You've heard the call to action at the end of nearly every podcast you've ever listened to: "Listen to us on your favorite podcast app", or in the phrasing of podcaster extraordinare Roman Mars, "...wherever you find podcasts"....

Anytime a big new market pops up, people rush in to stake their claims and make their fortunes. Our culture loves creation myths, especially in technology. Fables about lone geniuses are ubiquitous in the tech industry, with their fundamental falsity...

On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo. It is not just the best-regarded halftime show ever, but was to that point the most-viewed musical...

A significant percentage of conservative culture in America defines “freedom” as death. This is causing a lot more problems right now than even its usual horrible effects. Some explanation, for those who may not have context. Why do we need to have...

(Warning: this will be upsetting; you will not want to read this if you are already stressed.) [This piece was written in late February 2020, before there was widespread social distancing in place, under the assumption that no such distancing would...

We don’t even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It’s a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web link can be found on that user’s profile. Its presence is so subtle, and so pervasive, that...

This week marks the 20th anniversary of this blog. I thought the best way to observe the milestone, and to try to pass along some of the benefits I’ve gained from keeping a presence online all these years, would be to share some of the most important...

Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were legendary, spellbinding from arenas to intimate clubs, flooring audiences around the...

Tech is more important than ever, deeply affecting culture, politics and society. Given all the time we spend with our gadgets and apps, it’s essential to understand the principles that determine how tech affects our lives. Understanding technology...

I’ve been fortunate enough to get to speak at a lot of events over the years, in front of an amazing variety of audiences around the world. But I can honestly say I’ve never been more impressed by the reaction of an audience member than in the panel...

In one generation, the Internet went from opening up new free markets to creating a series of Fake Markets that exploit society, without most media or politicians even noticing. 1. The open internet markets American culture loves to use the ideal of...

With the recent availability of nearly all of Prince’s catalog on the most popular streaming services, it’s a great time to (re?)discover the breadth of Prince’s incredible body of work. The full scale of Prince’s music is probably too much for any...

Back in November, I got to sit down with the amazing Krista Tippett for a lengthy interview in front of an incredibly warm crowd in Easton, MD. Now, that interview has been edited down and is available as the latest episode of Krista’s hugely popular...

There are going to be endless think-pieces and armchair analyses about why America elected Donald Trump as its next President. But you already know why. Don’t waste a single moment listening to the hand-wringing of the pundit class about Why This...

In the past, popular movements have forced major industries to confront their need for ethical reform. But today‘s media, policymakers and activists don’t yet seem prepared to fix the tech sector’s problems. So how will reform happen? First things...

OMG I can’t believe it! I got to be on my very favorite podcast, BuzzFeed’s “Another Round“. I can verify that Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu are every bit as amazing in real life as they seem to be when you listen to the show. We talked about race...

I’m skeptical about “teach the kids to code!” as a panacea for all of society’s ills. Yet today, I’m at the White House to participate in a summit on Computer Science for All. Why would a skeptic still think it’s important to make computer science...

The label’s become too big to be useful, and tech could suffer for it. Quick: What do an auto leasing provider, a condiment company and the producers of a serious TV drama have in common? If your answer is “almost nothing”, then you’re right. If your...

Today, P.M. Dawn exists as a faded memory for most music fans, if they’re remembered at all. But Attrell Cordes made songs like nothing that came before. Beautiful, sweeping melodies paired with lyrics of regret, remorse, heartache and profound loss....

When Prince’s first greatest hits collection was released, Prince made private comments as a guide for the liner notes. Later briefly posted on his website thedawn.com in 1996, Prince’s comments have been lost for the last 20 years, but now provide a...

After talking to a friend about how Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” is so romantic if you just focus on the strings, bass and vocals, I was inspired to mix down the tracks to feature just those elements. anildash · A little less rocking with...

What it’s like to have the social network of a celebrity, without actually being famous I’ve got more Twitter followers than you. I’ve got more Twitter followers than Ted Cruz, and I’m only a little bit behind Björk. If my followers were a state,...

We all know tech is excluding most people from participating. But one group is actually over represented. And we’ve been conspicuously silent. The major tech companies finally gave in and published their statistics confirming the stark reality that...

This summer marked 15 years since I first started blogging here, and I’m happier than ever that I’ve chosen to live so much of my life in this place, with all of you. Nearly everything has changed for me since I began this blog, from major milestones...

