Tech Buzz

I'm writing this on Tuesday evening Pacific Time, Dec. 30, 2008. It will be published early Friday morning, Jan. 2. So right now I can't tell you if I was able to keep my first New Year's resolution: to use the extra "leap second" we all got just before midnight New Year's Eve in a wise, productive ...

People don't like to change; particularly as we get older, we take comfort in the status quo and start avoiding things that are new and different. As we get older we gain more power and this generally places the most conservative people in positions of authority. Let's look at four companies this we...

This year was likely the last of an era where vendors could afford to shotgun out products and services and hope that buyers would take them. 2009 will be much harsher on practices like this, as funding will be very short and misses will be career limiting, severely for some. Looking back, there wer...

The new president-elect for the U.S. isn't even in office yet and he is already wrapped in scandal. Fortunately we can live with this one as it had to do with whether he carried a Zune or an iPod, but given some were calling this -- and I'm not kidding -- "Zunegate," I thought the event was interest...

Here are just a handful of the big stories that CNN and other news organizations won't be able to fully cover over the next two to three years: An economic rebound spurred by renewed investments and new developments in technology. An Internet available to more people in more far-flung parts of the U...

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report accusing Kevin Martin, the chairman of the FCC, of being deceptive and opaque in his management of the agency's affairs. That a politician would pull such moves is no surprise, but the report should send a strong signal to the inco...

Kevin Martin has had it pretty rough these last few weeks. The guy can't catch a break -- from being painted as a bully and a bad manager by a House committee report to being dressed down by the Commerce Secretary and called out as crooked by The Wall Street Journal. If I were him, I'd bury myself i...

The economic pressure continues to increase and there is a reasonably good chance that we'll be down to one large car company in the U.S. by this time next year -- Ford, which appears to be the only one that isn't saying it won't survive without a massive cash infusion from the U.S. government. In t...

I'm starting to lose track of which major news event is supposed to be THE turning point for technology-driven citizen journalism. Was it bloggers detailing the horrors of Sept. 11? The surreal graininess of cell phone videos and photos capturing the 2004 London subway bombings? The digital camcorde...

One of the first jobs I ever held was as an auto mechanic and have had a passion for cars that predates my passion for technology. Watching the U.S. auto industry make mistake after mistake until it was nearly out of business has been particularly painful for any of us who love both cars and our cou...