August 2011
1 post
Steve Jobs and Sennheiser Mics
My favorite Steve Jobs anecdote comes not from an Apple employee, but an A/V technician who hooked up the CEO’s audio equipment for videoconferences many years ago.
The story went something like this:
Steve only uses one particular microphone — a Sennheiser — for all his teleconferences and presentations. It isn’t even the best mic for many situations, but he liked the...
February 2011
1 post
The Red Cup
(Submitted to LitUp’s “Take This Job and Shove It!” essay contest.)
I was almost done scrubbing the tables. I hated table duty. The crusty sponge only got slimier with every wipe, staining my finger tips with the smell of mildew for days. The final touch of Simple Green didn’t help much; it just gave me the spins. Lunch tables couldn’t get filthier than the ones at...
August 2010
1 post
Always On: Open to Your Suggestions
(The following is an update on my book project Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere Future. For a brief description of the book, see my introductory post.)
My one-month book sabbatical is coming to an end soon, and I’ve made good progress. I’ve covered topics that I feel will be highly relevant (and hopefully fascinating) to people interested in the...
July 2010
3 posts
Demystifying the iPhone 4 Antenna Presser
I felt it’d be a good idea to gather my thoughts about yesterday’s iPhone 4 press conference while I’m not starving, sleep-deprived and scatterbrained — which is the aftermath of covering any Apple event.
Ignoring all the stuff we’d already heard in Apple’s earlier written letter, the most important statistic from the entire presser was that the iPhone 4 is...
Always On
I wanted to quickly thank the people who have been supportive of my book project Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere Future. For those unfamiliar with my book, it’s a nonfiction title aiming to answer two complex questions:
1. What do we gain and what do we lose in a future where we can potentially have anything, anytime and anywhere with these...
The Sticky Sandwich
I wanted to take a short break from writing my technoculture book to share this fascinating story about HRD Coffee, a family-owned diner located across the street from the WIRED office.
In the past year this eatery has gone from a shoddy squat-and-gobble to a lively neighborhood staple. Also noteworthy — for years, the diner had an average 2-star rating on Yelp. In the past eight or...
June 2010
2 posts
“My business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
– Finley Peter Dunne, on journalism
“If you want to complain about bad journalism, go and do some good journalism.”
– Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing
May 2010
3 posts
Journalists Leaving Facebook
Any journalist who quits Facebook is sacrificing access to a valuable resource for finding leads. I tweeted this earlier, but I felt I should repeat it here so I can clarify what I mean. The tweet was in response to a live video podcast featuring Rob Scoble, Leo Laporte and Cory Doctorow, who were discussing the controversy surrounding Facebook and people deactivating accounts because of privacy...
Playing Catch-Up
Been bad about updating this blog regularly, so I just wanted to round up links of some recent highlight articles to keep them in my memory.
Pay to play: Some iPhone app sites demand money for reviews
Fallout from Wired.com’s iPhone app payola story
Apple rejects kid-friendly programming app
Review: Apple iPad 3G
A call for transparency in Apple’s App Store
How Wired.com Tracked the iPhone Finder
In response to Wired.com’s scoop identifying the finder of the lost iPhone prototype, many have asked me how we did it. The process of uncovering digital footprints to identify Brian Hogan was indeed challenging and enlightening, so I thought I’d tell the story here. Heck, it might even teach police officers a thing or two so they don’t have to kick down doors.
(I am limited...
February 2010
2 posts
What the iPad Means for the Future of Computing
(Originally published 02/01/10 at Wired.com)
When I picked up my iPhone over the weekend, I had an epiphany. I was using the LinkedIn app to confirm an invitation to connect, and it hit me: This is the future of mobile computing, the mobile web — the mobile experience.
No, I’m not saying the LinkedIn app is the future per se (that’d be silly), but rather the overall concept of it. The LinkedIn...
How the iPhone Could Reboot Education
(Originally published 12/08/09 at Wired.com)
How do you educate a generation of students eternally distracted by the internet, cellphones and video games? Easy. You enable them by handing out free iPhones — and then integrating the gadget into your curriculum.
That’s the idea Abilene Christian University has to refresh classroom learning. Located in Texas, the private university just finished...
October 2009
3 posts
Flash Lands on iPhone — One App at a Time
(Originally published 10/05/09 at Wired.com)
Adobe on Monday announced plans to roll out mobile versions of its Flash platform to several smartphones. Apple’s popular iPhone, however, is gaining a lesser Flash experience.
