Nine lessons, no carols
My summing up of the lessons of 2012 in the technology world. In today’s Observer.
View ArticleFarwell then, netbooks: it was nice knowing you
Nice piece by Charles Arthur in the Guardian on the rise and fall of something that was once the New New Thing. Conclusion: Netbooks had a short but interesting life – going from the one-time saviour...
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The ipad Mini: horses for courses
I’m trying out the small iPad, following a rave endorsement by Jason Calcanis, who claimed that it had left his big iPad for dead. That’s not quite the way I see it: my big iPad is doing just fine....
View ArticleThe baroque Net
This morning’s Observer column. “Dumb network, smart applications” was the mantra that they [the designers of the Internet] used to express the philosophy that all of the ingenuity should be left to...
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HMV and the perils of shipping atoms to ship bits
Long ago in his book Being Digital Nicholas Negroponte drew attention of the absurdity of “shipping atoms to ship bits” – for example using plastic discs as the medium for conveying bitstreams from...
View ArticleGove’s decision
This morning’s Observer column. Michael Gove is possibly the most unpopular minister in the government, but on Wednesday he made a courageous and enlightened decision. On that day, the Department for...
View ArticleKrugman: a technological optimist?
From Business Insider. The only problem: will these new technologies create jobs? My guess: probably not.
View ArticleDriverless cars and intersections
Interesting simulation suggesting that autonomous vehicles might be more efficient at utilising traffic junctions. Source.
View ArticleThe vision behind Google Glass
This morning’s Observer column. What endears the Google Glass project to me is that it’s the latest instalment in a long and honourable tradition in computer science. It goes all the way back to one of...
View ArticleRealism about self-driving cars
As readers of my Observer column know, I regard the Google self-driving car project as very significant for a number of reasons. One is that it signals a need to re-examine our assumptions about what...
View ArticleThe post-Apps world
A while ago I wrote this: We have replaced the old Microsoft Windows software monoculture with a new one based around an apps-centric user interface. Mobile devices have become machines for running...
View ArticleNet benefits?
The Economist has an interesting piece about quantifying the benefits that the Net brings to consumers. Measuring the economic impact of all the ways the internet has changed people’s lives is...
View ArticleKicking away the ladder
This morning’s Observer column: Why does this matter? Well, in a way, it comes back to the guys who won the Queen Elizabeth prize. The network that Cerf and Kahn built was deliberately designed as an...
View ArticleGoogle’s Keep: is it for keeps? Probably not
So Google has decided that Evernote needs to destroyed. That’s not what the search giant says, of course, but that’s the clear intention. The company has launched Keep as a web service and an Android...
View ArticleAll bit, no coin
This morning’s Observer column. Among the many unpleasant discoveries made by those who stashed their cash in Cypriot banks is that the island’s government could stop them moving their money elsewhere....
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The PC: the new sunset industry
IDC says PC sales fell 14 percent in the first quarter on a year-over-year basis. That’s worse than its forecast of a 7.7 percent drop. This is the worst quarter for PC industry since 1994 when IDC...
View ArticleThe Glassholes are coming
Lovely Irish Times piece by Shane Hegarty about the implications of Google’s new toy. Imagine the near future. Sometime next year. You, sir, are standing in a public toilet and a man sidles up to the...
View ArticleFragile systems
This morning’s Observer column. On Tuesday 23 April, a tweet from Associated Press (AP) revealed startling news. There had been explosions in the White House and Obama had been injured. The tweet was a...
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Technology giveth, and technology taketh away
My Observer review of The The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. When, in early 2011, Eric Schmidt stepped aside from his position as Google’s CEO to become the company’s executive...
View ArticleGoogle Glass: half full or half empty?
This morning’s Observer column. The Chinese name their years after animals – the year of the goat, the rat and so on. In the tech world, we name years after devices. Thus, 2007 was the year of the...
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