This is going to be a very big deal. Or forgettable. I am not sure which. I had a conversation with a NYT reporter about this today. (Story here, but I was not quoted). It made me think. First off, this product was not launched by Eric, Sergey, or Larry. So who knows if this is a Big Deal Inside Goo...

Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone, has been saying this recently: I don’t like the word ‘carrier’. A ‘carrier’ is not what Vodafone wants to be.” Instead, he’s keen to become a provider of “smart pipes” and perhaps even of “NaaS” - that...

Matt Asay has offered a rather strange post noting that if history had been different the roles of IBM and Microsoft would be reversed. If history were different I’d be George Clooney. It’s not. This is Clooney’s good fortune. Matt’s point is that, in future work, Microso...

Chris Anderson (Columbia University):  What’s So Hard About Local? Where should our foundation dollars go? Perhaps they should go towards assuring that the so-called “lowly� (and yet, so oddly difficult to fund either a peer-produced or market based substitute for!! so much for lowly!) beat r...

Lost in this clip from the 1958 movie "Teacher's Pet" is the class war embedded in the plot. Clark Gable (right) plays a newspaper editor who considers journalism a trade, Doris Day a journalism professor who considers it a profession. In the end Gable's boss is flattered and the two sides compromis...

I'm Thinking Out Loud about Blogger and Google and......Twitter. yeah, I'm writing about Twitter a lot, but hell, it's the most interesting thing in search in a while, and things keep popping up that spark my mind. This post from Google, for example. It's titled "Blogger connects to Google Friend Co...

When I wrote my book about Moore’s Law early this decade I knew there were many areas where Moore’s Law did not apply. Software for one. Training for another. (Picture from Yes-Minister.com.) Government is a third. In the U.S. Constitution this is a feature and not a bug. The three branc...

Jaron Lanier, the Original Virtual Realist (respect!) writing on the TED conference, makes an interesting point about how technology is shifting as it becomes more established: When the conference began in the 1980s, nerds were on the rise. Brilliant young innovators, often shunned at high school, w...

While leaving my gym this morning I noticed our lady of the front desk had the local fishwrap open to the sales. “Look at this,” she said in amazement. “When I bought my iPod it cost $250, and that was before it had video. Now here it is for $145 and it’s the one with the vid...

Ever scratch your head and wonder why you can use your favorite application for free?  How can a business actually make money (and stay in business) when they offer their product for free?  This article looks at the freemium business model, to see when it makes sense for a company to offer it.  ...