Internet of Things – What Things?

March 4, 2013

All joking aside, the internet of things is a technology looking for a use. The geek in us tells us that connecting devices together is a good thing. Networks are better than the sum of it’s parts. Choice is better than none at all. Back in the day, I had a friend who set up [...]

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Internet of Things Gone Wrong – My Kitchen Just Crashed

March 2, 2013

It started with devices such as Nest, the connected thermostat, and Withings, the connect scale. As more and more devices hook into our home network, the opportunity to have them talk to each other begets scenarios that harken back to the Connected Home visions from the 90s. Remember the internet-enabled refrigerator? Samsung now makes one. All this [...]

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Google Glass and Time Travel

February 25, 2013

A lot has been written about how Google Glass will be great for those that put on a pair. Immediate access to the world’s most powerful database, push alerts from your closest friends, a voice UI so you can look up directions without having to look down at your phone, a  camera that lets you [...]

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House of Cards

February 16, 2013

Just finished all 13 hours of the first season of the latest Netflix series, House of Cards. While I didn’t binge view as some of my colleagues did in the name of journalism, I did find myself staying up later than normal to watch “just one more episode” of this dark cousin to West Wing. [...]

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Where is the Microsoft Surface theme song?

February 12, 2013

For the launch of Windows95, Microsoft licensed Start Me Up from the Rolling Stones as a way to kick off the biggest software upgrade in the company’s history and forever brand Mick Jagger’s crooning with a key feature of Win95. Now we have the Surface. Where’s the theme song?

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More about coffee

January 10, 2013

More writing about the value of handmade coffee (vs. those automated Nespresso capsule machines) to follow on my earlier post about Specialty Coffee. It is not that handmade is always best, of course. Much technology is itself a testimony to human creativity and ingenuity. Apple has got very rich through supplying technology that is beautifully designed by [...]

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Online Advertising is just TV?

January 5, 2013

Here’s the plan: Publishers, take every banner ad off of your site. Not just the ones you stuffed at the bottom on the page that nobody sees anyway. Remove each and every single one. Replace those small, ugly boxes with a full-screen, 30-second video interstitial to be displayed on every third page viewed per customer session. Sell the value [...]

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Specialty Coffee around the World

January 3, 2013

The New York Times has a piece about the San Francisco coffee scene, specifically the barista training upstairs from the local temple of the perfect cup, Sightglass. While the West Coast style of brewing is making it’s way to Japan in places like Shibuya, Japan has it’s own professional brewing method which they take very [...]

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Struggling is a given and struggling can be good

January 2, 2013

Nice post over on my dad’s blog about the difference between learning in Japan and learning in America, When that one boy as applauded for struggling to learn, the teacher gave the lesson that anyone struggling to learn deserves to be applauded. The lesson was that struggling is a chance to show that you have [...]

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Guns in Japan

December 20, 2012

My father (who started his own blog) shares what you need to do to get a gun in Japan. To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. [...]

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