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 […]

Here’s a copy of Monday’s NYT op-ed about cloud computing.  The Kindle/Orwell incident broke about ten minutes before the piece closed.  (The original new hook, somewhat oddly, was the announcement of the Google Chrome OS — not at all bad in itself, but a milestone on our progression from PC to cloud.)

David Pogue just blogged about a fascinating memory hole leak in the Kindle: customers who purchased at least one version of the classic Nineteen Eighty-Four found their copies of the book simply vanished from their readers. Amazon’s apparent explanation: The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four […]

I wrote up a few thoughts on Google’s announcement of its new Chrome operating system, designed to permit near-instant booting of a PC or other device to … a Web browser, and essentially only a Web browser.  The piece can be found here, and below: Google and Microsoft are now officially fighting over you. They […]

Twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet.  The founders explain that they expected interconnection with mobile phone text messaging — SMS — from the start, and that it could be expensive to have longer tweets broken into mutiple messages when people pay per SMS.  As Dom Sagolla explains: Messages longer than 160 characters (the common […]

One less examined piece of what’s going on in Iran this week goes beyond the use of Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms — beyond what people can do with a basic browser.  And that’s the role of the humble PC — the personal computer, whether Windows, Mac, or GNU/Linux. What makes the PC so crucial […]

This blog isn’t that active — I haven’t quite figured out the right rhythm, and what should count as blogworthy enough to post.  The past couple days have been active, though, with the events unfolding in Iran.  I’m part of OpenNet, which tracks Internet censorship around the world, and we just released an update to […]