CIO.com offers a fascinating article on the Facebook economy and how much app use has plummeted since a Facebook user interface redesign de-emphasized outside apps. I’d noticed that, too, and wondered what Facebook was thinking in stripping the site down so much (or Twitterizing itself, depending on how you look at it). The article does […]

In the book, JZ discussed why it is that even tech-savvy, cautious users can’t avoid malware: [S]urfing the World Wide Web often entails accepting and running new code. The Web was designed to seamlessly integrate material from disparate sources: a single Web page can draw from hundreds of different sources on the fly, not only […]

Apple has long been killing apps—sometimes inexplicably, sometimes because they compete with other Apple products (Podcaster), and sometimes because they compete with AT&T’s exclusive deal (Netshare). This week brings another example of killing an app because it competes with AT&T, and the tech world is disgusted, outraged, and furious—even the New York Times noticed. The […]

There’s lots of talk, and confusion, about the “cloud” and “cloud computing.”  I’ve recently contributed to it (the discussion, at least, and possibly the confusion) with some of my worries, and in some technology and vendor circles that’s been seen as controversial. I wanted to share some thoughts about just what the cloud is – […]

Prof. Zittrain has spent this week writing about the dangers of moving computing into the cloud. Another aspect of the same story is the danger of keeping computing on endpoints — PCs, smartphones — if those endpoints become tethered instead of generative. This story illustrates the potential problems. Etisalat, a telecom provider that serves much […]