A great deal has been said and written about cyberbullying, but not all of it is true. As Cyberbullying Research Center co-director Justin Patchin said in an interview recently, it's "a concern that we need to take very seriously," but "it's certainly not an epidemic."
Cyberbullying, said Patchin, is "bullying behaviors carried out using or facilitated by technology," which includes "a lot of the same kind of things we see at school and in neighborhoods, such as harassment or disrespecting or rumors or gossip that are now being carried out online.&… Read more
Out with the old. In with the new. That's been the way of the personal technology industry for as long as there's been a personal technology industry. (I cut my computing teeth on Radio Shack's TRS-80--a personal computer that helped render the original personal computer, MITS' Altair, obsolete in the late 1970s.)
It's also the beat I'll cover here in Challengers. This blog is focused on new things--companies, products, services, and technologies--that aim to go head-to-head with established ones. I'll explore what makes them different and, in theory at least, better. And while I'… Read more
We solid-state drive lovers (it's quite easy to fall in love, by the way, if you have a computer that's equipped with one) should throw a party and hire Jimmy McMillan to represent us. Because, you guessed it, the price of this type of storage device for computers is still just too damn high! So how high is high?
Though priced significantly lower than it was a few years ago, the SSD is still possibly the most expensive component inside the handful of high-end laptops on the market. Unless there's a rare deal or big promotion, a 120GB SSD generally goes for around $200 to $250 these days, depending on the connection type (SATA 2 or SATA 3) and speed.
(It's worth noting that, for most computers, you'd need one that's 120GB or larger. This is because a 64GB SSD, though will get the job done, can hold just the OS, essential software applications, and not much else.)
The price gets progressively higher as capacities get larger. A 240GB--which is the "sweet spot" that enjoys the balance of relatively large storage space while remaining attainable for consumers--now goes for between $420 and $550. Starting at 512GB, SSDs can cost thousands of dollars, too expensive for most of us to afford or justify.… Read more
Typically I write about storage. Now, as part of my research, I'm writing about data--data about you. The hottest commodity on the Web right now is data that describes who you are, what you like, what you do, who you know, where you've gone, where you might be, and what you are likely to do.
There are potentially tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of buyers, sellers, and collectors of data about you. For example, retailers of all stripes--from online to bricks and mortar--believe that they can sell more to you when they know more about … Read more
Looks like you could soon be able to pick up a Double Big Gulp, an Absinthe kit and even the mysterious upcoming Amazon tablet all in one trip to your local corner store. That's because the company that sells everything is setting up shop in the store that seems to be everywhere.
Amazon's first lockers for merchandise pickup are apparently set to go online in a Seattle 7-Eleven later this week. The system looks something like a gigantic, retro hybrid of an ATM and a wall of post office boxes, from what we can make out in shots snapped by local Seattle bloggers. According to The Daily, the system will work something like the in-store pickup option that retailers including Wal-Mart and Best Buy already offer:… Read more
Officially, we still have three weeks of summer, but we all know that after the three-day Labor Day weekend it's all but over. And it's probably a good thing. After the blistering pace of big news and wild moments over the past three months, we could all use an autumn vacation. Here's a look back at the stories that made summer 2011 so memorable:
iOS 5 and "one more thing" from WWDC: No blockbuster new device announcement came out of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Instead we got updates to Mac OS X and iOS to anticipate, as well as one more very intriguing thing. Steve Jobs announced iCloud, which rehashes a lot of cloud concepts that are already old hat for Android users, but adds that special Apple polish and iTunes Match, which syncs up users' music and media collections across iOS devices. The service still hasn't debuted, but Spotify landed in the U.S. (see below) in the meantime, creating some serious competition.
Everything's coming up tablets: The great race to catch up to the iPad continued, but no one seemed to gain ground. RIM's PlayBook flopped and HP's TouchPad... well, more on that later. But the tech world is far from giving up. Microsoft started the summer by introducing Windows 8, which is basically built to be tablet-ready with a touch interface. Of course, who knows if we'll see it before 2014--by that time tablets will probably have been replaced by nanotech thought-controlled devices. Amazon also looks to be throwing its hat in the tablet ring, with a rumored iPad-killer coming soon, maybe?
Everyone hacks everything: What's summer without a fresh Mountain Dew and Low-Orbit Ion Cannon by the glow of a flat-screen monitor, DDoSing the lazy days away? You're not anyone in this world anymore until someone hacks you. By that measure, a whole lot of people, companies, and governments finally "arrived" this year. Tongue-in-cheek congratulations to the CIA, Sony (several times over), Citigroup, Electronic Arts, Turkey, and so many more for making the long list of targets.… Read more
Let's just get one thing out of the way--Amazon's mysterious and still officially unannounced tablet is NOT an iPad killer. The iPad can look forward to living a long and prosperous life, at least in tech terms. But today, the first report came down of someone actually seeing and using the Amazon tablet, which is actually the next Kindle, according to TechCrunch's MG Seigler, who was not allowed to photograph the device.
As ZDNet's Larry Dignan points out, the new Kindle (or Kindles--CNET also reported as early as May that Amazon was working on both 7- and 10-inch tablets) is Amazon's worst-kept secret, which is why we think we know so much about it.
And now that at least one human appears to have handled one of the devices, I'm suddenly feeling confident enough to make a declaration that may seem foolish given the HP TouchPad's recent demise and strange life after death. Here it is anyway in case you missed the headline: This new Amazon Kindle/tablet thing, if the majority of what we've heard about it is true, will be the first Android tablet to actually sell.
Forrester has already said that Amazon could sell 5 million tablets next quarter, and I think that's more than just blowing smoke. Here're five reasons why: … Read more
In part 1 of this two-part series, I explained why I thought Amazon Web Services is the leader in public infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and why no other company really seems poised to catch it at this point. There is no doubt in my mind that Amazon's developer-centric approach to cloud sets it far apart--and ahead of--the hosting companies trying to compete in that market.
That said, Amazon's market position is not invulnerable, and there are several ways that it can be beaten--or at least challenged. What it will take is a different approach to the public-cloud … Read more
As you may have heard in today's episode, the Buzz Out Loud podcast is going from a daily show to a weekly show. I'll pause here to let you shout at me.
Before I get to the reasons, let me get to the logistics. Our last daily episode will be Episode 1550, on September 23, and our first weekly episode will be Thursday, September 29. The new, weekly Buzz Out Loud will happen live on Thursdays at 10 a.m. Pacific, and will be an hour-long show that features the biggest stories of the week, awesome and fascinating … Read more
I need to reprioritize the items in my Hurricane Irene Go Bag. How do I know this? Because this a.m. I found myself struggling to decide which toy my cat would prefer should we be forced to evacuate our home early tomorrow morning.
And if you do live in one of the affected areas, you can download apps for both iOS and Android devices that show Doppler radar info, detailed maps, and ongoing weather warnings and satellite images for up-to-date news on the storm. But what should you pack in your emergency "Go Bag"? … Read more
What's the #1 music streaming-app for iOS? Who wins in an iPhone v. S4 faceoff? We've got it covered with iPhone news, rumors, app recommendations, and more.
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