Imagine you had a roommate who you’d known for ten years as a somewhat annoying, slightly compulsive, very finicky but ultimately very talented and capable individual. Now, suppose that one day this person showed up wearing completely new, very trendy clothes. A new hairstyle, sort of a New Wave fli

“Asshat,” which perfectly combines aspects of stupidity or clownishness and assholism. I say this knowing that Gadget Lab blogger Rob Beschizza has outed me as someone who says “Oh my goodness” with no apparent trace of irony. Guilty as charged. Hey, I’ve got a young child. You want to hear a kinder

It’s not too late to get on the “web 2.0” bandwagon, says publishing magnate Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term. And if you’re wondering what it takes to build a web 2.0 startup, O’Reilly has just the conference for you — the Web 2.0 Expo. O’Reilly Media and CMP are co-hosting the conference, which r

Jonathan Abrams’ last startup, Friendster, was one of the first social-networking companies to attract an audience of users numbering in the millions. Launched in 2003, the site grew quickly through word of mouth, as people rushed to connect with their friends online. Abrams became one of the most v

At Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters Monday evening, a couple hundred entrepreneurs and investors gathered to schmooze, eat mashed-potato-and-roast-beef hors-d’oeuvres from martini glasses, and spend a few desultory moments looking over the eight companies on display in the middle of the meeti

Content management system. n. A device for moving information from one computer to another computer by means of human manual labor. (My current working definition.)

Damn you, Google. As if my email addiction weren’t bad enough already, you have to go and create Google Mobile, a Java app for my cellphone that lets me read my Gmail messages, even on my crappy but stylish Razr V3. Message threading, easy scanning, and most importantly, quick message deletion–all t

Last night Clara was working on her homework, part of which involved math problems — simple addition. (Math homework! In kindergarten! But that’s another post.) 2+2, 2+3, 6+0, etc. Karen set her up with a handful of clementines on the table and her homework folder. For 2+3, Clara put two clementines

At the start of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, near the McLaren Lodge at Fell and Stanyan, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition holds a monthly “Freedom from Training Wheels” event to help kids learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. On Sundays the drive is closed to car traffic, except fo

That’s what my inbox contained on my first day of work at Wired News. My inbox had been open for less than 2 weeks prior to my start date, so that represents about 10 days’ worth of mail, of which only one message was directed at me specifically (that I know of — I didn’t […]

Someone has made a documentary about Helvetica. Yes, the font. In its honor they’re holding a haiku contest. Two of my favorite things — haiku and fonts — wrapped up in a third favorite thing — a contest. Ooh! I can hardly contain myself. Helvetica documentary world premier haiku contest

Check it out: The new Wired.com homepage just went live 2 minutes ago. Woo hoo!