0:00 — 0:10 In the summer of 1983, Wendy Melvoin was just 19 years old. She’d flown halfway across the country from Los Angeles for her first professional gig as a guitar player, joining her girlfriend Lisa Coleman in the band where Lisa had been...

After at least 15 years of debating whether I should spend money on this, I recently took the plunge and acquired one of my most-desired Prince collectibles. Added to my collection: 3.5" floppy given to press when Prince changed his name....

One of my recurrent ruminations of the last decade or so is a bit of reflection on my relationship with religion. To be clear: I don’t have one. I know there are no gods, that the supernatural does not exist, and that we should not base morality on...

We’ll spend three years of our lives with our thumbs on our phones. What will we have to show for it? I keep bumping up against this statistic about how much time we spend online, and how much time we spend on our smartphones and tablets. Depending...

I spend so much time writing, and thinking, about technology and tech companies. And so much of it’s critical. I point the finger at how the apps and sites we build aren’t meaningful, how the systems and institutions that support them aren’t...

I’ve had the good fortune to get to speak in public hundreds of times, about any manner of subjects. But I’ve never, never had the moments following one of my talks bring me to tears. Until yesterday. I was asked to go onstage at a conference full of...

In my years working in technology, I have learned a few things. These lessons have become oft-repeated refrains when speaking to people, so I thought I’d collect them so I have a link to send folks when needed. Given enough time, any object which...

Paul Graham on Unions: I wouldn’t quite call the high-paying union job a myth, but I think people who dwell on it are reading too much into it. The era of labor unions seems to have been the same kind of aberration, just spread over a longer period,...

When I wrote about the web we lost a few months ago, I thought the idea that we’d strayed from some of the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the social web’s early days would be of note to a few old-timers like me, and that most folks would...

Having had the good fortune to work with a broad range of entrepreneurs and get a front-row seat to the foundations of their success, I thought it’d be good to share 10 key tips that I’ve found work 100% of the time to increase your odds of startup...

Update: After this post was published, I had a chance to talk about Twitter verification at a live show of the Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, with Hari and Ashok Kondabolu. It turned out pretty well. Twitter verification is an interesting...

The era of User Generated Discontent began about a decade ago, when a critical mass of people started using social apps on the web often enough that they felt a bit proprietary over the user interface and design of those services. Inevitably, that...

Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-state police chase to Sly Stone strung out on crack and living in a van to Whitney Houston’s...

Update: A few months after this piece was published, I was invited by Harvard’s Berkman Center to speak about this topic in more detail. Though the final talk is an hour long, it offers much more insight into the topic, and I hope you’ll give it a...

Much of the conversation about the shortage of technology talent in the United States focuses on how we can encourage more young people to go to college to become Computer Science graduates. Those programs are admirable and should be encouraged, but...

My brilliant friend Caterina Fake wrote about the Fear of Missing Out last year, and the FOMO meme took instant hold amongst those of us who love the digital life. We’re keenly aware that our constant connection to those who are doing things that are...

Update: I just got off the phone with Popchips founder Keith Belling, who was sincere and contrite as he offered a thoughtful, apologetic response that indicates he understood much of what I was trying to say here. I’m cautiously optimistic to see...

Update: The students did it! The re-vote from the board yielded a unanimous vote in favor of forming the Coexist club. I’m sincerely thankful to the students, to their advisor Christina Baker, and to Superintendent Bruce Deveney for their leadership...

I think we’ve had more debates in the past few weeks for the Republican candidates so far than are typically held in the entirety of an election season, but the questions have generally been completely obvious, yielding only the usual expected...

Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users’ ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence that this is true even for sites which embrace Facebook technologies is overwhelming, and the...

The World Maker Faire opens in Queens this weekend, in the second annual New York City event for the formidable faire. That was perfect timing for having a conversation with Dale Dougherty, the father of the movement, about why Making is bigger than...

We’re twenty years in to this world wide web thing. Today, I myself celebrate twelve years of writing this blog. And yet those of us who love this medium, who’ve had our lives changed by the possibility of publishing our words to the world without...

“If you can make it here…“, Jamie Beck, 2011 It’s been 84 years since talkies began their march towards dominance over silent film. But while 1.3 billion people in the U.S. bought a ticket for a motion picture with sound last year, I’d estimate that...

By request, a bit of explanation of how and why I favorite things on the internet. (Or favor them. Or like them. Whatever.) First, where do I favorite? On Twitter, certainly: I love lots of tweets! On Facebook! That’s mostly for liking things outside...

