Archive | Original Site

Dropbox Gets a Little More Businesslike

Of all the many and varied services devoted to letting you move around files between computers and other devices by storing them on the Internet, Dropbox may be the single biggest fan favorite. Unlike some of its competitors, it’s been aimed at individual consumers. But despite that, lots of folks in businesses have used it to share stuff with coworkers and clients.

Now there’s a version of Dropbox targeted specifically at such users: Dropbox for Teams. It’s not fancy or radically different from the service’s other plans. Subscribers start with 1TB of storage that’s sharable among five users, but they can get more space at no additional charge if they need it. They can also receive tech support by phone, an option that isn’t available with other plans. That costs $795 a year; additional users are $125 apiece.

Continue Reading →

No comments

The Pros and Cons of the Internet, As Taught to Students in 1996

Last weekend, I was at my parents’ house in Connecticut for a family matter. As my sister went through some of the things in her childhood bedroom, she discovered a document from 1996, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. This was apparently part of some high school handout packet; also included among the papers were tips on using Altavista and print outs of the Yahoo home page as viewed in Netscape.

Since we’re fans of tech nostalgia here at Technologizer, I thought I’d share the document with you. Surprisngly, many of the Internet’s perks and problems remain the same 15 years later, but some of them just seem silly in retrospect.

Continue Reading →

26 comments

HP Decides It’s a PC Company After All

Back in August, HP announced that it felt its PC division, the world’s largest, might be better off if it wasn’t part of HP. It said it was going to review its options and that it might take twelve to eighteen months to come to any conclusions.

A month later, the company fired its CEO, Léo Apotheker, and replaced him with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. She didn’t take a year and a half to make a decision–and the decision is that HP will stay in the PC business.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

(Sadly, the reversal doesn’t seem to have any impact on Apotheker’s other big PC-related decision: Killing the TouchPad tablet after six weeks.)

I always found the breakup plausible–if for no other reason than that it’s an idea that’s been around for a least a decade–but I’m glad it’s not happening. And it always suffered from a fundamental flaw: How could it make sense for HP to want to be an enterprise software and services company that also happened to be heavily dependent on profits from ink cartridges sold to consumers?

The next few years of the PC industry are going to be some of the most interesting ones since the beginning of the PC business, since it’s so very unclear what’s going to happen to the PC we’ve known for all these decades. I hope that HP takes that as an opportunity, not an existential threat to its PC business–and that it builds some cool machines in the years to come.

No comments

Android Updates: Assume Nothing

Over at The Understatement, a revealing info graphic about Android phones (and iPhones) and the situation with software updates. Overall, it’s ugly for Android owners…

The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones and Nexus One users have fared much, much better than most Android buyers.

No comments

Why Would Anyone Use Windows XP Today, Anyhow?

Windows XP Splash ScreenAs the world celebrates–or at least acknowledges–the tenth anniversary of Windows XP, I wondered why so many people continue to use an operating system that dates from an utterly different era in the history of personal technology. So I conducted a quick survey to ask XP users…well, to ask them why they’re XP users, and whether they intend to continue on with the OS forever. Bottom line: A plurality of them use it because it’s what their employers provide. But most of them seem to be reasonably okay with that.

(Standard disclaimer: This was an informal survey, and the results reflect only the experiences and opinions of the people–almost 900 of them–who happened to take it. I’m not claiming their responses map to the world at large.)

Continue Reading →

32 comments

Nest: It’s the iPod of Thermostats

Many years ago, Tony Fadell took an idea he had for a new gadget to Apple. It was a pocket-sized hard-disk MP3 player. Apple was impressed–and, just over a decade ago, released Fadell’s creation as the iPod. It was, as you may recall, quite popular.

Fadell went on to run Apple’s iPod division, but In 2008, he stepped down and in 2010, he severed all ties with Apple. He and his wife (also a former Apple employee) spent some of their newly-found free time with their kids, and some of it building a green home near Lake Tahoe.

While Fadell was working on his house, he had a new brainstorm. Why not take the thermostat–one of the most boring devices on the planet, and therefore one which is largely ignored by most homeowners–and make it interesting? Why not make it what he calls “a cherished object?” Why not make it a gadget?

Inspired, he co-founded a company called Nest Labs. It’s announcing its creation, the Nest, which it plans to ship in November for $249. And it’s not just the least boring thermostat ever invented: It’s downright interesting. When Fadell briefed me recently and did a demo, I got excited by its potential–and if you see one in person, I think you’ll be just as intrigued.

Continue Reading →

21 comments

The Life and Times of Windows XP

If you’d been alive in 1924 and had enjoyed the comedy stylings of a young Vaudevillian named George Burns, you never would have believed he’d still be packing them in seventy years later. In 1963, you might have dug the music that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were making, but the idea they’d still be touring almost forty-five years later would have sounded insane. Those of us who watched Dennis Eckersley pitch for the Red Sox in 1978 would have scoffed at the notion that he’d be playing for Beantown once again in 1998.

And then there’s Windows XP. The press release announcing its release on October 25th 2001 called it “Microsoft’s Best Operating System Ever.” A decade later, so many people still agree with that assessment that it remains the planet’s most pervasive desktop operating system.

Nobody would have been prescient enough to predict that Windows XP would be flourishing so many years after its debut. Not Microsoft. Not consumers and businesses. Not the analysts who get paid to know where technology is going. And certainly not me.

No single factor explains XP’s astonishing longevity. The most obvious one, of course, is the failed launch of 2007’s Windows Vista, an upgrade so lackluster that many PC users simply rejected it, instinctively and intelligently. But I think you also have to give XP credit for being just plain good, especially once Microsoft released Service Pack 2 in 2004. And desktop operating systems, from any company, simply aren’t as exciting as they were in the 1990s; people are less likely to want a new one every couple of years, and more likely to drive the one they’ve got into the ground.

Continue Reading →

95 comments

Goal One for Netflix: Be Normal

Netflix has announced its third-quarter results, and one stat stands out: 800,000 customers left the service its user base shrunk by 800,000 customers overall. Netflix says the defectors were mostly folks disgruntled over its abrupt price hike back in July, not ones rattled by its short-lived plan to split off DVD rentals into a stand-alone service called Qwikster.

At some point, all the unhappy Netflix campers will leave, and I still think that the company is going to a good place with its streaming service. At the moment, though, it needs to repair its reputation. It needs to prove that it cares about its customers and isn’t going to spring any more bizarre surprises on them. It needs to show that it has an adequate degree of self-awareness. It just needs to be normal for a while.

11 comments

The Most Persistent Apple Rumor of Them All

More scuttlebutt about a possible Apple TV set:

In a note to clients released Monday, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster seizes on remarks attributed to Steve Jobs in the biography published overnight as “another data point” to support a thesis he’s been championing since 2009.

 

No comments

Ten Important Themes Covered in the New Steve Jobs Book

Walter Isaacson’s aptly-titled Steve Jobs book is available today and, at 650+ pages, it’s a doozy. If you’re looking to hone in on a particular section of the biography, here’s a roundup of recent articles from around the web that highlight various themes presented throughout the book:

On design:

Steve Jobs Would Annoy Jony Ive By Taking Credit For His Design Work [Business Insider]

“Jonathan ‘Jony’ Ive, Apple’s design maestro, was regularly frustrated with his good friend, and boss, Steve Jobs taking all the credit for Apple product’s design.”

On apps:

Steve Jobs resisted third-party apps on iPhone, biography reveals [The Guardian]

“Apple chief was initially reluctant to allow non-Apple apps but was swayed by lobbying from execs and board members.”

Continue Reading →

No comments