You can imagine that Barnes & Noble, with 774 stores scattered across suburban strip-mall America, finally got fed up with the way Amazon’s Kindle dominates the e-book market. “I know,” some B&N exec must have said. “Let’s pull an Apple move on their sorry asses!” The result: a nearly buttonless e-b

When the zombie apocalypse hits, you’ll want to have a copy of Wikipedia with you. And you’ll want to make sure it works even if the power is out, cellphone and internet connections are nonexistent, and you’re hunkered down in a remote cave. That way, you’ll be able to consult the sum of all human [

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a discussion about press embargoes, with Tom Foremski, Damon Darlin and Mark Glaser, skillfully moderated by Sam Whitmore. Also in the audience, and contributing worthy comments, were Rafe Needleman, Paul Boutin, and other members of the press and PR corps. I kic

I’ve been testing the Verizon Droid for the past few days, and it’s an awesome phone. But even though I’m eager to ditch my iPhone and eighty-six AT&T, I’m not going to switch to Verizon for the Droid. Don’t get me wrong: I am very impressed with what Motorola has built. In my mind, the […]

clearing sky– cherry petals lying blown upon the asphalt– what have you taught us except to fall, and fall, and fall? published in American Tanka #16

One thing follows another,as sure as teeth meshwith teeth, the pinion turns the gear,the axle drives the wheel and the worldtumbles forward on its pivot:Some things are reversible,allowing for the unavoidable backlash,a little play, a wiggle in the works,a slap in the gears, the jerk of each caras t

The rosin dust on the violinist’soldest violin is white,like the chalk beneath the wordswhere children learn to writethe equations that will definethe arcs and angles of their work.Rosin is the trace of a hundredthousand notes, silent, no sparkremaining but the sense that allhas come to rest: the sc

The collective intelligence poured into inventing new portable games over the past several centuries is equivalent, scientists estimate, to the outpouring of genius from a whole year’s worth of Nobel prize winners. Except instead of curing cancer, we’re making toys for kids who have trouble paying a

Sept. 24, 1979: First Online Service for Consumers Debuts The company known as Compu-Serve, and later CompuServe, opened its doors in 1969, providing dial-up computer timesharing to businesses. Over the next decade, it grew into a solid business providing corporations with online data. But the idea

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s unsurprising affirmation of support for network neutrality is a victory for the high-minded principle of open, unfettered internet access. Too bad it means the days of all-you-can-eat, flat-rate internet access are probably over. Net neutrality sounds like a good id

I’ll admit it: I got into journalism for the money. Columbia Journalism School dean Nicholas Lemann has said: “I’ve never met a single person in 35 years who went into journalism out of pure economic reason.” He never met me. While my motivation wasn’t purely financial, I’d be lying if I said that w

Brian X. Chen wrote a moving story about how three professional photographers are continuing to pursue their art even though they’re almost totally blind. One of them went blind after he’d become a photographer, but has found a way to continue working using a Nokia N82 and an iPhone 3GS. This piece