Please meet Malcolm Browne Dash. He’s my son, born February 9th weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces. The days (and yes, the nights) over this last week or so have been a blur, but one thing that’s crystal clear, beside his abiding cuteness, is that...

One interesting pattern I’ve noticed popping up around my favorite new apps these days is that they follow what I’d call a “cloudtop” design. I thought I’d share my own notes on this pattern primarily so that people I’m talking to know what I’m...

There’s a lengthy, excellent profile of Mark Zuckerberg, and by proxy Facebook, in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, written by Jose Antonio Vargas. In it, I’m quoted saying about Mark, “If you are twenty-six years old, you’ve been a golden child,...

Michael Arrington argues, over at TechCrunch, that the startup community should ignore the current administration’s entreaties for feedback on tech policy, and instead shoo policy makers away and hope for this best. This advice is naive, misguided...

As I write this, the Twittersphere is going through its annual love/hate paroxysms about TED. Every year, the conference seems even more an event perfectly calibrated to inflame the bloggerati: Inarguably great presentations combined with...

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I’ll have gained another follower or two on Twitter. Within an hour, I’ll have added more followers than 99% of Twitter users ever have. On a typical day, I’ll have averaged 100 new followers every...

Last week, I found this picture of a group dinner at Guero’s restaurant in Austin, TX, taken during South by Southwest in 2002. At the time, most of us at the table knew each other primarily through the web and through the then-nascent blogging...

I love seeing people start new companies, especially in the tech world. But I’ve probably gotten a little bit jaded about new startups, especially when the story seems to be more about who’s funding the effort than about the product itself. To me the...

Google Wave is an impressive set of technologies, the kind of stunningly slick application that literally makes developers stand up and cheer. I’ve played with the Google Wave test sandbox a bit, and while it’s definitely too complex to live up to...

Apple is justifiably revered in the worlds of technology and culture for creating one of the most powerful brands in the world based on the combination of some key elements: Great user experience and design, and an extraordinary secrecy punctuated by...

Pushbutton is a name for what I believe will be an upgrade for the web, where any site or application can deliver realtime messages to a web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost and without relying on any single company like...

I’m not sure Google’s new Chrome OS announcement is that big a deal, or that the eventual product that gets released will actually have that much impact, but it’s a useful milestone in marking Google’s evolution towards becoming an older company with...

FAIL is over. Fail is dead. Because it marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity, it is an unacceptable response to creative efforts in our culture. “Fail!” is the cry of someone who doesn’t create, doesn’t...

The whole worldA small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address. Since its announcement yesterday, there’s been...

Here’s the idea: We can fix the false impression that the newest gadgets are the only interesting ones by simply promoting the fact that we’re getting a lot out of our existing products. I am lucky — I get to talk to some of the smartest geeks in...

I was away traveling for the past few weeks, and upon my return, I asked my Twitter followers a simple question: "I’ve been completely offline for all of Feburary (no internet, TV, news) — what one thing should I read up on? @ msg me your...

This one’s been kicking around in my head for a while, and maybe you can all help me understand it. With any contemporary social networking site, I can control who has access to the things I share, and I can update or change or revoke the...

A few weeks ago, as a surprise gift for our anniversary, my wife got us a night’s stay at the Revolving Hotel Room, part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition (see video) at the Guggenheim. Created by Carsten Höller, the room is a remarkable art...

Three years and one day ago, I got married. And then shortly after that, I wrote a post about getting married, which has become one of the most popular things I’ve ever written. If I have to be known for something, I’ll definitely take that as a good...

One of the most frequent questions I get when I talk to people who are unfamiliar with social media on the web is, “Who writes all these blogs or Wikipedia? Who has the time?” The answer, at least in this case, is me. People who are skeptical about...

Spin Magazine’s piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D’Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a fan of D’Angelo’s from the start. And that’s true even though I was clowning him when he got...

Sometimes if you do something very difficult, and you do it really well, the end result is that your achievement becomes completely invisible. I mentioned a year and a half ago that I like Twitter. That was a little bit less common a position to...

Five years ago, I said I work for Six Apart. At the time, that sort of thing was a big deal, not because of me, but because so few of us who loved blogging could get a job doing what we loved. Since then, amazingly, it’s become downright common to...

Continuing from yesterday’s look at the soundtrack to the creation of Lotus Notes, we can look more at the physical space where it was created. For contrast, I also throught I’d start looking at some of the responses I’d gotten from Jeff Bezos about...