At its worldwide developer conference in Los Angeles, Adobe said it would be releasing Flash for mobile platforms including Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm’s webOS and Google...
In-App Sales and iTablet: The Killer Combo to Save...
(Originally published 10/16/09 at Wired.com)
Apple on Thursday made a subtle-yet-major revision to its App Store policy, enabling extra content to be sold through free iPhone apps. It’s a move that immediately impacts the publishing industry, and it could pay even bigger dividends if the Cupertino, California, company indeed delivers its highly anticipated touchscreen tablet.
While the most...
Android Army Pumped for All-Out Attack on iPhone
(Originally published 10/30/09 at Wired.com)
Soon, you’ll need more than two hands to count the number of Android phones on the market. At this rate, it seems inevitable that the number of phones running Google’s open source operating system will eventually outnumber the number of iPhones, which run Apple’s proprietary (and closed) operating system.
It’s a situation that has many observers...
August 2009
5 posts
Circles
(From my journal, Feb. 7, 2007) I was the only member of my family with perfect vision. I could’ve used my gift to become an artist, a pilot, perhaps a dentist. But instead I find myself kneeling in front of a window, staring at you through a scope, my index finger resting on a trigger, my thumb ready to release the safety switch. And you. You could’ve been a poet, an English teacher, a...
Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers Go...
(Originally published 08/06/09 at Wired.com)
Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren’t taking the rejection lying down: They’re turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist — and even earn developers some money.
That store is...
Hacker Says iPhone 3GS Encryption Is ‘Useless’ for...
(Originally published 07/23/09 at Wired.com)
Updated 07/24/09, 9 a.m. PDT: Zdziarski taped videos demonstrating iPhone 3GS disk extraction, as well as removal of PIN and backup encryption passcodes. Both are embedded below the jump.
Apple claims that hundreds of thousands of iPhones are being used by corporations and government agencies. What it won’t tell you is that the supposedly...
Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
(Originally published 08/03/09 at Wired.com)
After years of enticing rumors, ambitious prognostications and flat-out blather, 2010 may finally be the year that the tablet PC evolves from being a niche device to becoming a mainstream portable computer.
The tipping point comes via word to Wired.com from a well-connected industry executive that mainstream heavyweights Dell and Intel are...
July 2009
4 posts
Netbooks Mutate to Meet Market Challenges
(Originally published 06/16/09 at Wired.com)
The word netbook may soon vanish into irrelevance, but the products that resulted from the category are not going away any time soon. Indeed, they’re on the verge of injecting their DNA into a broad swath of the PC market.
Despite their shipments slowing down in the first quarter of 2009, inexpensive and low-powered netbooks are poised for rapid...
Want to Fool Apple’s App Store? Plant an Easter...
(Originally published 05/19/09 at Wired.com)
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/Want_to_Fool_Apple_s_App_Store_Plant_an_Easter_Egg';
Despite Apple’s reputation for being a notorious gatekeeper with its iPhone App Store, there’s a way to sneak in content such as porn, profanity or potentially malicious code, with no hacking required: Easter eggs.
Apple initially rejected Jelle Prins’ iPhone...
How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web
(Originally published 06/22/09 at Wired.com)
A growing chorus claims that Apple’s questionable approval policy for its iPhone application store raises issues with net neutrality.
Free Press, a group that advocates the idea of an open internet — that is, one in which consumers have the right to browse the web and run internet applications without restrictions — is the latest of several...
Child Porn Is Apple’s Latest iPhone Headache
A photo ostensibly showing a 15-year-old nude girl has turned up in an iPhone app, highlighting Apple’s inability to safeguard its application store from prohibited content.
The image appears in the free app BeautyMeter, which enables people to upload photos that are then rated by others, who assign a star-rating to members’ body parts and clothing. It’s much like an iPhone version of Hot or Not...
May 2009
3 posts
From iLightswitch to iBurrito, Stanford Students...
(Originally published 04/29/09 at Wired.com)
Stanford student Luke Ekkizogloy is writing an iPhone app that controls the lights in his house, but he has bigger dreams.
“I have what everyone has in mind, and that’s to make money,” Ekkizogloy told Wired.com.
Ekkizogloy, like many other students enrolled in Stanford’s iPhone programming class, is aiming to strike it rich by selling software...
Marathon Runners Tweet Their Way to the Finish...
