Rough Drafts

Getting even simple things done with a slightly underpowered computer and a bunch of web-based applications means you spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting for TypePad to publish a post, waiting for Gmail to populate the screen with a list of the latest messages, waiting for an image to download so y

It seems to be a law of ballpoint pens that the best ones inevitably disappear, leaving behind only inferior writing implements. Thus I have managed, over the past year, to lose three Fisher Space Pens (really the perfect all-purpose pocket pen) while the promising but ultimately disappointing Zebra

I finally found an antidote to the bloated, overgrown, poorly designed mess that is iTunes. It’s a little freeware app called Floola that is just a few megabytes in size and requires no installation, so you can just put the application file on your iPod and run it from there. Floola has a straightfo

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

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

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 […]

I started a new job this week, as business editor at Wired News, the online arm of Wired magazine. I couldn’t be more thrilled about this new assignment. I’ll be responsible for the web site’s business and gadgets coverage, including overseeing the blogs Gadget Lab and Epicenter. Wired News doesn’t

Some librarian got her knickers in a twist about the word “scrotum” appearing in the latest Newbery award-winning children’s novel: “The Higher Power of Lucky” is the story of a 10-year-old girl in rural California and her quest for “Higher Power.” The opening chapter includes a passage about a man

Richard Branson has set up a $25 million prize for the first person who can come up with a workable way of removing a billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. It’s a clever idea, offering a big prize as an incentive to spur innovative research. Big purses like this (or the X-Prize, […]

Generally, Apple does software reasonably well. The company understands that the user experience doesn’t end with the plastic and the circuits, but also encompasses the on-screen interface, the dialog boxes, and even the fonts used in its applications. So what happened to iTunes? Version 7 is, frank

My friend You Mon Tsang is finally taking the covers off of Boxxet, his third startup since I first met him a decade ago. It looks very promising. Boxxet takes aim at one of the problems I targeted in the livable web manifesto: that the World Wide Web as viewed through Google is just too […]