Tag Archives: Inrupt

Weekly output: Web Summit, Tim Berners-Lee, 1Password, Slingbox, Rocket Lab

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This coming week features my last long-haul flying for work of this year: I’m headed to Maui for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit. Qualcomm is picking up airfare and lodging for reporters and analysts at this invitation-only immersion into wireless technology; like last year, I accepted the invitation on behalf of my telecom-news client Light Reading with the advance approval of my editor there, and I’ll disclose the comped travel in every story I write from the event.

11/8/2022: Tech for good, evil and companionship at Web Summit, USA Today

I wrote most of this column at my hotel on my last night in Lisbon, then wrapped it up on the flight home.

11/8/2022: Tim Berners-Lee is building the web’s ‘third layer.’ Don’t call it Web3, Fast Company

I originally had a separate interview booked with Tim Berners-Lee but opted to consolidate with one my Fast Company editor Harry McCracken had already set up Friday. He wound up doing most of the talking and therefore got to transcribe the interview and write the story. Unanticipated bonus: Seeing Harry introduce himself to Berners-Lee, express his thanks to him for inventing the Web, and have Sir Tim respond “You’re very welcome—use it any time you like.”

Screenshot of the story as seen in Safari on an iPad mini.11/8/2022: 1Password CEO: Our Competition Isn’t Just Apple and Google, It’s Bad Habits, PCMag

The other interview I did Friday at Web Summit was with 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner, which resulted in this longer piece for PCMag. This was another plane-written piece, which was not the most comfortable sort of writing in the context of the 31-in. seat pitch in the back of a TAP Air Portugal A321.

11/9/2022: Slingboxes Silenced as Servers Go Offline, PCMag

Writing this semi-obituary for the Slingbox, the pioneering place-shifting device for traveling TV viewers, provided me with an unexpected hit of nostalgia. Especially when I looked up the review I wrote for the Washington Post of the first Slingbox in July of 2005.

11/10/2022: Rocket Lab Picks Dec. 7 for First US Electron Rocket Launch, PCMag

I’ve been following the progress of Rocket Lab’s plans to start launching its Electron rocket from Wallops Island, Va., for a few years, and now there’s an official launch date announced. Yes, I plan on making the trip to Virginia’s Eastern Shore for that.

 

 

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Weekly output: sustainability, Project Kuiper, Frances Haugen, AI benefits, wellness UX, Amazon Sidewalk, less Facebook, Microsoft vs. climate change, Apple vs. sideloading, HBO Max, Nothing, Tim Berners-Lee, Facebook at Web Summit, U.S. vs. NSO Group

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Looking at this list makes me feel tired… or maybe that’s just the jet lag talking.

Photo shows the Corporate Innovation Summit program in the library of the Academy of Sciences.11/1/2021: How technology is driving sustainability, Web Summit

My first of four Web Summit panels took place at the Corporate Innovation Summit, an offsite gathering at the Lisbon Academy of Sciences Monday. There, I quizzed Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at Thoughtworks; Vincent Clerc, chief executive officer for ocean and logistics at Maersk, and Tolga Kurtoglu, chief technology officer at HP, about how their firms were working to slow global warming.

11/1/2021: Amazon is gearing up to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet, Fast Company

I got an advance on the news that Amazon’s Project Kuiper low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband plans to launch its first two prototype satellites towards the end of next year–which will still leave it years behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

11/1/2021: Facebook Whistleblower: ‘I Don’t Hate Facebook’ (But Zuckerberg Should Step Down), PCMag

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen helped open Web Summit with an onstage talk Monday night; writing that up led to me not having dinner until 10 p.m.

11/2/2021: Beyond the bottom line: The extra benefits of AI, Web Summit

Tuesday morning, I interviewed David Kiron, editorial director at MIT Sloan Management Review, and François Candelon, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, about research they’d done in how artificial-intelligence software can make organizations smarter.

11/3/2021: How to win at wellness UX, Web Summit

Talking to executives at two health-tech startups–Nevada Sanchez, co-founder and vice president of core technology at Butterfly Network, and Alison Darcy, founder of Woebot Health–I had to ask “How do you convince people that you’re not the next Theranos?” I thought these two people fielded that query well.

11/3/2021: Amazon Sidewalk quietly walks on, Light Reading

This assessment of Amazon’s mesh-network project reflects a correction I requested Saturday after Amazon pointed out that the setup process on a new Echo device now gives people a chance to opt out of Sidewalk.

11/3/2021: Stop bothering me, Facebook: Not ready to quit? Try these 3 tips to quiet it down, USA Today

The last time I wrote a Facebook-diet column for USAT, the social network had yet to give its users a way to opt out of having it analyze their reading habits across the rest of the Web for advertising-tracking purposes.

11/3/2021: How Do You Hit Net Zero? Microsoft President Brad Smith Has an Idea, PCMag

Microsoft president Brad Smith used a Web Summit keynote to explain how the company plans to make itself not just a carbon-neutral operation, but to zero out all the carbon dioxide it’s put into the air since its founding.

11/3/2021: Apple Exec to the EU: Hands Off Our App Store, PCMag

Apple software executive Craig Federighi gave what I thought was a remarkably disingenuous speech at Web Summit urging the European Union to back off on a proposal to require that Apple allow “sideloading” of apps in iOS.

11/4/2021: HBO Max exec emphasizes curation and localization, FierceVideo

I wrote up an interview of HBO Max product-planning senior vice president Melissa Weiner, that took place at a virtual conference hosted by Fierce’s parent firm. I thought I’d have more free time in my calendar when I accepted the story assignment, but an early start to my Thursday allowed me to get this written without putting a dent in my Web Summit schedule.

11/4/2021: Can Europe compete in consumer hardware?, Web Summit

This interview of Akis Evangelidis, co-founder of the gadget startup Nothing, provided me with my introduction to Web Summit’s main stage.

11/4/2021: Tim Berners-Lee Wants to Put Online Privacy on a Solid Foundation, PCMag

Web Summit closed out with the Web’s inventor making a pitch for his privacy-optimizing startup Inrupt.

11/4/2021: Facebook finds few friends at Web Summit as techies turn out to hear from whistleblower, USA Today

I wrote a recap of how so many speakers at this conference teed off on Facebook–er, Meta–even as the social network now recasting itself as a “metaverse” company limited its presence at Web Summit to glitchy appearances via streaming video.

11/7/2021: U.S. blacklists NSO Group, Al Jazeera

The Arabic-language news network had me on Sunday to discuss the Department of Commerce putting the Israeli surveillance-software firm NSO (and three other offenders) on its Entity List of banned firms for its role in eroding human rights.