Categories: Curmudgeonly

Duh! RBC Analyst Says iPhone To Challenge Incumbents

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on August 18

I get a lot of analysts reports and except for the work of a few folks whose judgment and reporting skills I value, toss most of them unread. But for…

Verizon Communications: You Can Take the Boy Out of the Bell System but…

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on July 17

The surviving pieces of the old AT&T empire—Verizon Communications, the new AT&T, Qwest Communications—have spent the last quarter-century trying to transform themselves from dinosaurs that could only survive in a…

Heli-hoax: Beware the First of April (Updated)

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on March 30

Second Update (April 3): Hotelicopter comes clean, sort of. The company says that while the Hotelicopter flying hotel was fake, Hotelicopter is a “new travel brand launching next week.” Much…

Tweeting Washer: What’s Old Is New

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 03

Make: reports that an enterprising hacker named Ryan Rose has modified a washing machine to post to Twitter when a load is finished (read its very uninteresting tweets here.) Sorry…

Why the BCS Will Always Be a Mess

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on December 02

OK, this isn’t about technology, but every year at this time, we need a reminder that there are some issues that that defy all of our efforts, technological or intellectual….

Press Releases I Didn’t Finish Reading

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on July 07

And didn’t believe either. Newbury Park, CA (July 7, 2008) – During a recent customer survey, Minimus.biz asked its customers what unavailable travel-sized product they wanted the most. The response…

Why You Can’t Sell Your Vote

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on July 07

You can sell just about anything on eBay, so why not your vote? That’s apparently what University of Minnesota student Max Sanders was thinking when, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,…

How Not To Advertise

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on June 20

I received the following e-mail this morning offering Chinese-to-English translations. Should I ever need such a service, I think I’ll look elsewhere: Need Qualify Translators with Satisfied Budget? Elanso Offers…

The Future of the Past (Blade Runner Edition)

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on May 12

The other evening, having nothing better to do, I headed over to one of my favorite places, the American Film Institutes’s Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Md., for a screening…

Beware the Perfect Story

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 02

During my many years as an off-and-on editor, one time-test rule I observed was to watch out for the story that seemed too perfect. The Internet has only made this…

Profanity, the Supremes, and the State of Television

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on March 18

It has been 35 years since comedian George Carlin started making his living with a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” and somehow we just can;t…

Sometimes, Low Tech Is the Best Answer

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 13

Accoring to this Reuters story, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration wants to build a system that could use cell phones or other technology to wake up sleeping Americans to…

Why an Internet Tax Moratorium?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on October 16

With House passage today, it appears we are well on the way to enactment of a four year extension of a moratorium on state taxes on Internet service charges. Both…

The uses of old computers

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on July 27

Yesterday I visited the research labs of Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., and was struck, as I often am on visits to academic or industrial labs, by how old most…

Windows Genuine Annoyance

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 26

Microsoft never seems to run out of ways to make its antipiracy Windows Genuine Advantage campaign more annoying. WGA is a “service” that checks the validity and activation status of…

eBay Sellers Seek Profit from VT Tragedy

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 18

No tragedy is too awful, no heartbreak too great to stop two great forces in American life, trial lawyers and eBay sellers, from cashing in. So it shouldn’t come as…

Report from the Daylight Time Trenches

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on March 12

It took more effort than it should have, but when Sunday arrived with its three-weeks-early switch to daylight savings time, everything sprang forward as it should have, with only insignificant…

Give Me That Old Time Technology

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 21

I have recently renewed a long-time interest in old scientific instruments and, along the way, I think I have learned something interesting about today’s technology, compared to the way things…

Please, Not the Plant Billboard Again

Posted by: Heather Green on June 21

Ford’s “living billboard” made of plants makes this writer think of a similar, soon doomed one that dot.com Garden.com had for a while on Route 101 in Silicon Valley.

Why PC makers still don’t get it

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 23

I’ve been pretty happy with Dell Computer, having bought a home system several years ago and using a Dell laptop at work. But when the laptop keyboard’s space bar stopped…

Can you spell b-u-b-b-l-e?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 04

Three recent clues: * A $300 price target on Google. Sorry, nobody’s perfect. Not even Larry and Sergey. * Last year, 11,399 homes in the San Francisco Bay Area sold…