Editorials

Whither Goeth the Newspaper?

I grew up in Northern Virginia right in the middle of the Nixon/Watergate madness. Both my parents were big readers, and growing up then, and there, turned me into a big newspaper reader. A big newspaper reader. When I went to college, I made sure my dorm subscribed to a paper; when I moved into my own place, one of the first things I always did after getting the power and phone and such turned on was to order the paper; when we moved from Santa Cruz to San Jose, and then to Austin, I always made sure I had…

Editorials

How to Use Online App/Product Reviews to Your Advantage

You can probably trust any reviews written by this guy! Recently, our own Carly Z pointed us GD folks to a very interesting and, for me, thought-provoking article about online reviews and blogs published to the web that contain reviews–like this here one that you’re reading–by Al Gauthier of “Living Barefoot”. (N.B.–I don’t follow the “living barefoot” guidelines, but if you saw me paddling around my workplace in my stocking feet, you would know that I’m closer to it than a lot of high-tech types.) Gautier’s (fairly open) question was, in an online world where there’s no barrier to creating…

Editorials

New Report: Technology is Ruining Our Sleep

Image courtesy of Corbis Images According to a new Reuters study “the national penchant for watching television every evening before going to sleep, playing video games late into the night or checking emails and text messages before turning off the lights could be interfering with the nation’s sleep habits.” I know this will come as hilarious irony given my recent take on how obnoxious technology has made us, but this is something I am terrible about. On my bedside table I always have my Alienware laptop, Nintendo DSi, and Sony PSP, and I also generally bring my iPad upstairs with…

Editorials

Why the eBook World Makes Me Nuts

Image taken from the Wayback Machine In the beginning, there was Peanut Press . . . Seriously, though; as you’ve probably noticed from Carly’s great postings, the eBook industry is . . . well, the polite way to put it is, “In flux.” The less-polite way to put it is, “A big friggin’ mess.” The same book cannot be read on different eReaders; paperbacks are cheaper than eBooks; eBooks are being delayed to give hardcover books a chance to sell more; books can be summarily deleted from your library without notice; and on and on. It’s enough to drive you…

Editorials

The New York Times Paywall Proves Paper Is Still King

By now you’ve probably heard about the byzantine pay wall being set up by the New York Times. It’s complicated, it’s expensive, and it proves one thing: for the New York Times, paper subscriptions are still what they care about, and digital is just a means to that end. If you haven’t already heard about the NYT pay wall, here’s how it’s going to work: 1) Buy an online+smartphone app subscription for $15 every four weeks, or roughly $180 a year. 2) Buy an online+tablet app subscription for $20 every four weeks, or roughly $240 a year. 3) Buy a…

Editorials

New Apple iPhone TV Spots – What Do You Think?

Apple has made a name for themselves with creative and often humorous commercials through the years, from the legendary 1984 Mac introduction video through the Think Different campaign through the Pentium-toasting PowerPC commercials through the infamous ‘I’m a Mac …’ spots with John Hodgeman and Justin Long. Now they have launched a series of three new iPhone 4 commercials themed “If you don’t have an iPhone”. Each features a specific iPhone-specific ecosystem that you are missing if you don’t have an iPhone: one touts the App Store, another the iPod and iTunes, and finally iBooks. By the end of the…

Editorials

iPad is Apple’s Third Post-PC Device? Try “Apple’s Third Totally Reliant on the PC Blockbuster”!

Apple detractors love to talk about the “Steve Jobs distortion field”. I have never much bought into that. Sure, Steve jobs is a master showman. And yes, he is most likely among the more arrogant people living today. And yes, he does like to build hype when he brings out a new product or service. And, I will admit, he has been somewhat into overstatement at times. But then again, he’s got the stuff to back it up. There is an old saying from here in suburban New Jersey that there are people who “have no cattle but a big…

Editorials

When Fandom and Philanthropy Meet

Photo courtesy of James Wong One of my favorite works of any genre–fine arts, performance arts, what-have-you–is Shinichir? Watanabe’s future-cowboy noirish anime Cowboy Bebob. I’m not going to get all gushy and fanboy-like telling you about how wonderful Bebop is, and why you should ignore the kinda silly name and rent it from Netflix right now–I’ll restrain myself to just saying that, if you like Joss Wheadon’s Firefly, you’ll almost certainly like Bebop. (Even if you don’t ordinarily like anime, which is the case with me.) Our heroes (yes, even including Ein the Corgi) One of the best things about Bebop…

Editorials

Verifone vs. Square, a Perspective

The recent Square vs. Verifone kerfuffle/gymkhana/embroglio/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is, I think, a pretty important one. Not just for itself, but for what it says about the tech industry. (This also happens to be my industry.) There are a number of companies right now trying to muscle and/or bully their rivals out of the marketplace– Twitter is a recent example with their attempt to be the only one offering a Twitter client etc and, of course, there is Apple’s involvement in the eBooks space. (Carly has talked about this a few times already and things are just getting started!) Frankly it honks me off….

Editorials

Adventures in Customer Service- Zinio Edition

When the term “customer service” seems more like “customer lack-of-service” we like to call the company in question out. We did so with regard to AT&T Wireless. We did so with Amazon’s Kindle policy too. We’ve even done so with Apple. (Although, to be fair, both Apple and Amazon are usually amazing in the Customer Service arena.) Yes, when a company lets us down we aren’t shy about saying so. We WANT others to know! But what happens when a company goes above and beyond? What happens when a company has a glitch and, rather than trying to ignore it…

Editorials, Game Diary

Gear Games Quickie: Want to Play Dragon Age 2? Don’t Upset an EA Forum Moderator!

