Practical Technology

Perhaps no group has earned a borderline obscene pejorative as quickly as the wearers of Google Glass. I mean, the product, not due for release until early next year, is seen in the wild today only on the few thousand who are its early testers. And yet we already have the term “glasshole.” Google Glass [...]

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The rumors appear to have been correct. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is reporting that on Sunday Yahoo’s board will approve buying Tumblr, the blogging and social networking platform, for $1.1 billion. Yahoo pulls trigger on $1 billion-plus Tumblr buy. More >

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A year after Google+’s  last remake, Google decided to give Google+ a radical new look and feel. Some users love it, some hate it, but no one’s indifferent to it. Love and hate: The New Google+ look. More >

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The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early [...]

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Tragically, Aaron Swartz, hounded by an apparently over-zealous prosecutor, committed suicide in early 2013. His just-unveiled major open-source privacy project, DeadDrop, lives on in a citizen and press protection program, The New Yorker’s Strongbox. Strongbox is the first use of DeadDrop technology. The New Yorker magazine will use it so that its readers can “communicate [...]

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