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Editorials May 14, 2013

Breast Cancer and Elective Mastectomies – If You Knew You Had a Faulty Gene, Would You Delete It?

I am 46, and I have been getting a yearly mammogram every year since I turned 40; six mammograms, and so far each one has been normal. Breast cancer doesn’t run in my family, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling apprehensive every time I have to step up to the machine, and it doesn’t [...]

Will Samsung Suffer Due to the ‘Lackluster’ S4?

Samsung recently started delivering their new flagship, the Galaxy S4. The GS4 is the follow-up to the Galaxy S3, which is the best-selling Android phone ever made, and one of big reasons Samsung is now the largest smartphone maker in the world. The GS3 was itself the sequel to the earlier best-selling Galaxy phones – [...]

Are You Still Using Mailbox?

When Mailbox, the app designed to tame, manage and control your inbox, arrived, I was thrilled. I was the first person on the Gear Diary team to gain access, and for the first few weeks I was doing nothing but singing its praises. Judie, Dan and Mike all joined over the next several weeks, but [...]

Do You Own a Car?

There were some amazing discussions at Telenav’s Waypoint conference a few weeks ago about GPS, mobile navigation, and how we approach our smartphones and integration location services into our lives. One offshoot of that discussion, though, was whether GPS navigation would matter in the future, since car ownership is apparently on the decline. I was [...]

The Right and Wrong Way to Do Post-Disaster Fundraising

Much has been written about all of the amazing people who stepped up after the Boston Marathon bombings, as well as companies in the area that opened their doors for stranded runners and other impacted individuals. We have since seen both good and bad examples of those who claim to want to help. The obvious [...]

Twitter Showed the Best and Worst of Brands During Boston Attacks

Some have called Twitter the ‘new police scanner’, an analogy which makes sense for those of us who had relatives with police scanners and CB radios back in the 70s when they were all the rage. This was very true during the attacks at the finish line of the Boston Marathon: I found myself with [...]

Court Rules MP3 Resale Violates Copyright Law

Calling everything about digital rights management a land-mine or clusterf**k seems to be overstating things, but some of the rules that apply to digital goods compared to the rules for the same goods on physical media just seem out of touch with reality. For example, let’s look at the latest ruling regarding ‘used MP3 seller’ [...]

5 Ways to Honor the Boston Marathon Tragedy Victims – A Monday Mile Special Edition

As someone who was born and spent more than forty years in the Boston area, my heart is heavy today. Although I am glad that the numbers didn’t continue climbing through the night in terms of those hurt, I am still having trouble wrapping my head around the horrific events that occurred at yesterday’s Boston Marathon. [...]

DIY Ice Chest Air Conditioner Project

Spring time in Texas is hot; we do not really have seasons, just hot and not so hot. We are deep into the spring turkey hunting season, and some days it is just unbearable. I hunt with a bow, so that is done in a pop up tent blind. Turkeys can see extremely well, so [...]

Google Sees Android OS Distribution Shift as it Changes Accounting Methods

Every month Google releases a report that details the distribution of the various Android operating system versions. These reports have long been used to see how slowly or quickly various versions are adopted and fade away. For as long as I could remember the accounting method used was simply having a device touched by Google [...]

Free-to-Pay, a Revolution in Game Sales & Player Investment

The era of the sixty-dollar shooter desperately needs an end. Modern game distribution exists in a broken system. As a recent Gamasutra article has detailed, recent NPD data shows a noticeable decline in both hardware and software sales. The Wii U, the first next-gen console to hit the market, has shown us a dreadful, if [...]

Another Way iPhone Beats Android – Battery Life in the Dungeon!

We all know that it is an Apple & Samsung world – and pretty much everywhere I go I carry both my Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3. They are both excellent phones, and I highly recommend both of them to anyone looking for a phone – each has strengths and weaknesses, just like [...]

Is an eBook a Book, or Is It Something Else?

The fine folks at Forbes raised an interesting question this week: are eBooks really books? Their take is that eBooks are more like software, due to their digital nature. And yes, they are looking specifically at the education markets. But this touches on a larger debate, one that comes up quite often. Opponents of eBooks [...]

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