A Few Digital Music Thoughts
The horse is long out of the barn. That’s my reaction to Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke’s announcement earlier this week that he was pulling his solo and Atoms For Peace music from the streaming service Spotify to protest the minuscule royalty payments it, and other similar services, issues to artists. I absolutely agree with his point: there needs to…
The Cloud’s Fatal Flaw (For Now)
This is a frightening story. Mat Honan, a technology writer, had his iCloud, Google, Twitter, and Amazon accounts hijacked, and in turn, his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook remotely wiped, destroying years of data he had not backed up. He was lucky, though, in that the hackers were only interested in having some fun rather than running amok with his financial…
iPad Vs. Macbook: The Verdict
I’ve been (almost) exclusively on the iPad + keyboard combo for nearly two weeks now. How’s it going? I’m glad you asked. A couple years back, in the midst of the nine or ten month netbook craze, I picked up a cheap MSI netbook. I tried to use it for work, but it was just too damn small. The keyboard…
Taking A Flying Leap
After a couple of days of preparation, today I begin my latest technology experiment: can I survive with just an iPad? I’m often struck by the silliness of me switching back-and-forth betwen the iPad and the MacBook Air throughout the day. I always held on to the Air, though, because it seemed necessary for longer writing and for work assignments.…
Who Owns Your Data
Following up on last week’s link to the Atlantic article about on-line advertising, a few thoughts about Internet privacy in general. As we spend more-and-more time online, more-and-more people are airing concerns about what happens to the bread crumbs of data we leave in our wake. It seems like every week or so brings a new ‘scandal’ regarding how some…
App Review: Kingdom Rush
I don’t spend a lot of time playing games on my iPad or iPhone. I’ll buy a handful each year and maybe get really interested in a couple of them. It’s rare that a game captures my imagination for more than a couple days. But for the last three weeks, I’ve been loving Armor Games’ Kingdom Rush. I bought it…
Something New And Apple News
You may recall that I took a crack at running a separate blog dedicated to my musings on Apple and technology. Like many of my Internet dreams,1 it seemed like a great idea but in practice wasn’t such a huge success. Turns out it’s hard to write every day about the same subject, especially when there are about 1000 people…
State Of The Blog
Greetings fellow citizens. I am here to talk about the State of the Blog. I can report that the State of the Blog is changed. Read on for the news. It’s been a whole five months or something, thus it was time to implement some changes to Ye Olde Blog. I’ve bored you in the past (if you’ve chosen to…
Why iPhones Are Made In China
This is a terrific article on several levels. It examines some of the inside story of the development of the iPhone. It points out fundamental demographic advantages that China has over the U.S. And it gets into the potential moral delimma Apple, and other successful US technology companies, has when balancing profitability, share owner value, and the needs of the…
Sounds Of The Game
Piggy-backing a bit on my post about cloud-based music systems last week, my baseball post for this week will focus on the changing broadcast technology of the game. I first became a baseball fan in 1978. But I really went head-over-heels for the game in 1980, when we moved to Kansas City. Suddenly I could listen to every single Royals…