I pretty well tore a hole into Dragon Age 2 the other day, including about the whole need to be logged in everywhere. But there was one thing I didn’t even think about – that an inability to login could prevent you from playing the game! But apparently that is EXACTLY what has happened to at least one person according to a report at BluesNews! Please review the EA Community Terms of Service, particularly sections #9 and #11. There are two levels of enforcement here: 1. BioWare community bans are forum-only and can be for as little as 24 hours….

Editorials, Gear Bits

On the Eve of iPad 2…

Posted January 29, 2010 So here we are on the eve of the iPad 2 release. The anticipation of the release of the iPad 2 prompted me to go back and look at some early posts we did on the iPad over a year ago. I hate to say it, but I think we largely nailed it early on. (OK, actually I don’t hate to say it… We pretty much nailed it early on! Yes, we knew this was going to be an amazing device from the moment El Jobso introduced it.) At the time of the initial announcement, we…

Editorials

Has Technology Made Us Obnoxious or ‘Fun’?

The roll of smartphone users is increasing exponentially, and perhaps not surprisingly the amount of people ignoring what used to be common courtesy has also increased. What I DO find intriguing is that it is extremely likely that many folks who complained about people speaking loudly on cell phones years ago are now doing exactly that themselves! From a Yahoo report of a Reuters survey: “The poll of 2,000 adults revealed that most U.S. adults wished people practised better mobile etiquette and found the lack of cellphone manners extremely annoying, even though about 20 percent admitted to poor etiquette themselves….

Editorials

The Consequences of Distracted Driving

I got into a fender bender last night. Luckily no one was hurt, and as for the damage to my car (see above), well, that’s what insurance is for. In the aftermath, though, I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking on how easily I let myself get distracted while driving, not just yesterday but in general…and fortuitously, this afternoon I came across my old iPod shuffle. If you’re wondering how I went from distracted driving to iPod shuffle, it’s not that crazy a leap. I usually use my Droid for music in my car, either using the built-in music…

eBooks, Editorials

The Evils of Hokey Statistics: Bad Math and Free Kindles!

As anyone who has passed the third grade knows, all you need to form a line is two points and a ruler. Add another point and you can extend the line or draw a curve, and with one more point you can describe a third-order or declare a trend! All of that is good in the abstract, but when it comes to predictive modeling you need more data … and some common sense. So I chuckled when I saw this article at TheTechnium predicting free Kindles this year. The chuckle wasn’t that the idea was preposterous – in fact, here…

Editorials

In the Sea of Sameness- Sony Seeks to Swim to the Top

The consumer electronics world is a “sea of sameness”, and that’s not a good thing if you are an electronics company. “Sea of sameness” is the term that was used numerous times during a private briefing with the number of Sony’s executives. The issue is this: You walk into a box store such as Best Buy, and you go to the back of the store. There on the wall you find high-definition television, after high-definition television, after high-definition television. They all look pretty much the same, and they all pretty much have the same price points. Some are a little…

eBooks, Editorials

Is Apple Going to Boot eBook Apps? My Conspiracy Theory…

I might be seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any, but I think I see a pattern in many business decisions going on in the eBook market lately. We’re all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for the outcome of the in-app purchasing drama, and so far no one’s (overtly) talking. But reading between the lines tells a very different story… 1) Apple can’t be happy with how iBooks has performed so far. 100 million books downloads is an empty number, especially since everyone who downloads iBooks gets one download to go with it. With a very low number…

Editorials, Game Diary

Is THIS the Future of the RPG? If So … the RPG is Dead!

Several years ago a variety of games started adding things like experience, skill building and other forms of progression as elements to their roster. Games like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas allowed you to ‘pump iron’ to make progress, online shooters like Battlefield 2142 tracked your progress and allowed you new ranks and skills as you progressed. Games were touting their ‘RPG elements’ in an attempt to differentiate themselves from the sea of similar shooters and action games … rather than actually being innovative. Life has come full circle, or so it seems based on a couple of statements by…

Editorials

The Story is Ancient: a Work in Progress; Build Your Own Passover Haggadah

For the past few years I have used a different Passover Haggadah each time I led the family seder. I realize that I may have just spoken Greek – or rather Hebrew – to some of you, so let me explain. The Haggadah is the service or story book used at Passover to retell the Israelites journey from slavery to redemption as told in the book of Exodus. It is read during the seder, the the festive meal that starts the week long festival. There are a tremendous number of different versions of the haggadah available from publishers. Each has a…

Editorials

Jenny McCarthy: Still Sticking with Debunked Autism Theory and Using ‘Mob Mind’ as Excuse

There are conspiracy theories everywhere that describe nearly every major political and social event throughout history, but until recently most common sense people simply dismissed them while allowing the theorists the ability to hold their nonfalsifiable opinions. Now there are those who think that conspiracy might be replacing democracy as the primary motivation in some people’s minds – in other words, they see every choice as motivated by some secret undercurrent hidden to most people. Most of these conspiracies are harmless differential theories that have an alternate explanation to an event. However, there have always been certain ‘lunatic fringe’ elements…

Editorials, Music Diary

Are 10,000 Albums the New Bar For Success?

Last year’s music sales were … um, dismal. And not to kick an already flailing music industry, but the numbers look even worse in context: when adjusted for inflation, with the former 45% decline in the last decade turning into a 64% tail-spin! While we’re at bad news, how about this one: only 1,215 albums sold more than 10,000 copies last year! That is a 20% decline in just TWO YEARS! Here are some details from the report: The incredibly-shrinking album is forcing everyone to adapt. But why can’t artists even sell 10,000 units anymore? Especially when top-line album sales…

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