Lots of news & commentary today about Google Voice. I got my invite earlier today and, after clicking around a bit, am wondering why more of the analysis (as in none that I’ve read) doesn’t mention the implications for Google Voice when combined with Android. As I noted in a previous post, it’s not hard continue…
I’m not a doomer, but I *do* believe that the accelerating rate of technological change (i.e., Moore’s Law) will continue to cause disruptions in our society and the global economy, and that these disruptions will likely increase in amplitude as the future acclerates toward us. In that spirit, I’ve been following with interest the mainstreaming continue…
After 2+ years as a more-or-less-satisfied BlackBerry user, I just made the switch to the G1, the first (and currently the only) production handset running Google’s Android OS. As regular readers know I have high expectations for the Android platform, but felt like I needed to get closer to the OS and developer ecosystem to continue…
I’m still a little mystified by the appeal of Twitter to the individual user, but I definitely see the argument that – taken in aggregate – the service offers a useful window into what a (rarefied) slice of the global population is thinking about right now. But when I read pieces like this one by continue…
At 15%+ of U.S. GDP, it’s impossible to ignore health care as a vector for investment. By all accounts the system is badly broken, which should create myriad opportunities for nimble startups to find and exploit inefficiencies. But the sheer size and complexity of the system, not to mention the thicket of state and federal continue…
Cost-efficient transaction processing for “micropayments” (transactions in amounts less than $10) is one of the many unrealized dreams of the Internet age. Of the literally dozens of venture-backed companies that have attempted to crack the opportunity, only PayPal can claim even modest success (just last October they announced new, lower micropayments pricing designed to capture continue…
Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web has a great post out today on the cultural shift underway in consumer computing. His premise is that the first generation of PC software (and specifically the once-dominant paradigm of Microsoft Windows + Office) made computing tasks too hard to understand, alienating most users. By contrast, the current generation of continue…
An old friend once shared a telling (and slightly off-color) story about working for a Hollywood studio. He didn’t have much money and his car was a shabby older model. One day his boss (a successful producer) took him aside and urged him to upgrade for the sake of his professional image: “In this town,” continue…
I’ve been watching Google’s Android project with interest to see if (unlike so many other Google projects) it will actually amount to something. It’s still very early in the game, but everything I’m seeing tells me that Android is about to become one of the top stories in tech for 2009. Here are some of continue…
I’ve been looking for a good holiday read and today Om Malik offered a book suggestion that’s right up my alley: “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart“. In the post, he also cites a handful of what he calls “data-centric” companies – including Summize, Glassdoor and Panjiva – as examples continue…