Props and more props to Ryan & Co. Not only did they manage to post the first-ever iPhone unboxing slide show; not only did they get an exclusive interview with Woz as he waited in line to buy his own (Woz! Waiting! In! Line!); not only did they get great shots of the victorious first [...]
Given my love of lists and my near-obsessive interest in good, basic word processing software, it was great to see this list of 10 free minimalist word processors from Web Worker Daily. The list, not surprisingly, is heavy on web-based tools like Google Docs and Zoho Writer, though it also mentions a few of [...]
Caught a story on NPR the other day about Tuvalu’s ambassador to the UN. Turns out he — and the island nation he represents — are banking everything on stopping global warming. Noble cause, but one that’s not without some self-interest. Given that most of the habitable land on Tuvalu is less than 6 [...]
Valleywag is one of my guilty pleasures, nestled in my Google Reader stream, in a “Tech News” folder that includes more sober reads like TechCrunch, TechMeme, TechDirt and, well, you get the idea. While I’m not a fan of Gawker Media’s other gossip blogs (though I am devoted to Consumerist and Lifehacker), Valleywag, with its [...]
We’ve had diggs at CR before, but this is definitely a record: Our crash test videos were featured on Consumerist on Friday, and over the weekend, someone dugg the story. (They dugg directly to us, instead of going through Consumerist.) As of now, it’s got close to 3,000 diggs and is up on the front [...]
Marc Andreessen has finally started a blog, and I have to say it’s high time. I’m not going to get into a whole exegesis of his writing style or choice of topics, though I may after he’s been at it for more than a week. For now, my main comment, other than Welcome! is that [...]
The Consumer Reports July issue update is live now, and we have some great stuff in there, if I do say so myself. It’s our annual digicam issue, and we’ve added a first-ever piece on DSLR lenses. We also looked at software, including the free stuff that comes with most digicams. Among commercial programs, I [...]
I’ve stopped grumbling about paying more at the pump. Sure, I don’t like it, and I would rather be spending that money on other things. But I have to agree with Adam at TerraPass, who points out:
1. Gas prices should be higher, not lower.
2. No one is “gouging” consumers.
3. The problem is oil consumption, not [...]
When I was a kid, Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite scifi writers, right up there with Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. Sure, a lot of his writing was hokey and homespun—he was sort of scifi’s Sinclair Lewis, even if he aspired to be its Hemingway—but his novels and short stories were elegantly crafted and [...]
When I moved to Hong Kong in 1992, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was still a fresh wound. As the colony prepared to rejoin China, and Britain’s last governor tried, 150 years too late, to bring some small taste of democracy and local rule to the city, Tiananmen was seen by many as a harbinger of [...]