Back in the early 1990s, when you went online, you either dialed up a local BBS or you used a national service like Prodigy or America Online . These services each had their own user interfaces and co
In 2008 I moved to the US and within six months I’d paralysed my left arm doing something stupid in the office. For a while I didn’t know if it was ever going to recover. It was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life and it happened in the most trivial of ways.
The world is still mourning the loss of Ray Bradbury, one of the most indelible authors in any genre. Bradbury's legacy is hard to summarize, hard even to encompass — so it's lucky that his friend and
As for the state’s Republicans, they used to roam the freeways and cul-de-sacs in great, thundering herds. Now, they cling to a few isolated enclaves along the beaches of San Diego, farmlands of the Central Valley, and retirement communities near the Oregon border. And they are old and white in a…
GINSBERG UNLEASHES THIS SLOGAN TO DON AND AT THAT VERY MOMENT THEY KNOW THEY HAVE THE WINNER, SOMETHING THAT MAKES THEIR JAGUAR CAMPAIGN TRULY RESONATE. AND AT THE CENTER OF THIS SLOGAN IS THE BELIEF THAT WHILE THIS CAR CAN BE OWNED, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (ERGO PEOPLE IN GENERAL) ARE NOT SOMETHING THAT…
Apple’s documentation for Core Data syncing via iCloud offers very little insight into how it actually works. This is probably quite deliberate: Apple sees this as an implementation detail that develo
I became involved with the Game of Thrones TV series and books against all odds. After all, I don’t think of myself as a “geek” or a “nerd”, even if I am a video game journalist.
I first met Adam Yauch in 1982, in Brooklyn, when I was fifteen. I was sitting on the red steps in the lobby of St. Ann’s, where I was a sophomore in high school. His bandmate, Michael Diamond, was a grade ahead of me. Occasionally Mike and I would talk about records and argue. We talked about doing…
Every company comes up with the idea of writing a "shell app." By replacing native code with a web view you could: Release new functionality outside a full app update Implement a feature once and shar
A treasure trove of unearthed interviews, conducted by the writer who knew him best, reveals how Jobs's ultimate success at Apple can be traced directly to his so-called wilderness years.
Adding namespaces to Objective-C is a non-trivial problem. This proposal is a working draft; it may have bugs. (In particular, the definition of @namespace blocks and the @using directive is incomplete, but it’s analogous enough to other languages that the intent should be obvious.) This draft will…
Via DesignScene: When we first sat down with Tony Fadell, the CEO of Nest and the inventor of the Nest Learning Thermostat, we asked him what made Steve Jobs so great. Fadell is, perhaps, one of the best-qualified people on the planet to answer. He’s the one who first pitched the idea of an…
One of the great things about Twitter is working with so many talented folks who dream up and build incredible products day in and day out. Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we…
In a cranky interview, David Simon gives us a glimpse of his brilliance, and a lesson in how to spot fabricators like Mike Daisey and Greg Mortenson, writes Alec Nevala-Lee.
(This article has been translated into Spanish ( PDF , with some additions) by Jorge Amado Soria Ramirez — thanks!) I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of technolo
This week, we were extremely honored to speak to Internet intellectual Clay Shirky, writer, teacher, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. Clay is a professor at the renowned Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and author of two books, most recently…
After working in technology for 17 years now, I can assure you: constantly being the only woman in the room stinks. Since I usually am, one of my career goals is to surround myself with capable women
Forgive me if a wry tone eludes me when it comes to today’s proceedings in the Supreme Court. As far as I am concerned the whole thing is absurd—yet another example of how America’s antiquated system of government, and its determined refusal to accept the economic realities of the modern world, is…
Mashable’s Lauren Indvik writes about magazine apps looking bad on the new iPad. She mostly refers to publishers who wanted to retain print-like magazine design and therefore cunningly churned out rendered PNG or JPEG files for each page, rather than using native text. Now the new iPad has a…
For the last two months, you've seen some version of the same story all over the Internet: Delete your search history before Google's new privacy settings take effect. A straightforward piece outlining a rudimentary technique, but also evidence that the search titan has a serious trust problem on…
THE FIRST THREE EPISODES SCREENED AT SXSW AND THEY WERE AN UTTER JOY TO BEHOLD. AND BEYOND THE MERE ENJOYMENT OF THEM, THE THING THAT MAKES HULK MOST HAPPY IS TO HAVE A STRONG, HONEST YOUNG FEMALE VOICE COMING TO THE FOREFRONT... THERE'S A REASON THAT MATTERS, BUT HULK WILL GET TO IT IN A SECOND.
The most viable rival to Apple's iPad isn't produced by a traditional hardware firm. Samsung, Motorola, Toshiba, HP, RIM and HTC have hardly made a dent in Apple's dominance. Remarkably, the leading challenger is online retailer Amazon, with its Kindle Fire tablet.
If there’s a certain radicalism to this gesture, we should also note that the most he can do is make the system do what it always does anyway: in this case, throw police at a crime it thereby propagates and reproduces. But the main thing is why, and how: the fiction comes into existence because an…
Kahn’s thinking regarding “barbarians” was prescient. It not only partially inspires Agile and other lightweight software development methods, it reinforces a theme big companies are often unintentionally trying to forget: hacking is important.
The most important thing that happened at SXSW Interactive wasn't an app launch or a keynote presentation. It wasn’t a major acquisition or a surprise takeover. In many ways, it was a controversy that
Deanna Costello’s love knew no boundaries. Literally. For years she had a romantic relationship with a man who was not in the United States lawfully. It led to a strong judicial slapdown of the Depart
Not eating for 12-16 hours can help people quickly reset their sleep-wake cycle, according to a study from the Harvard Medical School. This discovery can drastically improve a person's ability to cope with jet lag or adjust to working late shifts. (See also: Tips for Sounder Sleep at Hotels)
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