Gravitational Pull: A blog about tech and other stuff.
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I’m over at The Boston Globe
As of June, 2021, I’ve left Fortune (and the Data Sheet newsletter) and joined The Boston Globe as a reporter on the newly formed tech team in the business section. My focus will be more on the local Boston/New England tech scene, but with occasional forays into broader topics. You can find my stuff on…
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(Not) I’m over at Fortune writing about tech and telecom now
As of the end of March, 2016, I’ve left Yahoo Finance and hopped over to the tech team at Fortune. Most of my stuff is for the web site, with occasional magazine pieces as well. I’m concentrating on the big four telecom carriers plus a few other companies, such as Intel, Qualcomm and Fitbit. It’s all…
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(Not) I’m over at Yahoo Finance writing about tech stuff now
Hi folks. Sorry for the long hiatus between posts. A few months back, I was hired as senior technology reporter by Yahoo Finance. So now my hobby is my job. You can find pretty much all of my tech-related views and such, in text and video, over at my YF author page from now on.…
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Five myths about Apple’s tax avoidance
Tuesday’s hearing on Apple’s tax avoidance schemes made for pretty good Washington, D.C. theater. Apple CEO Tim Cook was friendly and forthcoming and most of the senators went out of their way to proffer their love of Apple products. So I doubt the hearing will help advance the much needed cause of corporate tax reform…
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Looking for the best Google Reader replacement, don’t forget the plumbing
Google is shutting down Google Reader, its RSS feed collector, in July. Google’s bare bones reader web site was never the greatest way to actually read your RSS feeds, automatically updated collections of all your blog post subscriptions. There were plenty of alternatives for that function — I was using Reeder on my iPad and…
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It’s not about the specs – dumping my fancy pants camera
For the past year or so, I’ve been taking pictures with one of the most well-reviewed and highly spec-ed out digital cameras on the market, the Sony NEX-7. It didn’t come cheap and a couple of additional lens added to the bill but this was supposedly one of the great cameras out there. Considerably smaller…
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The iPhone has lost its lead and needs a rethink, not a retread
“iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” Steve Jobs, Jan 9, 2007 Introducing the iPhone From the first version of the iPhone through at least a couple of revisions of its hardware and software, the thing stood so far ahead of any other phone…
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Simplification disaster: The Case of Shafer v Civilization
How does it happen that a shining success fades into failure, that a popular series falls out of favor, that a great product line drops off into obscurity? Those are the questions I’ve pondered for the past few years after my favorite video game series, Sid Meier’s Civilization, went completely off the rails at version…
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Post PC Vacationing: kids, cameras, iPads but no laptops
Just back from a short family vacation to San Francisco where much fun was had. We traveled light, or at least light-ish, for this wired day and age. We took smart phones, digital cameras and iPads but we didn’t bring a laptop. For the most part, everything went well. The iPad makes a great travel…
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Yikes, Microsoft’s Time Machine clone leaves out tons of important stuff
(Updated to include a way to unhide files and add them to a “library” for backup) Basically, this post is a warning to anyone using the new File History backup program in Windows 8. The program is severely limited because it will only back up files in a few preset locations that can’t be expanded.…
Got any book recommendations?