Web 2.0 version v54

While I was presenting my Web 2.0 seminar in Rome this week, I had a chance to review and edit the V53 Web 2.0 materials that I recently uploaded — as well as adding some new material based on the June 9, 2008 Apple presentation about its new iPhone3g. The result is a new V54 […]

Web 2.0, version 53

During the past week, I’ve had a chance to review and edit the V52 Web 2.0 materials that I recently published. The result is a new V53 version, which you can download as a PDF file by clicking here or on the picture below, or which you can view/download by visiting my Slideshare page. The […]

MacBook Air

A couple months ago, I posted a long blog about the many reasons I had decided to forego the temptation to order Apple’s new MacBook Air. Too slow, too limited, missing ports and PC card slots, blah blah blah …
… and yet … and yet … I couldn’t help being tempted every time I saw […]

MacBook Air: Not now, maybe next year …

I’ve been a loyal Apple fan since 1985, and have bought at least one of almost every new computer they’ve produced — especially the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, which first arrived on the scene around 1993. So I was as excited and titillated by the rumors of the MacBook Air as everyone else during […]

OLPC/XO machine, first reactions

Bottom line: the XO machine built by the OLPC organization is miniscule; it’s slow; its keyboard is built for tiny hands; the trackpad sucks; and its user interface did not seem quite as intuitive as I had expected. But it’s rugged, it’s got some wonderful UI innovations, and you can’t help but feel like you’re […]

Donald Norman’s “Design of Future Things”

After yesterday’s discussion of whether enterprise applications are doomed to be dull and “unsexy,” I thought it would be a good opportunity to provide a review of Donald Norman’s new book, The Design of Future Things. Norman doesn’t talk about ERP or enterprise applications, nor does he focus on software “products” per se — though […]

Kindle reviews: a smorgasborg of positive and negative opinions

While I’ve been reporting on my own personal experiences with Kindle during the past few days, several other bloggers, journalists, pundits, and techno-geeks have also been offering their opinions. What follows is almost certainly not an exhaustive collection — and even if it were, it would be obsolete by tomorrow. But it will give you […]

Kindle, Day 3: the other bells and whistles

Bottom line: the Kindle machine may be as unattractive as a Commodore 64 (to paraphrase David Pogue’s review in this morning’s New York Times), but it is a remarkably complex, sophisticated device. Indeed, I found myself muttering, “With a little more work, they could have made this as good as a Mac!” — and I […]

Kindle, Day 2: Reading the New York Times

Here are a couple of observations about reading newspapers on the new Kindle e-reader. First: reading is a ritual, which most of us begin practicing at an early age. Second: it’s not easy changing a ritual, especially when it’s been reinforced for a long time, on a daily basis. Third: rituals have nuances and details, […]

First impressions of Kindle

I returned home from an out-of-town business trip this evening, and found my Kindle machine (which I had just ordered yesterday, courtesy of Amazon’s one-click shopping mechanism) waiting for me. I’ve now had about two hours to play with it, which in today’s superficial world probably qualifies me as a veteran pundit; in any case, […]