Technologizer

Kind Words From Kiplinger’s

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Good grief! Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has published its Best of Everything 2009 feature, which provides picks for everything from mutual funds to cars to colleges to travel deals. It’s also got a category for “Best Tech Gadget Guru,” and Kiplinger’s choice in that category is…me! Whether he’s discussing Microsoft’s mobile-phone software or praising a cool netbook,HARRY [...]

Political Caricature? There’s No App For That

Monday, November 9, 2009

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I long ago gave up on trying to cover every weird rejection of an application intended for Apple’s iPhone App Store, but this one merits quick mention. Tom Richmond, the excellent caricaturist whose work appears in MAD these days, has blogged about an app he co-created. It’s a guide to senators and members of congress [...]

Google Magazines: Now Actually Findable!

Friday, November 6, 2009

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I keep writing about the wonders of Google Books’ archive of scanned magazines–most notably, the utter delight that is the complete LIFE. Every time I do, I pause to wonder why it’s practically impossible to find a magazine unless you know it’s there. Problem solved, mostly: Google Books now has a page with thumbnail images of [...]

Magazines: Still Ripe for Digital Reimagining

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

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We don’t even know for sure whether Apple will ever release a tablet–although there’s lots of compelling evidence that it will–and already there’s a lively debate about whether the company is interested in using said tablet to do to printed reading materials what iTunes has done for music. Until recently, the smart money seemed to be [...]

LIFE is Good!

Saturday, September 26, 2009

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I’m not sure how I managed to miss this, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the month’s best tech-related news. On Wednesday, Google announced that Google Books has published the entire run of the most famous incarnation of LIFE magazine–almost 1900 issues, spanning 1936 to 1972. It’s the perfect complement to Google Images’ astonishing [...]

World of Warcraft, The Magazine: What an Idea!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

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You know a video game is popular when it spawns its own magazine. Such is the case with World of Warcraft: The Magazine, debuting this weekend at the BlizzCon gaming convention in Anaheim, Calif. The quarterly publication has the blessing of publisher Blizzard, and it’ll be run by former Official Xbox Magazine Senior Editor Dan Amrich. [...]

How a Macworld Cover is Born

Sunday, August 9, 2009

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I love doing my thing on the Web, but I’d be a liar if I told you there weren’t things I missed about being a magazine journalist. And one of the top three things I pine for is the fun (and challenge) of creating a cover every month. So I love, love, love this video [...]

Computer Shopper: A Magazine No More

Friday, February 27, 2009

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At its peak, Computer Shopper may have consumed more wood pulp each month than any other magazine of any sort, ever: It consistently ran over 1,000 pages oversized a month in the early 1990s. (I remember in part because I worked for a not-very-successful magazine that had been formed to take Shopper on head-to-head.) The onetime [...]

The Newsstand That Spawned Microsoft Will Live On

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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Good news for Bostonians, traditionalists, and computer-history junkies: Out of Town News, the 54-year-old newsstand in the heart of Cambridge’s Harvard Square, won’t be closing after all. The kiosk that sold Paul Allen the copy of Popular Electronics that inspired him and Bill Gates to found a company called Micro-Soft has a new tenant that [...]

JPG Magazine Goes Bye-Bye

Friday, January 2, 2009

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JPG Magazine, the publication consisting entirely of photos submitted by its readers, is folding. The closure includes the print publication, its PDF version, and the Web site, and comes at a time when just about everybody involved in the creation of advertising-supported media properties is having a tough time of it. As Daring Fireball’s John [...]

The Best of Frenemies

Thursday, December 11, 2008

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Frenemy: Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust. –Urban Dictionary That’s not a bad first stab at a definition, but let’s expand on it: A frenemy can be a friend who evolves into an enemy. Or an enemy who morphs [...]

Google’s Infinite, Infinitely Imperfect Newsstand

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

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Who says magazines are dead? Sure, ones printed on wood pulp are writhing in agony at the moment. But there are a couple of centuries’ worth of back issues that still make for fascinating–and sometimes important–reading. And among Google’s umpteen major initiatives is getting as many of them as possible online in searchable form. Today, [...]