Challengers

Can Barnes & Noble save the bookstore?

Over the weekend, I drove to a local mall to go see a movie, but got stuck in traffic and missed the showtime--so I visited the mall's Barnes & Noble bookstore instead.

Reminders of the Nook's virtues were strategically placed elsewhere in the store, too, such as signs in the magazine section touting digital magazine subscriptions.

Barnes & Noble has been selling books since 1873, but it's selling fewer of them these days--or at least devoting less floor space to them. Areas that were once filled with books are now devoted to greeting cards, toys and games, and other more

Google's Google+ gambit: The Madman theory

Let me tell you a story about Richard M. Nixon and the Cold War--and yes, I promise it's relevant to a blog post about Google's controversial move to integrate its Google+ network deeply into the Google search engine.

In October 1969, President Nixon secretly elevated the U.S. military to full global readiness alert and ordered bombers loaded with nuclear weapons to fly near the Soviet border. If that sounds like an impulsive and dangerous move--well, that's because Nixon wanted the Soviet leaders to believe that he was so impulsive and dangerous that he might do anything. more

Google thinks that Google+ is Google. Is it?

Week before last, Google fired its biggest salvo yet in its battle with Facebook to be the world's most important Web site: It began rolling information from its Google+ social network into the results at its namesake search engine.

I'm not sure how the average Google user feels about this development, but the response of the Google-watching blogosphere has been overwhelmingly critical. Search expert Danny Sullivan has done an excellent series of posts, saying that Google is playing favorites by emphasizing Google+ over rivals such as Facebook and Twitter. Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily argues that Google has violated a promise more

What the world needs now: An iOS laptop

It happens to me all the time--in coffee shops, at airport gates, during conferences.

I'll be sitting by myself, tapping away on my ZaggFolio, which essentially turns an iPad 2 into an undersized notebook with a high-quality keyboard. A stranger comes up and gawks. Sometimes that person figures out that I'm using an iPad; sometimes he or she thinks it's some amazing new category of device. But both types of folks are instantly smitten. When I explain what I'm doing, they ask me who made the keyboard, and often jot down the name Zagg so they more

Kodak was never going to be the Kodak of digital photography

First, an important point: The fact that Eastman Kodak has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy is no reason to begin talking about this iconic American company in the past tense.

Kodak isn't going out of business. In fact, the whole point of chapter 11 is to help an ailing business avoid death and move forward. I'm still hoping that Kodak will find a way to be viable--even successful--for years to come.

When a venerable, successful company flounders as times change, it's tempting to look back for moments in time when one decision, made differently, would have led more

Seven things I learned at CES 2012

At many major tech conferences, one big story--a product, technology, or trend--dominates the entire show.

CES 2012 was not one of those events. Intel's Ultrabook was the closest thing there was to a show-dominating topic, but in the end, what I was struck by was the diversity of stuff on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center and surrounding venues. And in some cases, the no-shows were as interesting as the products that were there.

Herewith, a few of the lessons I took home with me after four jam-packed days in Vegas:

Windows Phone was the mobile platform of more

Mirasol displays: running late, worth the wait?

Two years ago, at the 2010 edition of CES, I got all excited about a technology from Qualcomm called Mirasol--a new type of color screen that ran for weeks on one battery charge, was fast enough to permit fluid user interfaces and video playback, and which didn't wash out in direct sunlight.

Mirasol looked like a good fit for Kindle-style e-readers, and Qualcomm said that it expected an e-reader with a Mirasol screen to arrive by the third quarter of the year. It didn't. A whole lot of other stuff did happen, though. Monochrome E-Ink screens got more

At first, I admired the new version of smartphone social network app Path more than I liked it.

When Path 2 premiered at the end of November, I thought it had one of the prettiest, most clever user interfaces I'd ever seen on any piece of software, for any type of device. I also bristled, however, at the cap it placed on your social network: It let you friend a maximum of 150 people, who were supposed to consist only of loved ones and close friends. The limitation seemed artificial and pushy, and I was skeptical that my loved more

Threadsy's gone, but I'm still searching for a universal in-box

It was a little like learning that an old friend had passed away without me knowing about it.

I recently tried to log in to my account at Threadsy, an extremely clever Web-based service that wove multiple Gmail accounts, Facebook, and Twitter into one interface that let you handle all your communications in one place. When I did, I got a message: "threadsy will be shutting down on November 2, 2011. We have been honored to serve you, our passionate community."

Wow. For a few months, Threadsy--which debuted at the TechCrunch 50 conference in September 2009 and opened more

Eight things I'm looking forward to seeing at CES

Some of my colleagues in the tech journalism business actively despise the Consumer Electronics Show.

If they make the trek to Vegas in January, they complain about the experience from start to end, obsessing over all the little things they dislike about it. If they can figure out a way to avoid the show altogether, they do so, and gloat.

I'm also aware that the industry has a long track record of getting all excited over new products, trends, and technologies that debut at CES and then never end up amounting to anything. (One example that springs to mind: more