I come across a lot of startups in my work as a technology journalist, and quite often I can’t tell if they have any shot of making it. I admire the passion, but I know that they face many hurdles, and many will fail. I don’t know if Get Satisfaction, the startup that I profiled […]
Category: Media
Feel better, Om Malik
I’d like to join the chorus wishing for Om Malik‘s speedy recovery. In today’s New York Times, I have a story about how Om suffered a heart attack just after Christmas — and how other A-list bloggers like Paul Kedrosky and Michael Arrington warn how stressful it is to have to constantly update a site. Om was […]
Shed a tear for Dow Jones
I wrote a story in today’s New York Times about how Dow Jones has lost its spot in the Standard & Poor’s 500, getting replaced by GameStop, a shopping mall seller of new and used video games. For Dow Jones, the demotion is but one more sign of the painful move into Rupert Murdoch’s fold. For […]
Fortune, if not fame
A story I wrote about what Rupert Murdoch might do with the San Francisco Web site MarketWatch.com is up today on Fortune.com. Fortune has revamped its Web site, and it looks great. Now, instead of stories appearing to come from CNNMoney, you can tell that they’re by Fortune writers. I hope to contribute more in […]
The virtues, and sins, of editing
As a writer, length has always been important. As a newspaper reporter, I tended to write long stories, trying to cram in every detail I had gathered. As a freelance writer, I’m frequently paid by the word. I love long-form journalism, and am enjoying writing for magazines and dreaming up book projects. Yet I struggle with […]
USA Today: Cash, charge or cell phone?
I’ve got a story in this morning’s USA Today about how cell phones will soon have credit card information stored in a chip, so that you’ll only have to wave it over a scanner in order to pay for something. While all the experts I spoke to said this is a very secure technology, there […]
New York Times: Outsource my chores to India
The New York Times today published a story I wrote about how small businesses and individuals can outsource even mundane tasks to “virtual personal assistants” in India. In reporting the story, I found many people using these affordable services in a variety of creative ways: A woman in New Jersey who works for a health […]
Hooked on computing
I recently read Matt Richtel’s Silicon Valley thriller “Hooked,” and loved it. Matt is a tech reporter at The New York Times and a versatile talent — he even writes a comic strip under a pen name — and he really nailed a key element of modern computing culture: Addiction. It’s the feeling of being […]
Second Life will be bigger than the Internet
That was the startling assertion I heard from Philip Rosedale, CEO of San Francisco’s Linden Lab, producer of the virtual world Second Life, at a breakfast hosted by Conde Nast’s new business magazine Portfolio at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11. Yet despite such an outrageously hype-filled statement, Rosedale […]