January 2009 - Posts

It’s a necessity
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% Read More...
Posted 30 January 09 12:32 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under
Sneaking into the Macintosh launch
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 Read More...
Posted 25 January 09 11:07 by sprague | 2 Comments   
Filed under
Prepping for ITExpo
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 Read More...
Posted 23 January 09 05:14 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Filed under ,
Disproving the Qwerty effect
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 Read More...
Posted 19 January 09 07:09 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under
Do you know any scientists?
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't Read More...
Posted 16 January 09 07:16 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under ,
Tag it
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 Read More...
Posted 08 January 09 12:13 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under ,
VOIPs not dead, it's just no longer cool
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 Read More...
Posted 06 January 09 10:19 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Filed under ,
It’s Twitter’s Turn
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 Read More...
Posted 06 January 09 06:51 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under ,
Journalism and talent agencies
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 Read More...
Posted 05 January 09 06:43 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under
No CES for me this year
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, Read More...
Posted 04 January 09 11:58 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Filed under ,
Save hard drive space with Mklink
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. Read More...
Posted 03 January 09 01:41 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Filed under ,

Search

This Blog

Subscribe with Bloglines

Add to Google

Add to My Yahoo!

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter

    Syndication

    Page view tracker