Tag Archives: Google Glass

Weekly output: Birdly, net neutrality, SXSW’s hot apps, Google moonshots, best LTE hotspot, basic cable on extra TVs

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I completed two rites of spring today: editing and uploading my SXSW photos (here’s the Flickr album) and weeding the lawn for the first of many times this year. One of them has left me sore.

Yahoo Tech Birdly recap3/16/2015: This VR Demo Let Me Soar Over San Francisco Like a Bird, Yahoo Tech

My friend and SXSW housemate Dan Pacheco had been telling me about this crazy VR demo/bird flight simulator since at least Saturday, and Monday morning I finally got my introduction. The words practically flew onto the screen as I typed up this recap, which is always a good feeling.

3/16/2015: Take Back Your Internet, Golden Frog

I moderated this Austin secure-Web-services company’s panel about net neutrality. Will all of the panelists–lawyer and activist Marvin Ammori, Data Foundry chief technology officer Edward Henigin, Federal Communications Commission counsel Gigi Sohn, CompTel CEO Chip Pickering, and Computer & Communications Industry Association European vice president James Waterworth–being very much in favor of it, the discussion got a little one-sided. But I did expose a few differences of opinion in issues like the best ways to foster broadband competition.

3/17/2015: Where Are They Now? Hot Apps From Past SXSWs that Didn’t Have Much of a Future, Yahoo Tech

I knew that the apps people had been chattering about at SXSW 2012, my introduction to this festival, hadn’t made much of a dent since. But when I realized that one of them had become the “Nearby Friends” feature on Facebook that has yet to signal the presence of a pal I’m not already talking to, I thought: there’s a column in this.

3/18/2015: Don’t Trust Humans, Wear Fluffy Socks: Wisdom From Google X, Yahoo Tech

I’d seen Google’s “Captain of Moonshots” Astro Teller speak once before, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York last May, and so making time for his keynote was an easy call. In it, he shared some new details about Google’s ventures into self-driving cars and Internet-broadcasting balloons.

3/20/2105: This Is The Best Wifi Hotspot You Can Buy, Forbes

A month or so back, I filed a condensed version of my update to the Wirecutter’s guide to LTE hotspots, and Forbes’ tech section seems to have been the first place to run it. (I only found out about it a week later when a publicist thanked me for mentioning her client’s product in a Forbes post I had no memory of writing.)

3/22/2015: Basic cable switch on extra TVs not so simple, USA Today

This column revisited a subject I seem to cover at least every two years–your dwindling ability to watch cable TV without a separate box with its own monthly fee. This time around, it doubled as a headline-writing refresher course: The hed I wrote the first time around had not one but two techie abbreviations and failed to describe the core problem my reader had complained about in her e-mail.

Updated 3/25 to add the LTE-hotspots post.

 

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Weekly output: smartwatch etiquette, Kojo Nnamdi Show, Android tips, finding an ISP

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With the arrival of August, I’m supposed to be able to slack off now that everybody with more sense temporarily flees D.C. Somehow I doubt things will work out that easily.

7/29/2014: Smartwatch Etiquette: We’re Making It Up as We Go, Yahoo Tech

Does wearing a smartwatch mean I no longer have to be the annoying person who’s always checking his phone, or does it turn me into the annoying person who’s always checking his smartwatch?

7/29/2014: A Short History of Gadget Hate, Yahoo Tech

I enjoyed putting together this sidebar listing past denunciations of wearable technology, from the watch itself to the Sony Walkman.

Kojo Nnamdi travel-tech show7/29/2014: Travel Tech for a Great Vacation, The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I talked about airfare- and hotel-search sites, out-of-town bandwidth, navigation apps and other travel-tech topics with National Geographic Traveler editor Keith Bellows and Washington Post travel writer Andrea Sachs.

8/1/2014: 9 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Android, Yahoo Tech

The little Android crash-test-dummy toy in the picture atop this post was a giveaway at last year’s Google I/O conference. More interesting than yet another screen shot, don’t you think?

8/3/2014: How to find the best Internet service provider, USA Today

A friend’s question about replacing his wretched EarthLink DSL led me to realize how the lack of competition in broadband seems to have dried up the market for find-an-ISP sites. (Not that I miss the insane amount of work I sank into compiling directories of local ISPs for the Post.)

Weekly output: tax prep, Google Glass, Heartbleed, Nearby Friends, online banking

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This was a multiple-microphone week, and two of my three broadcast appearances involved shows that hadn’t booked me as a guest before. That’s good.

In other news: Happy Easter!

4/15/2014: The Strange and Successful Campaign to Make Taxes More Taxing, Yahoo Tech

A lot of material had to get left out of this already-long column denouncing the crony-capitalism campaign by Intuit and such Washington groups as Americans for Tax Reform and my former client CCIA to stop governments from letting citizens file and pay taxes at their own sites. (For example, these direct-filing sites cost little to run–$80,000 a year at California’s ReadyReturn, $150,000 for Pennsylvania’s soon-to-be-shuttered padirectfile.)  Comments debuted at Yahoo Tech late Tuesday afternoon, and as you can see I did not wait long to show up in them myself.

Speaking of feedback, you might as well see ATR’s latest post opposing IRS-run tax prep and stories, mine included, that suggest it would be a good thing… which, in a coincidence too weird for me not to disclose, was written by the guy who’s done my taxes since 2012.

4/16/2014: Google Glass and privacy, Al Jazeera

The news network’s Arabic-language channel had me on the air to talk about Google Glass and privacy issues. Since I was being translated into Arabic in real time, the producer emphasized that I speak slowly and simply–a challenge when my usual habit is to speak too fast on the air.

To the Point Heartbleed show4/16/2014: Heartbleed and Internet Security, To the Point

KCRW’s news show had me on to discuss the Heartbleed bug and how  open-source development broke down in this case. I wish I’d thought to compare major tech companies’ unwillingness to kick in any money to the OpenSSL Foundation with all the effort they’ve put into finding ways to pipe income to shell corporations in overseas tax havens.

Most of my input happened in the first 20 minutes or so, but keep listening to hear Internet Governance Project founder Milton Mueller discard some silly objections from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Daniel Castro to the government’s proposal to hand over supervision of the DNS root zone.

4/18/2014: Nearby Friends, WTOP

D.C.’s news station had me on the air for a few minutes via Skype to talk about Facebook’s new location-based option, its privacy implications and how it competes with such existing apps as Foursquare and the D.C. startup SocialRadar.

4/20/2014: Safety you can bank on: Chromebook, Linux, phone, USA Today

A relative’s question about whether he should buy a Chromebook for his online banking gave me an opportunity to note a couple of cheaper options to separate your Web financial transactions from your regular use: booting your computer off a Linux CD or flash drive, or using your bank’s app or the built-in browser on your phone or tablet.