wit that would make Apple’s Siri an icon during a packed press conference held before an auditorium of tech elite. "Who are you?" an Apple executive asked
Four years ago I got my iPhone 3G. To this day it’s my daily driver smartphone and constant digital companion when I’m out and about. The world has since long moved on to newer devices with far more c
Steven Heller Dashboard Type What Type of Driver Are You? Rick Poynor Exposure: Clive Owen in character by Dan Winters Anatomy of a publicity picture Debbie Millman Todd Waterbury Debbie Millman talks to Target’s Chief Creative Officer Todd Waterbury about how technology is changing consumption and…
It’s the funny season in technology land. The holidays are over, the major technology trade shows are soon to pass, and thousands of tech writers have nothing to report. So we get stories like the Wal
Dave Wiskus, in a thoughtful piece for Macworld, “ Apple and the Future of Design ”: It’s curious how Apple’s hardware and software have taken suchdivergent paths. Looking at iOS hardware and software
I blame the floppy disk. For years, it served as the icon for “save,” clearly illustrating to the user that your data would be written to that flat square thing with the hole in it—a digital represent
Quijada’s invented language has two seemingly incompatible ambitions: to be maximally precise but also maximally concise. Photograph by Dan Winters / Typography By AJ Frackattack There are so many way
During the early development of Safari, I didn’t just worry about leaking our secret project through Apple’s IP address or our browser’s user agent string. It also concerned me that curious gawkers on
As far back as I can remember , I was told I would grow up to be an artist. By age six, my obsessively detailed renderings of Mechagodzilla , et al. were already drawing attention from adults. By the
David James, SMPSP / Everett When the House of Representatives finally, dramatically votes to approve the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, Washington erupts in celebration. Membe
Cliff Edwards’s 2001 “ Sorry, Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work ” piece for Businessweek is deservingly notorious in the annals of claim chowder, but there are a few things about it worth keep
The Autism Advantage Thorkil Sonne and his son Lars, who has autism, at home in Ringsted, Denmark. Credit... Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times When Thorkil Sonne and his wife, Annette, lea
I used to work for a very large survey company. They conduct phone surveys, mail surveys, in-person surveys, and they gather data automatically using various gadgets, apps, and plug-ins. They gather a
The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle? —N. Murdoch If the wi
Only once in my life have I owned the best of anything. That was on June 29th, 2007, the first day the original iPhone went on sale. Purchasing an 8 GB iPhone in 2007 meant I owned the very best mobile phone money could buy 1 . In 2007 the iPhone was in a league of its own. Android would not be…
Brent Caswell wrote a post called " Rethinking the Lockscreen ". Unfortunately he opened his post by heartily bashing iOS. This caused the comments to degrade into a flame war that buried any constructive discussion of the ideas Brent presented. This article is my critique of his ideas. The lock…
I remain steadfast in my belief that one of the best examples of the disproportionate value of the iPhone is the fact that we are able to completely ignore the fact that its form factor is horrible to use as a camera. Yes, the internals are amazing, the guts of the camera are terrific, but when…
No, no, grapefruit is actually NOT a great gift idea for loved ones. Photograph by Thinkstock. Happy holidays, and brace yourself for the season’s worst tradition! I speak not of the crass commerciali
(This essay was a finalist for a 2013 National Magazine Award in the Essay category.) THE PROBLEM WITH environmentalists, Lynn Margulis used to say, is that they think conservation has something to do with biological reality. A researcher who specialized in cells and microorganisms, Margulis was one…
Abhimat