
Privacy is Dead and We Killed it
Privacy…everyone keeps talking about it and apparently everyone is concerned with it, but does it matter? I recently watched the documentary, “Terms and Conditions may Apply,” which provides a fascinating look at how organizations such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and others have changed the way they look at and approach privacy. After watching the movie […]

Getting Started with Swift, For NON-Apple Devs
This past weekend I attempted to get started with Swift coding. Since I have not been an Apple Developer for a while, it wasn’t immediately obvious how to get started. But once I fumbled around a few minutes I realized I needed a developer account to get the latest XCode. Jeez, it really shows how […]

DataSift Announces Mega-Round. Apple Buys Topsy for $200 Million. Here’s What You Need to Know
I’m super proud to announce that DataSift has just completed a $42 million financing round coming at the end of a year where its revenue grew several hundred percent year-over-year. Considering our revenue is SaaS revenue this achievement is even more remarkable. The timing of the announcement of this investment couldn’t have been timed more […]

Will Success Ruin Silicon Valley?
Everywhere one looks, Silicon Valley seems ascendant. Tech companies like Apple and Google are among the world’s most valuable and admired, while tech titans like Larry and Sergey, and Mark and Sheryl are given the first-name-only treatment of offline celebrities. Silicon Valley has even stuck its nose into broader society, helped by the fact that […]

Microsoft and Me
Regarding desktops, tablets, and smartphones – I am considering going pure Microsoft. That will mean two new mobile devices, and then switching to IE and Office 365. I will lose apps on my mobile devices and hinder my path to WebRTC. It will be a difficult transition. Why? It really boils down to two frustrations. […]

Yes, Android is winning (at least by what Google cares about)
John Kirk recently took issue with the spate of stories about Android’s increasing share of the smartphone market. In his polemic, “Android’s Market Share Is Literally A Joke“, he argues that Apple is actually winning the smartphone battle because it has a majority of the profits: “Not only do the high priests of market share […]

Is Microsoft doomed? I’ll let you know when Windows 10 comes out.
A lot of folks believe that the Microsoft empire is doomed, and that the rise of touchscreen computing and mobile devices will lead it its inevitable downfall. This may very well be true; it certainly is true that to date, Microsoft’s attempts to enter the touch and mobile markets have been poorly received. Yet much […]

802.11ac is Almost Here
802.11ac will start appearing in force in products this year. It is the latest and greatest Wi-Fi standard that will replace 802.11a, b, and g. It will receive final approval this year. Now, considering how long it has taken the working group, and how many man hours they have put into it that it would solve […]

Growing Internationally
One of the greatest opportunities any established business faces is growth internationally. Take a company like Apple. Recently, much has been made about how they have saturated the domestic marketplace wi their iPhones and iPads. The thinking is a concern over how earth’s largest company can grow much more. This type of thinking lead to […]

Massive Java Update available you should apply it
And you should do this update; Oracle has finally gotten around to pushing a massive 50 vulnerability fixing update to Java. The bad part is that most of us have decoupled Java from our browsers, and I am wondering if this is too little too late. With Mozilla (Firefox) dropping Java support from its browser […]

Irked by IRQs
PCs use interrupt requests known as IRQs to manage various devices such as sound cards and modems. When the device has a need for processing power, it sends an interrupt request to the processor. It’s a silly design as the mere request is an interrupt itself. This is my day. It’s like when someone says […]

Siri, You Don’t Say
Google slated Siri. Apple’s Siri and I have never gotten along. I don’t need a personal assistant with a sense of humor. I need a computer assistant that gives me answers. Siri gives enough backlash that it just isn’t fun to use…or usually does it answer my questions. It’s easy to poke at a new […]

Making Sense of Color after Meraki, and Going Big
I had a draft post I’d written weeks ago entitled something like “Color: Just an Enormously Large Seed Round Gone Horribly Wrong”, or something like that. Which I guess it was — $41,000,000 to build an iOS app with no revenue that no one ever used. But it wasn’t that interesting, that post/story, so I […]

Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive; maybe they’re not apples after all?
Cloud storage product Dropbox is one of those tools that users tend to rave about. It’s deceptively simple. It’s pretty reliable. The value proposition is immediately apparent. It has paid tiers of usage that bring additional storage but (like other freemium beacons such as Evernote) the free offering is rich enough to be compelling, engaging, […]