Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Technologizer’s Greatest Hits, 2008-2012

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 29, 2012 at 11:53 am

Whenever people ask me what the topic of Technologizer is–which they do all the time–I have a stock answer which happens to be true. This site is about the intersection between the tech-related stuff that I’m interested in, and the tech-related stuff that a critical mass of other people are interested in. You see, I’m not very good at covering topics I don’t care about–but I do like people to read what I’ve written.

My interests are eclectic enough that Technologizer has tended to be eclectic. And when other folks started writing for the site, it sometimes got eclectic in ways that surprised even me. One of the great pleasures of blogging here is that so many of you have gotten what we do here, even in cases when the subject matter has gotten a tad peculiar.

Now that Technologizer is about to end its life as a stand-alone site and become part of TIME.com,  I wanted to look back at some of our most popular stories to date. Here’s a month-by-month accounting of the most-read items we’ve published, by unique visitors. (Unless otherwise specified, I wrote all of these.)

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Ah, But I Was So Much Older Then, I’m Younger Than That Now

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 22, 2012 at 9:43 pm

[FURTHER UPDATE: As commenter Jdoors explains, I can see the video I uploaded when I’m logged into YouTube. But I’m the only one who can see it–for everybody else, it’s blocked.]

[UPDATE: The original video, with Dylan soundtrack, is still playing for me here at home in Daly City, California. But Network World’s Paul McNamara, commenters, and others are saying that it’s blocked for them. Sounds like the geolocation technology that YouTube uses has decided that Daly City isn’t in the U.S. Or something like that.]

Back in October, shortly after Steve Jobs passed away, I uploaded a wonderful video to YouTube. It was called “To Steven Jobs on his thirtieth birthday,” and was a film created by Jobs’ Apple coworkers in 1985 to show at his birthday party. (Craig Elliott, who worked at Apple when it was made and shown, was the generous soul who shared it with me.)

I’d never seen the video or many of the Jobs images it included, and thought they deserved to be more widely known. Now they are: The YouTube version has been viewed almost 240.000 times.

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Checking In

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 16, 2012 at 3:29 pm

My apologies for the lull in activity here since I announced my new gig as an editor at large for TIME. Before too long, Technologizer will reemerge as a blog hosted by TIME.com. In the meantime, I’m doing most of my blogging on TIME’s Techland. Here are a few items you may have missed:

See you over there, I hope–and I promise to drop in here as well before the TIME.com transition is complete.

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The Offbeat World of Atari

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 13, 2012 at 12:18 am

For a forty-year-old company that remains synonymous with video games, Atari has experimented with an awful lot of other businesses. In its early years, it made pinball machines, jukeboxes, video phones, digital photo booths, music-visualization boxes for your hi-fi, and more. Benj Edwards, who knows more about this stuff than anyone, has compiled a look at Atari Oddities–including the aforementioned and others, and some strange games, too. (If you remember Puppy Pong, I’m impressed.)

 

Visit Atari Oddities slideshow.

 

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It’s TIME for a New Adventure

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 9, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Three and a half years ago, I quit a cool job and started Technologizer. It’s been the best gig I’ve ever had. So far.

As a sideline, starting in September of 2010, I’ve been writing for TIME.com and TIME magazine. That too has been huge fun, and an honor. Over the past few decades, TIME has influenced my editorial brain as much as any publication. Just as important, I’ve been impressed by its current incarnation online, in print, on tablets, and elsewhere.

I’m pleased to announce that my relationship with TIME is about to become way more than a sideline: I’ve agreed to join its staff as an editor at large.

 

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Is Kodak Smartly Exiting a Dying Business?

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 9, 2012 at 10:40 am

Kodak Instamatic

I’m part of the problem: I never owned a Kodak digital camera. In fact, I’m not sure if I ever owned a Kodak camera–not counting disposable ones–period.

Still, my instinct upon hearing that Kodak is going to stop making digital cameras (along with video cameras and digital picture frames) was to take the loss personally. Kodak says it wants to license its legendary name to other manufacturers–as Polaroid, Sylvania, and other companies do–but it’s not going to be the same.

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iPad 3, Coming About When You Expected It?

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 9, 2012 at 10:00 am

AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski, usually not a spreader of wild rumor, says that Apple will announce the iPad 3 in the first week of March and release it shortly thereafter:

As for the next-generation iPad itself, sources say it will be pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release: A device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but running a much faster chip, sporting an improved graphics processing unit, and featuring a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.

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Path: We’re Sorry and We Have a Fix

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 8, 2012 at 12:58 pm

Dave Morin, the cofounder and CEO of Path, has blogged an apology and an update concerning the discovery that the company’s social networking app was uploading users’ address books without permission:

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

In Path 2.0.6, released to the App Store today, you are prompted to opt in or out of sharing your phone’s contacts with our servers in order to find your friends and family on Path. If you accept and later decide you would like to revoke this access, please send an email to service@path.com and we will promptly see to it that your contact information are removed.

[snip]

In the interest of complete transparency we want to clarify that the use of this information is limited to improving the quality of friend suggestions when you use the ‘Add Friends’ feature and to notify you when one of your contacts joins Path––nothing else. We always transmit this and any other information you share on Path to our servers over an encrypted connection. It is also stored securely on our servers using industry standard firewall technology.

We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.

We hope this update clears up any confusion. You can find Path 2.0.6 in the App Store here:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/path/id403639508?mt=8

Good. (Seems to me, though, that most of the “confusion” here was on the part of Path, not the people who were displeased…)

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