October 30, 2011 – 9:19 pm
TweetLet me jump to the conclusion: This is an extraordinary book on many levels: informative, entertaining often, insightful, sympathetic but not indulgent; it rises to its unusual subject and manages to render its complexity in a straightforward manner that attests to the biographer’s talent. Get thee to a physical bookstore, if you can find one, [...]
October 16, 2011 – 11:27 pm
TweetSurprise: To boost its circulation, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal Europe engaged in massive channel stuffing. No kidding. It sounds like everyone discovers, all of a sudden, how medias (old and new) actually work. Granted, when it comes to cheating, News Corp is in a class all by itself. The phone hacking scandal pushed the [...]
October 16, 2011 – 11:08 pm
TweetOn October 4th, after months of speculation, Apple finally introduces the iPhone 5. The kommentariat are ecstatic and approvingly list the new smartphone’s strongest points: Twice the processor speed; seven times the graphics oomph; a new camera with an Apple-designed lens, 8 megapixels and improved image processing; the power of the new iOS 5; iCloud [...]
October 9, 2011 – 7:51 pm
TweetSteve Jobs taught us so many things… To us whose professional life strides tech, ads and media, his way of fostering innovation, of creating an obsessive culture of perfection remains both inspirational and enigmatic. For those who like design and engineering, there isn’t a single field Apple hasn’t entered — or at least influenced. When [...]
October 9, 2011 – 7:48 pm
Tweet‘Humor is the politeness of despair’, an approximate, googlish translation of l’humour est la politesse du désespoir, a saying attributed to noted post-WWII Left Bank jazzman, writer, and engineer, Boris Vian, So, let’s start with the reverent, despairing humor of Chris Calloway in Wired Magazine’s memorial to Steve Jobs: “Heaven got a major upgrade today…” [...]
October 2, 2011 – 10:01 pm
TweetWith each introduction of a new reading device publishers around the world are overcome with the same recurring same fantasy: What if it worked, this time around? Could a reliable business model emerge for news publishing companies? Last week’s launch of new Kindles is no exception to the cyclic fantasy. For those who where on [...]
October 2, 2011 – 9:48 pm
TweetLet’s start gingerly, with Nokia. You’ll recall the indignation when Nokia threw Symbian under the Windows Phone 7 bus and osborned its existing product line. Nokia dead-ended Symbian handsets, causing sales to plunge while everyone waited for the new MicroNokia smartphones. The company didn’t stop there. It then presented Meego, the offspring of Intel’s Moblin [...]
August 28, 2011 – 10:15 pm
Tweet Not so fast. Until the last sinew, the last synapse gives up, Steve will continue to influence the company he co-founded and later recreated. Seeing he could no longer ‘‘meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO’’, Jobs kicks himself upstairs and becomes Chairman, director, and “mere” Apple employee. In a distant future, I [...]
August 28, 2011 – 9:09 pm
Tweet(Includes correction with the right 3rd graph) Two important questions in our times of large public debt and lagging economies: Is it effective to inject public money in support of the ailing media industry? And, in order to ensure the best readers’ bang for the taxpayer’s buck, are some models better than others? Last week, [...]
August 14, 2011 – 8:36 pm
TweetGoing after copyright reformers is risky business. To digital zealots, defending copyright is like advocating the return to the typewriter. (I personally like typewriters; I own several and I recommend a wonderful 1997 Atlantic piece on them at Longform.org). Going after sworn copyright opponents is what Robert Levine does in his just-published book Free Ride [...]
