Look at the list of things Americans now list as necessities (according to a new poll by Pew Research ) Car 91% Clothes Washer 90% Clothes Dryer 83% Air Conditioning 70% Microwave 68% TV 64% Home Computer 51% Cell phone 49% Dishwasher 35% Cable TV 33...

The Apple Macintosh was launched 25 years ago, which seems like ancient history because of course it is, but it’s fun to reflect a little on it because it brings back lots of personal memories for me – especially memories of what I think was the true...

One more week and I’ll be off to Miami for ITExpo East.  I don’t usually look forward to trade shows, but I really enjoyed the last one and we have so many cool things planned that I can’t wait to get there.  The organizer, Rich Tehrani, wrote...

I still run into people who cite the “Qwerty effect” as evidence that sometimes a big head start will give an inferior technology unfair market dominance at the expense of “better” ones.  This theory has been disproven historically (it’s not true...

Now this is sad… Only 18 percent of us know a scientist personally, according to a 2005 survey (subscription required), and when asked in 2007 to name scientific "role models," the results were dismal . Forty-four percent of Americans couldn...

Here's a cool new app from a sister team of mine: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/ First, download the free app to your Windows Mobile phone (takes just a couple seconds). When you run the app on your phone, it starts the camera automatically. Just aim the...

I've been following the conversation in the blogosphere (and in last night’s Calliflower podcast ) among the VOIP pundits, arguing whether VOIP is dead or alive. I'm sort of an outsider to all this, since I've only been following VOIP for the past year...

Every great new social phenomenon has a "fad" phase , where zillions of people join in because, well, because zillions of others are joining. A few years ago I suddenly reunited with my old friends at Apple Japan because suddenly it seemed like...

Traditional media is being killed by the plummeting costs of content creation and distribution, thanks to wonderful new technologies like cheap HD camcorders, easy-to-make podcasts, and Twitter . The resulting lower barriers to entry make it possible...

Michael Wolf is right on, at GigaOM, when he questions the long-term importance of CES .  I got a lot out of attending in person last year , but I bet I’ll get even more out of it this year by not attending. There is value in having a shared experience...

There’s no shortage of disk space in my house, but only a small amount really needs to be backed up.  The music and photos --  yes of course you want that backed up, but why waste gigabytes on a database that can just be recreated later anyway...