Category: web services

  • Apple’s iPad may be the perfect computer for kids

    I’m excited about Apple’s new iPad for a couple of reasons. While a lot of the iPad’s features and services had been leaked in advance, I found myself gasping along with the audience in San Francisco when the price was announced. This is a product that is going to have vastly more impact for under…

  • Evernote is the best note keeper in the cloud and on the ground

    Wall Street Journal tech reviewer Walter Mossberg doesn’t always hit the rights notes, in my view, but he was pitch perfect today in a rave about note-stashing software program and web site Evernote. This is the data storage program that runs on practically every platform — Windows and Mac desktops, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and Android…

  • Google slashes price of online storage vs. Apple, others

    (Update April, 2012: Google finally opened its GDrive service and promptly raised the price of storage. Doh!) In a much-commented-upon announcement today that I first saw on Rex Hammock’s blog, Google said it would start selling online storage space for keeping any kinds of files. Previously, the company’s cloud-based storage was limited for use with…

  • Best way to sync Mac and Google contacts? There isn’t one

    It’s kind of a disaster when your two most critical IT vendors won’t play nice. And it’s happening right now to me with Apple and Google feuding over iPhone apps. Google had an iPhone app for managing its fabulous Google Voice service but Apple nixed it (or didn’t approve it, or whatever). Now I have…

  • Apple still isn’t going to kill Amazon’s Kindle, or any other ereader

    Steve Jobs’ latest mouthing off about the market for electronic books and dedicated ereader devices like the Amazon Kindle has sparked the usual conflagration of comments, interpretations and predictions. Some are way off-base, others quite savvy. But after seeing a bit on Techcrunch claiming that everyone was misinterpreting Jobs, it seems like some further clarity…

  • Times Reader’s offline New York Times needs improvement

    “Welcome to the future,” reads the web page for the New York Times’ software/web hybrid application, Times Reader. “Your newspaper is here.” Well, I certainly hope not. The Times Reader, a program which allows you to download virtually the entire contents of the newspaper in seconds online for offline perusal at your leisure, is rather…

  • Mac users should stick with online backup Mozy

    For more than two years, I’ve been quite happily using the Mozy online backup service. Now owned by storage giant EMC, Mozy offers unlimited backup space for under $5 a month per computer and a slick Mac program that automatically uploads new files in the background (there’s also a Windows version but I don’t use…

  • Barnes & Noble eBook Store Great News For Consumers

    Book retailing titan Barnes & Noble has been building its electronic book sales effort this year with some haste, likely hoping to slow the growing momentum of Amazon’s Kindle before it becomes unstoppable. In March, Barnes & Noble bought Fictionwise, maker of a popular ebook reader app for the iPhone and proprietor of several popular…

  • As feared, Kindle prices appear to be rising

    I’ll start this post about Amazon’s fabulous Kindle just like I did the last one: I really, really like my Kindle and I’ve written about it positively here and all over the web (Internet smartie and publisher Rex Hammock says I’m his go-to Kindle fanboy). And, I really want to see the Kindle succeed. That…

  • Scary complaints mounting about Amazon Kindle’s DRM (Updated)

    I’m a big fan of Amazon’s electronic reader, the Kindle, but I have to admit that stories about the digital rights management software embedded in Kindle books are starting to make me very nervous. Digital rights management, or DRM, is the euphemism for restrictive software limits that copyright owners frequently require in digitally licensed versions…