Muhammad v. YouTube

Update — From reader comments below it sounds like many people think I am advocating some specific behavior from either YouTube or President Obama. That’s not true. I’m not proposing that either DO anything. I’m  just explaining what I believe is happening and why, which is pretty much all I ever do around here if you haven’t noticed. I’m neither trying to hobble the First Amendment nor take any political or religious stand whatsoever. If people think I am doing ether, well they aren’t reading very carefully at all, because it simply isn’t in there. So settle down, everyone. 

Moving on to any readers who […]

By |September 15th, 2012|2012, Breaking News, Business, Companies, Government, Intellectual Property, Politics, Privacy and Security, Public Relations|154 Comments
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Thunderbolt, on an iPhone 5?

Update — It sounds like the iPhone 5’s “Lightning” port may not be a true “Thunderbolt” interface. So far the info on Lightning has been extremely vague. Thunderbolt is a 20 pin interface, Lightning appears to be a 10 pin interface.  No one really knows right now.  Apple claims it is an adaptive interface.  Perhaps it can support USB 2.0 signals and a subset of the Thunderbolt interface.  The USB “adapter” may simply align the power and data lines to the Lightning interface.  USB has 2 power lines and 2 data lines.  Lightning has 8 data lines.  Perhaps it can operate with a variable number (2-8) of data lines.  I wonder if they can support 

By |September 12th, 2012|2012, Breaking News, Business, Companies, Phones, Technology|92 Comments
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What’s a WeJIT?

This is the third in a series of columns about interesting new technologies.

Every few years something comes along to fundamentally change how we use the World Wide Web, whether it is online video, social networking, dynamic pages, or even search, itself. This week a new technology called WeJIT was announced that looks like something small but is really something big because it extends collaboration from specialized sites like wikis to everywhere HTML is used.  WeJITS are collaboration in a persistent link.

WeJITS come from Democrasoft, a company here in Santa Rosa that is best known for Collaborize Classroom, a cloud-based service used by more than 30,000 teachers to interact with students, deliver lessons from a global peer reviewed library, and even give […]

By |August 24th, 2012|2012, Breaking News, Education, Internet, Social Media, Technology|36 Comments
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Facebook, Cringely and the devolution of the web

Some readers may recall one of my predictions for 2012 was the end of this column. It’s time for me to start explaining what that’s all about. Next month will mark 25 years of my doing some version of this column either in print or online. It’s not a record (I’m sure John Dvorak has that) but it is a milestone that I’ve been for some time determined to reach. But having achieved 25 years of continuous service, what then? Well there is no gold watch. In fact my transition is, if anything, forced by the declining economics of the web. Facebook has much the same problem.

Desktop computers are at or […]

By |August 7th, 2012|2012, Advertising, Breaking News, Family, Internet, Media|121 Comments
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Steve Jobs — The Lost Interview available for preorder on Amazon.com

This DVD won’t ship until October, but it is ready for preorder right now on Amazon.com and might make a good Christmas gift for someone.

Additional material on the DVD not available anywhere else include a commentary audio track and my 2005 NeRDTV video interview with original Mac system programmer Andy Hertzfeld in which he talks about his Apple experiences and recounts the hilarious story of what happened when Steve Jobs apologized to Bill Gates for telling me that Microsoft had no taste. This 65 minute interview with Andy has never before been available in full resolution and is well worth having in its own right.

But then what do I know?

[amazon_my_favorites design=”2″ width=”485″ title=”” market_place=”US” ASIN=”B008NA3HZY” […]

By |August 1st, 2012|2012, Breaking News, Media, People, Uncategorized|29 Comments
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