Early in my efforts to document the creative environment where great technology projects happen, I reached out to Ray Ozzie. Ray is of course a software industry legend, today the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, in addition to having been the...

In the world of business, and especially the world of technology, we have some archetypical stories of entrepreneurs in the garage, working to create new products and new companies. But too many of those stories seem to neglect the creative...

Almost five years ago, I got involved in a project that would eventually become Atom, a pair of matching standards functioning as a syndication format and a publishing protocol. Though its contentious genesis was in the world of blogging and feeds,...

Now that his single Sensual Seduction (a.k.a. Sexual Eruption) is in the Top 10, it’s official: Snoop Dogg can see the future. First, let’s pause to watch the best video in the history of anything, ever. (The song is about four minutes long, so...

Theory of mind is that thing that a two-year-old lacks, which makes her think that covering her eyes means you can’t see her. It’s the thing a chimpanzee has, which makes him hide a banana behind his back, only taking bites when the other chimps...

This week, I’ll be highlighting the sites that I think stood out this year. July marked the 8th anniversary of my blog, and over these past eight and a half years, my appreciation of what it takes to run a successful blog has really grown and...

Although I’ve been accused sometimes of reflexive contrariness, the truth is I’m just pretty consistent in my assessments of technology, with little regard for the perceptions of the companies or people who provide those technologies. The best case...

I added this thing to my site (the HTML version, which most of you never see) a while back, and it’s gotten some interesting responses. I’ll reproduce it here in a post for your convenience. del.icio.us Profile Digg Profile Dopplr Profile Facebook...

I’ve seen a number of people make reference to Facebook’s application platform without knowing a lot of background about some historical examples that might be useful to learn from. So, since I remember a good bit of info about these things, I...

I get a little self-conscious about the fact that I’m so earnest on my blog sometimes, since I’m kind of a smart-ass in person. But I figure I’ll never regret putting myself out there, even if it’s stuff that I’d mock myself for, if somebody else...

It’s the first year that the anniversary didn’t hang over everything I do. I’m still aware of it, I’ll always be aware of it, but time and distance and some amount of willful disbelief have dimmed the sharpness of the remembrance. On the afternoon of...

The Premise: Anyone who creates technologies that aspire to have significant cultural or social impacts on the developed world has to focus on both our lives at home and our lives at work. Anything less is an abdication of potential, or a failure of...

Daniel Lyons, author of the heretofore-anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog, which comments extensively on companies in the technology industry, was also the author of Forbes’ November 2005 cover story “Attack of the Blogs”, a 3000-word screed vilifying...

An interesting infographic trend: Square blocks of color are now being used to represent percentage-based statistics instead of the traditional pie chart. Some recent examples are shown here. The chart on the left is from a NY Times story on atheism...

In technology, one of the best ideas to emerge from the world of social software is the ability to tag other people’s works and creations for our own reference. There are some interesting behaviors that come from having a free-form text description...

Okay, this is the one that’s going to get me in the most trouble: A list of the famous tourist attractions that you can safely skip when you come to New York City. After covering the basics and the must-sees, it only stands to reason that there’s...

I get asked by a lot of people for tips on what to do when visiting New York City, and though I’m hardly an expert on NYC tourism, I thought I’d take the time to write up a lot of the tips and information that I share with family and friends when...

After yesterday’s look at the basics of visting New York City, it’s time to move on to some more ambitious, and more contentious, topics. I’m going to start with my short list of the sights you simply must see if you get to the city. Knowing already...

Indian mangoes have arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and for me, my family, and my friends, this is a big freaking deal. I’ve got a lot to say about the subject, but if you weren’t familiar with the fact that this is the first time in history...

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you’ll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and...

Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the DoubleClick cookie, used for tying your ad-viewing behavior on the web to your real-world...

A few months ago, I spent a lot of time trying to show the tech community I belong to that diversity is essential to our survival. Not just to the Web 2.0 world being healthy and thriving, but as a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, my diatribe...

Do you want to learn about the future of web applications? If so, when choosing an event, you might want to make sure it’s one that cares about including speakers based on merit, instead of based on arbitrary gender qualifications. I judge merit to...

The sign of success in social software is when your community does something you didn’t expect. It’s easy to be cynical about new sites, especially when one is trying to maintain some healthy skepticism. But sometimes you have to let that critical...

Background: Yahoo’s launched an interesting and innovative new service, Pipes, which lets users with a relatively low degree of technological expertise combine structured sources of web data such as feeds. In this way, it’s possible for non-experts...