(Originally published 04/27/09 at Wired.com)
Two London marathon runners documented their cardiovascular treks in real-time, and they didn’t need a camera crew to follow them.
CNN news producer Peter Wilkinson and Latitude Group CEO Alex Hoye stood out among 35,000 runners at Sunday’s London Marathon — in the digital world, at least, where they tweeted their progress with their...
4 Reasons Apple Should Share the iPhone With...
(Originally published 04/17/09 at Wired.com)
Apple is more likely to bring the iPhone to Verizon once the cellular company deploys its fourth-generation network, claims Verizon’s chief executive.
That’s because Apple was never very interested in Verizon’s current CDMA cellular standard, which is less popular among cellphone networks outside North America, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told The ...
April 2009
6 posts
Apple Aggressively Pursues 'Pod' Trademarks
(Originally published 03/29/09 at Wired.com)
What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if its name ended in “pod,” it might attract the ire of Apple’s shark-like legal team.
Apple’s obsession with the blockbuster success of its iPod has driven the corporation to chase down many companies attempting to use the media player’s...
Digitally Unlimited: Rushmore Star Embraces...
(Originally published 04/17/09 at Wired.com)
If the film Rushmore were made recently, Max Fischer would probably be founder of the Digital Music Society.
The actor who played him, Jason Schwartzman, would be at least. When he’s off the movie set, Schwartzman injects his creative mojo into his online music project, Coconut Records. Songs from his first album, Nighttiming debuted on...
Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store
(Originally published 03/30/09 at Wired.com)
The iPhone’s App Store is becoming an increasingly juicy target for pirates, who have illegally cracked 20 percent of paid applications for free distribution.
Apple’s App Store offers about 25,000 paid apps, and iPhone analytics company Medialets estimates at least 5,000 have been pirated. The company also said it has tracked dozens of...
MacHeist's League of Extraordinary Dropouts...
(Originally published 04/07/09 at Wired.com)
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/software/MacHeist_s_League_of_Extraordinary_Dropouts_Reinvents_Softwa';
A white Subaru WRX chases a silver Mercedes out of a parking structure and down a country road. They pull over outside a brick building, and the target steps out of his car. He’s wearing charcoal New Balances, dark blue jeans and a Jobs-ian black...
The Funniest E-mail I've Ever Received
From Brian Chen <chenbri2000@yahoo.com> to bedawgy@altavista.com cc me@brianchen.com, bchen15@comcast.net, brian@brianhchen.com, chenbri@gmail.com, bc2272@columbia.edu, jacketseason@gmail.com, brianxchen@gmail.com
subject Brian Chen webpage Hello to all the Brian Chen’s out there. This email concerns bedawgy@altavista.com and his website: “Brian Chen Is Sexy”...
Digg This URL Grey: Tea Is the New Coffee
(Originally published 04/02/2009 at Wired.com)
The drink of choice for Web 2.0 zillionaires isn’t a quad espresso anymore. It’s a soothingly steeped tea harvested from a shaded mountainside half a world away.
Captains of the internet like Digg’s Kevin Rose and business guru Tim Ferriss (pictured above) are gravitating to the ancient drink, and enterprising retailers are...
March 2009
4 posts
Apple's Next iPhone Will Rule at Gaming
(Originally published 01/29/2009 at Wired.com) The next upgrade to Apple’s iPhone will have a strong focus on gaming, analysts and developers agree.
That’s because the gaming market is an increasingly juicy segment of the mobile multimedia space — and it’s one that Apple’s phenomenally successful iPhone is well-positioned to dominate.
“The iPhone and iPod Touch are...
What Apple Needs to Fix to Keep the iPhone...
(Originally published 03/16/2009 at Wired.com)
Apple’s third-generation iPhone must adopt several crucial features to outsmart competing smartphones, developers and enthusiasts agree.
Aside from the obvious missing features — copy-and-paste and multimedia text messaging — the next iPhone needs features that improve usability, such as search functionality and, most importantly, the ability...
Review: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
A film review by Brian Chen - Copyright © 2009 Filmcritic.com
Sorry, folks — the star of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is not the mouth-drippingly voluptuous lead actress Kristin Kreuk. It’s actually supporting actor Chris Klein, who may very well be our next Keanu Reeves. Klein must have flash-kicked himself in the brain, because his acting is so outrageously horrid and...
