A month ago I did the unthinkable. I quit Facebook. There’s a lot you might learn from my experience, even if you never follow me. I didn’t bail in a… Read More
It was like witnessing the creation of a “generation ship” — a vessel that requires multiple human lifespans to reach its destination. Fifteen of us were gathered in the room.… Read More
Dear Seattle Times executives, I’m writing you in the traditional letter-to-the-editor format because it’s one with which I’m certain you’re familiar. After all, you recently used it in your “Dear… Read More
An early and persistent myth of the web is that the Internet levels the playing field for commerce and content. Does the Internet democratize access? Yes. But does it guarantee attention?… Read More
Friends, and you are my “friends:” I’m giving up on Facebook. No more status updates, no more vacation photos, no more links to interesting columns (even those I haven’t written).… Read More
There are words that are dead. They just don’t know it yet. The advance of technology has left, in its wake, zombie terminology. It’s the verbal equivalent of junk DNA, inserted… Read More
It started at that stage in a relationship where the exhilaration and newness wears off. After eight months, I could no longer ignore worrisome behaviors. They’d become patterns. I finally had to… Read More
It’s not easy being the big kid at the popular children’s pool. Yet that’s exactly where Microsoft finds itself with today’s launch of Office Mix into the now-hot education technology… Read More
Hey, thanks for your tweet asking if you should do an edtech startup based on what I saw at this year’s ASU+GSV Education Innovation Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., the so-called… Read More
When it comes to tech scams, in the immortal words of Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots, I have shamed myself. It was probably only a matter of time. Hadn’t I… Read More
If you want to see the future of Amazon in education, don’t look to Seattle. Look to Sao Paulo. For months, I’ve wondered what Amazon’s strategy for the Kindle in… Read More
This is a tale of two keynotes. One, by a working scientist explaining the work being done in her field. The other, by a recycling expert dropping an inexcusable f-bomb:… Read More
There are many things that seem stubbornly cyclical in their refusal to be resolved in the tech industry. Password management. Bubble valuations. Sexism. I’ve addressed the first two elsewhere. I’ve… Read More
It began as a dare: Take an entire business trip without touching a piece of paper. I nearly choked on my half-finished beer, wondering if I’d been poured malt liquor… Read More
The “learn to code” movement may be about to run afoul of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Few (least of all nerdy me) will argue that learning a computer language… Read More
Happy Data Privacy Day! The first round of credit card numbers is on me! Yes, this Tuesday, Jan. 28 really is Data Privacy Day in the U.S. and Canada, commemorating… Read More
All hail the lowly business card. For it is the most concise chronicler of the advances in communications technology. Despite calls for its elimination as wasteful in an era of… Read More
It’s 2014, and time to ring in the new and throw out the old. Old tech terms, that is: those made meaningless in 2013 by media and marketers. I occasionally… Read More
Makers of tech products are often told to “eat their own dog food” – actually use what they tout in their real-world lives. The same should apply to reviewers of… Read More
There’s a classic tech industry joke. A jet is lost in dense fog and low on fuel. The pilot, desperate to get his bearings, winds up circling an IBM skyscraper.… Read More
When the Kindle Fire HDX was first released, I read reviews that raved how this Kindle finally added business-friendly features, enough to garner it the blessing of corporate IT departments.… Read More
It’s time to shoot the password. And multiple screens are the trigger. I had this epiphany when wrestling with one Rhapsody music service on two devices using three pieces of… Read More
For the past three decades, I have been a psychological test subject. Not in a creepy NSA-and-tin-foil-hat kind of way, but as part of a long-term study designed to understand… Read More
A geek is not a nerd. And vice versa. Unless, of course, they are. When I was a kid, I wore thick black glasses, long pants that were too short… Read More
Memo to Microsoft: When it comes to Surface tablets in the classroom, be careful what you wish for. Because you might be the next victim of education’s Curse of the… Read More
On this twentieth anniversary of the first popular web browser, consider how its potential was viewed just one year after its birth. If only to realize that sometimes in tech… Read More
The tech community has a rite of passage for its newborns hoping to reach adulthood. It is selective, it is harrowing, and it crushes many under the weight of expectation… Read More
Don’t try to be smarter than a smart device. That’s the main lesson I learned from an otherwise flawless first Google Chromecast experience. Chromecast is Google’s new entry into a… Read More
Geeks and science fiction. You can almost track the rise in influence of the former by the inexorable pop-culture spread of the latter. So it was with a sense of… Read More
On its face, it was totally unbelievable. After all, when was the last time you recall any tech support pro-actively contacting you to solve a problem? “Hello, sir. I am… Read More