For the past week or so, I have been experimenting with the Pixel Slate, Google’s new hybrid tablet/laptop. Here is me typing this blog post right now, on the train to NYC. For a longer, more technical analysis, this review from The Verge is good. The Pixel Slate is an odd machine, and I am still… Continue reading
Category: Products & Services
Dropbox and personal data
More and more, recently, I’ve been noticing web services that use Dropbox for storing user data. For example,1Password, OneName and Diaro. With all the talk about user control of data, data liberation, privacy, etc — I actually feel like this is is a super nice approach, at least for some use cases. I am more comfortable… Continue reading
Pebble: first impressions
Last week, having been inspired by (of all things) this awesome and awful samsung gear commercial, i ordered a Pebble smartwatch. I can’t remember the last time I wore a watch — maybe it was 20 years ago in high school. My standard line for the past 10 years has been “why do I need… Continue reading
Uber and Safer Cities
For some reason I have always liked talking to taxi drivers about their business. Maybe it’s because my dad was a NYC taxi driver back in the 70s, or maybe it’s because driving a taxi is such a classic immigrant path to building a life here. And it’s certainly because of the amount of tech… Continue reading
Chromecast: First Impressions
When we got home from vacation last night, my new Chromecast was sitting waiting for me. I’ve been really psyched to try it out. The out-of-the-box experience was clear and simple. My favorite thing about Chromecast is how small it is — it’s barely there; just a tiny little add-on to web-enable your TV. The… Continue reading
FlightCar – a Beachhead for Car Sharing
Despite the extent to which I talk and think about car sharing and other newly possible. web-enabled modes of transportation, the truth is I still don’t use too many of them on a regular basis. Need to work on that. It seems as though I need to travel to SF to get the urge to get around town in new ways.… Continue reading
WebFWD: Accelerating a Better Internet
I’ve always loved Mozilla‘s mission and tactics – using awesome consumer products as the lever to make the web a better place to be. That’s why I’m happy to join their WebFWD accelerator program as a scout. That just means that I’m one of many folks who are on the lookout for products and companies… Continue reading
Superheroes in the Snowpocalypse
Yesterday Uber made me feel like a superhero. It was about 10 degrees in Boston, and I was on the T on my way into Cambridge. And as we pulled in to Kenmore station the conductor notified us that all Green Line trains would be going out of service. So my train — and every… Continue reading
My Public Folders on Google Reader
I love Google Reader. I’ve used it for a long long time now to keep tabs on things. I suppose it’s an old school method at this point, but I think it’s just great. The screengrab above is one of my home screens on my galaxy s3. I have moved to a widgets-only mobile desktop,… Continue reading
Making the Switch to Android
A few things happened recently, which are causing an unexpected and totally interesting change in my digital life. 1) On the last day of our vacation, Theo dropped our iPad on a brick patio, smashing it to bits. 2) I realized that I could save over $100/mo by consolidating my wireless accounts, and moving our… Continue reading
Why Sliderocket Could Be So Awesome, and Why It Isn’t
I wrote the other day about wanting a better way to share slide presentations. I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I don’t think anyone has nailed it yet. I consider this to be an open letter to Sliderocket, which is so close to capturing this opportunity but has (in my humble opinion)… Continue reading
Is _____ for you?
I get way too much spam in my inbox, even just counting things I’ve signed up for myself. Most of it I delete, but today’s email from CoTweet stood out, and is worth mentioning. A while back I signed up for CoTweet, just to check it out — nutshell: CoTweet lets you collaboratively monitor and… Continue reading
Silenced!
Today, I got my first dose of Twitter smack down, as my account was suspended along with a bunch of others following yesterday’s Gov 2.0 Expo. Ouch! Well, at least I’m in good company. As one of the commenters on the Tech Crunch article noted, a situation like this is definitely a bit of a… Continue reading
Chandler and Constraints
I spent most of this morning looking back through old posts about the Chandler Project and OSAF. I’ve thought about this a lot, due to the many parallels with my work at The Open Planning Project. For newcomers, those parallels are: Massive funding from a visionary with a dream (in OSAF’s case, Mitch Kapor, in… Continue reading
Goodbye Fresh Direct, Hello Max Delivery
Here at TOPP, we’ve been using Fresh Direct for a while now for our office groceries (even while being critical of them on one of our blogs). It’s easy — we can order online and have food delivered right to the office. However, the packaging Fresh Direct uses is really outrageous; items are delivered in… Continue reading
Sorry, Chandler
For a while now, I’ve been using Chandler to keep track of my to-dos. Chandler is a semi-historic open source project which I’ve been following ever since I read Dreaming in Code (and in many ways, it’s saga parallels ours at The Open Planning Project with our work on OpenPlans) I’ve been rooting for it… Continue reading
Web App of the Week: SmartyPig
I stumbled upon SmartyPig this week while looking through the Happy Cog website, after reading a Zeldman post, linked to by Daring Fireball, which was brought to me via Melkjug. Gotta love the blogosphere. Now, after all that, not only do I have a new Favorite Web App, but I have a new bank. My… Continue reading
Sendible: "inspired by" Facebook
I came across a post this morning about a new service called Sendible. The basic idea is this: create messages of various types (email, sms, twitter tweets, facebook messages, etc) in advance, then sit back and relax as they get sent out right on schedule. Interesting idea — apparently there are a few other services… Continue reading