To help celebrate my parents’ upcoming 40th wedding anniversary, our whole family headed down to Disney World last week for a few days of fun in the parks. The kids had a good time, but I won’t lie – with three boys six and under, it was a lot of work. A lot of time […]
Year: 2011
The Nest Learning Thermostat
I’m a sucker for well designed products and for energy efficiency technologies. Combine the two, and you’ve definitely got my attention. Yesterday, former Apple employee and iPod designer Tony Fadell revealed what his start-up has been working on for the last couple of years. It is, of all things, a home thermostat. Called the Nest, […]
I was shocked last night when, after dinner, Casey took a look at the Facebook updates streaming down her page, and said, “I didn’t know Steve Jobs died.” I suspected the time would come sooner, rather than later, after he resigned as Apple CEO in late August, but I don’t think anyone thought the day […]
Bike Commuting
I’ve ridden more bike in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 10 years. Why? I had a really nice mountain bike that I bought myself as a college graduation gift, but I never rode it. It was great for hills and off-road, but not so good for city riding – […]
Earlier today, Netflix published a post to its blog that said, in some of the thickest PR bullshit I’ve ever read, it was raising prices splitting its streaming video plan from its DVD plans, resulting in a 60% price hike for most of its customers: First, we are launching new DVD only plans. These plans […]
WWDC 2011 – Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud
Apple held their annual World Wide Developers Conference last week, and as usual, they kicked it off with a keynote address Monday morning. If you want a full overview of what Apple announced, this video condenses the two hour event down to just eight minutes. I’m not much for rehashing what’s already been covered in-depth, […]
Living in Tim Pawlenty’s Fantasyland
As we get ever closer to the 2012 primary season, I’m watching the GOP Presidential campaign with a growing sense of amusement. The announced candidates and the unofficial contenders are so profoundly unserious that I have a hard time believing they mean half of the things coming out of their mouths. Still, words have consequences, […]
Five months ago I wrote about the Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook prototype I had received from Google. I’ve been using it almost every day since then and was planning on giving an update after six months of having it. But, at Google’s IO conference last week, they announced the availability of Chromebooks for purchase beginning […]
The fundamental question Apple always wants an answer for before entering a new market is “Why would someone buy this instead of what’s already out there?” I don’t think there’s a good answer for that if an Apple-branded HDTV is just a big screen with built-in Apple TV functionality. — John Gruber For years, there […]
Why You’ll be Buying an iPad 2
First, an admission: I was wrong. Last year I said I didn’t think the iPad would be a commercial success, but it clearly is. I also said it was a just a bigger, faster iPod Touch, but it’s obvious that the large 9.7 inch LED screen makes all the difference. Despite a clear use case […]