Just before the holiday, my friend and former boss Jim Louderback invited me to appear on his video show, downLOADED, to talk about the week’s top tech stories. To my surprise, Redg Snodgrass — another friend, who has worked with VentureBeat off and on over the past two years — was the other guest.

“If you’re bored, you’re not paying attention” has been the motto on my blog for at least a couple of years. I’m not sure where the phrase came from, but to me it’s a statement that there is always something interesting going on, if you are simply willing to take an interest, open your eyes, […]

There is data on gun use in the U.S. Unfortunately, we don’t have good access to it, which makes informed discussion almost impossible. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms collects statistics on gun sales and where those guns wind up. They know the make, model, and details of guns used in c

People are increasingly dissatisfied with their social networks — the advertising, the lack of clear privacy protections, the intimations that anything you say can and will be used in a promotional manner at some point in the future — and some of them, this week, have even started to abandon them. K

In my column this week, I return to the subject of Microsoft — and suggest a way that the company can give its Windows Phone OS a boost. Carrier subsidies are increasingly standing in the way of innovation. “We’re drunk off the subsidy model,” IDC analyst Ramon Llamas told VentureBeat last week. The

After tracking my daily sleep hours, caffeine and alcohol consumption, mood, weight, and exercise on and off for a year, I decided to see if this data could teach me anything. And here it is: There’s a fairly strong negative correlation between the amount of caffeine I consume and the hours I sleep

VentureBeat’s second annual CloudBeat conference is coming up, and here’s why you should be there: * Unlike most other conferences, customers are center stage at CloudBeat 2012. We’ll have IT executives talking about how they implement cloud technologies in the real world, sharing equal billing with

Here we go again. The clouds part, and another iPhone descends from the heavens. What mystical secrets will be written on the device’s extra-large, 640-by-1,136-pixel Retina display? Will there be earthshaking new features? Will it contain the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everyt

“It’s not working! Oh my god! Where did everybody go? It’s like being deprived of your oxygen or something.” I used those immortal words to describe the experience of being unable to access Twitter for about an hour last week. Jonathan Bloom at ABC 7 here in the Bay Area interviewed me last week abo

One product that Apple does exceptionally well is the press conference. This week’s Worldwide Developers Conference was no exception, with a two-hour presentation that, while on the long side, was perfectly orchestrated, beautifully presented, and full of real news. It’s that last item that, for som

Facebook’s post-IPO performance has been poor. But is it so poor that it will hurt the prospects for other startups? The short answer: Almost certainly. This is the subtext of the wave of anger and disappointment over Facebook’s stock slide over the past few weeks. First, let’s get something straigh

Here’s my latest column. I wrote this yesterday, after stewing about the affair over the weekend. Perhaps my anger is misplaced? Let me know what you think. The text of the column is below. Also, this week I’m in Los Angeles for the All Things Digital 2012 conference, also known as D10. Will you be