Apple's Delays Could Cost iPhone Developer $600K
(Originally published 03/19/2009 at Wired.com)
A software company could potentially lose more than half a million dollars because of an iPhone app that Apple has ignored for six months.
Eric Thomas, CEO of FreedomVoice Systems, told staff this week that the company is ceasing indefinitely any work on an iPhone voice app, called Newber, because Apple will neither accept it nor reject it....
February 2009
3 posts
Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone
(Originally published 02/26/09 at Wired.com)
Apple’s iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it’s being offered for free.
What’s wrong with the iPhone, from a Japanese perspective? Almost everything: the high monthly data plans that go with it, its paucity of features, the low-quality camera, the unfashionable design and the...
5 Geeky Marriage Proposals That Worked
(Originally published 02/13/09 at Wired.com)
Propose to your girlfriend with technology and you’re bound to get blogged.
There’s no shame in that, though. If the idea of Cupid were conceived in modern times, he’d probably be sending messages through an RSS reader rather than shooting arrows with a bow, right?
OK, probably not. But even so, geeks have come a long way since...
Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone...
(Originally published 02/12/09 at Wired.com)
Apple’s iPhone application store is as crowded as a Beyonce concert, with more than 20,000 apps available. But one independent developer still managed to rake in $600,000 in a single month with a single iPhone game.
Ethan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, told Wired.com he quit his job the day his app rose to No. 1 in...
December 2008
5 posts
8 Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special
(Originally published 12/22/08 at Wired.com)
Remember when Apple customers felt hip?
There was a time when a glowing Apple logo symbolized radical nonconformity. Being part of a miniature customer base was, to Mac users, like being a member of a holier-than-thou, secret society — a “Cult of Mac,” if you will. But when Apple’s ecosystem grew beyond notebooks and desktops to...
Jobs Won't Appear at Macworld — 2009 to Be Apple's...
(Originally published 12/16/08 at Wired.com)
Apple announced Tuesday that Macworld 2009 will be the last Macworld show the corporation will attend. Steve Jobs won’t be appearing, either, which once again raises questions about the CEO’s health.
“Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of...
Rumor: New Mac Mini Coming to Macworld 2009
(Originally published 12/15/08 at Wired.com)
Apple will launch an upgrade to its low-end desktop, the Mac Mini, at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, according to an Apple corporate employee who contacted Wired.com.
The source, who wished to remain anonymous (to keep his job), could not disclose details about the Mac Mini other than its upcoming announcement at Macworld Expo,...
Hack of the Clones: Why Apple Can't Stop the...
(Originally published 12/12/08 at Wired.com)
Just hours after announcing plans to sell a high-end Mac clone, niche electronics reseller EFIX USA changed course in order to avoid a nasty legal confrontation with Apple.
“We certainly don’t want to get into a legal battle that’s over a couple thousand dollars,” an EFIX USA spokesman said. “Potentially Apple could...
Gadgets, Games Help Musicians Offset Declining...
(Originally published 12/10/08 at Wired.com)
As album sales continue to decline, gadgets and games may help ensure the survival of the music business. Indeed, the most tech-savvy bands are already recording songs for distribution exclusively through new channels opened up by the iPhone, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
“I don’t really look at the last 10 years of music business...
November 2008
5 posts
iPhone Developer May Be Bribing Reviewers
(Originally published 11/20/2008 at Wired.com)
An iPhone developer appears to have paid people to give its application glowing reviews in an effort to boost sales.
The developer of Santa Live, a jokey iPhone app for kids, appears to have posted a listing on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk offering to pay $4 for the highest-rated reviews on Apple’s iPhone App Store.
“So for this...
Apple Bends to Studios, Adds Copyright Protection...
(Originally published 11/19/08 at Wired.com)
Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.
Apple has secretly included a copy protection scheme called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in the external display ports on the...
Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone
(Originally published 11/17/08 at Wired.com)
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe’s Flash software: Apple’s terms-of-service agreement prohibits it.
Although Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone, Apple is unlikely ever to permit it to appear in the handset’s App Store, no matter how much customers want...
Six Real Gadgets Minority Report Predicted...
(Originally published 11/10/08 at Wired.com)
The future-predicting technology that drives the premise of the sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report is silly at best. And when the film hit theaters in 2002, the gadgets seemed pretty unrealistic, too. But eerily enough the slew of dreamed-up gizmos showed off throughout John Anderton’s daring escape are hardening into reality.
No, our...