Category: Gear

  • Making my WordPress site legible on my crummy mobile phone

    Stuck with my Treo “smart” phone in an airport recently, I decided to navigate over here to my blog via its wimpy browser. The Treo is on Verizon’s 3rd-generation broadband service so even though I have a fair number of pictures on the front page, I figured all would be okay. Nope — the experience…

  • All I ask is a full-frame and a single mirror to sail her by

    With apologies to 19th century English poet John Masefield, I have an issue with my digital camera and none of the major camera vendors are helping me out. As we all learned way back in the days of Kodak Tri-X and silver-halide, the field of view of your basic human being is about equivalent to…

  • Android, iPhone and the push for a real mobile Internet

    Plenty of “news” today about the mobile Internet, prompted by this Wall Street Journal piece on Google’s Android mobile phone operating system.  The Journal’s story is chock full of details of the internal struggles of Android developers and carriers that may support Android phone. While Google had said phones running Android would be available in…

  • The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers

    Web marketing guru Seth Godin has a Kindle and he seems to like it but he’d also like it to be more revolutionary in a very Godin-esque way. Okay. He’s also incredibly sexist. Godin claims the Kindle is “for women” because 1. it’s ugly and 2. the top 10 best sellers are not tech-heavy and…

  • Tivo tip: Shut down everything to transfer shows off a TivoHD

    For a while now, I’ve been trying in vain to move a copy of the film Notting Hill off my TivoHD and onto my iPod. It’s all legit. The TivoHD allows such a transfer using a Mac and Toast’s Tivo Transfer software. The Tivo itself is networked with one of Netgear’s Powerline HDX101 adapters, which…

  • Following up: the new iPhone is even more expensive

    Got plenty of opinionated comments on my prior post about pricing of the new iPhone 3G. Thanks for all the comments. Just a couple of quick responses from me First, my main point is about how Apple and AT&T’s shift from higher up-front cost to higher per-month fees radically altered the sales projections. Thought experiment:…

  • New iPhone pricing proves consumers are idiots

    There’s lots of fascinating research about just how truly horrible consumers and investors we all are most of the time. The field of behavioral economics has produced much scholarship along these lines. Princeton professor Danny Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2002 for his research showing in essence that people make radically different…

  • Kensington’s long-named battery extender saved my flight

    Did you know that it takes a bit longer to fly back from Europe than it takes to fly there? I went to London for a couple of days, tagging along on the better half’s business trip, and my journey aboard two very fine British Airways Boeing 777’s took 6 hours and 15 minutes on…

  • Ah Europe, land of cell phone greatness

    The phone is ringing, it’s 4 a.m. Who do you want answering that (mobile) phone? Me, of course. I’m in London, however, so your 4 a.m. is what we like to call 9 a.m. here in England. I’m on a sort of mini-holiday over here enjoying the many beautiful sights, unusually fine weather and amazing…

  • Tivo already connects your TV to the web content you want

    We’ve been happy Tivo subscribers for almost two years now. We started with a Toshiba RS-TX20 model that also has an integrated DVD player/recorder. That was an awesome combination (just one remote!) but its been discontinued. Not just the model — the whole concept. So when we added a high-definition television set and Verizon’s FIOS…