Most everybody who knows me well knows that I’ve been a fan of Prince for pretty much my entire life. So when casual fans or non-fans hear that Prince is playing the halftime show at the Superbowl this year, they ask me, “What’s up with that guy?” or...

To those of us who grew up after his artistic heyday, James Brown is some combination of legend, influence, icon, and inevitably, caricature. So on the day we find out about his passing, I thought I’d point out some examples of what an amazing...

Remember a few years ago I mentioned that I was moving to San Francisco? Well, it’s time for an update: I’m moving back to New York City! There’s a couple of reasons why, and they nicely mirror the reasons why I moved to California in the first...

Summary: In 2002, Google launched one of their few pay services, Google Answers. The service attracted only 800 responders in the past 4 years, and was shut down a few weeks ago. Three years ago, Matt Haughey created Ask MetaFilter, pays no money to...

When we were unpacking the delightful Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago, I was marvelling at how well-thought-out the process was. Beautiful, pleasant, and of course full of anticipation at the great machine we were about to be enjoying. But the we had to...

Four years ago, I didn’t know anything about diamonds. Then I posted one ill-tempered rant about how annoying and even offensive I found the advertising for the diamond industry. And I’m not easily offended. I was immediately drawn into a...

There weren’t a whole lot of really new things announced at the Web 2.0 conference, mostly large companies saying what you’d expect. But one of the launches that stood out was stikkit. There are plenty of reviews of the service; I’m not here to talk...

Microsoft has just launched the Zune, which will be one of the most popular digital music players ever made, and could have been considered a wild success as a result. Instead, the device has been inevitably and irrevocably compared to Apple’s...

One of the great, definitive abbreviations for the social web is TL;DR. It stands for too long; didn’t read, and epitomizes the short-attention-span crowd, the willfully idiotic segment of the online population that 1. we all sometimes belong to and...

A month ago, I began a series of posts outlining some common themes: Any system faces danger when it becomes a monoculture Diversity offers many broad-ranging and sometimes unexpected benefits There are many parallels between biological systems and...

In 2001, I checked in with everyone on the morning of the attacks, and then again that night before I finally went to bed. In 2002, I reflected on what it is to be an American. And it was just as important to me to note that we’re all wrong. In 2003,...

The Sunday New York Times ran a fantastic article by Alex Mindlin, Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars that details a battle that has brewed, off and on, for the past 30 years. There are, it seems, at least two distinct systems of belief...

There are lots of different corners of the web, most of which have the good graces to be supportive and interesting and to act like, well, a community. People generally like to be social. But then there’s the high-profile personal websites, full of...

The first version of Google Apps for Your Domain has been released, offering hosted applications that provide free, ad-supported services including email, chat, calendar, and simple web page creation. Each of the services is integrated with Google’s...

This is the third post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is from the Vox Neighborhood page. Sure, Vox is still in preview. Sure, I work for the company that...

This is the second post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the Amazon Gold Box. It’s been four years since the introduction of Amazon’s Gold Box, and...

This is the first post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the Nike Plus site. Nike Plus is the product of Apple’s partnership with Nike to produce an...

I’m flattered, somewhat amazed, and more than a little amused to point out that I’m part of Time Shares, a series of online exhibitions presented by Rhizome and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Alongside the works of geniuses like Golan Levin and...

Wikipedia‘s an amazing achievement, the kind of thing a lot of us use as a case study of what can go right on the web. But it’s an effort that involves a large number of people, touches on politically sensitive issues and gets into topics like...

A little over a year ago, I wore a funny t-shirt while posing for a photo that was published in an article in the New York Times. The shirt‘s a reference to a popular (and rather offensive) internet meme, and the reaction was immediate and...

Four years is a long time in pop music, but that’s how long it’s been since Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” heralded his launch as a solo singer and led the parade of singles from Justified. But it’s summertime, time for hit singles, and this...

Zinedine Zidane’s savage headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final has touched on many things: Race, family, country, terrorism, sportsmanship. But more than anything else, it’s united the entire Internet around the most important thing....

I’d started reading The Long Tail (You’ve read the blog, now buy the book!) by surprising myself with how excited I was to read the book; After all, I’d read the original article in Wired when it came out, and have been following Chris’ blog since...

I’ve been told that sometimes I seem frustrated or cynical lately about new web things or Web 2.0 hype, and that’s probably because I have been. I grew up with technology and with loving software, and part of the reason why I loved it was because it...

Short and sweet, the Ribbon and new UI in Microsoft Office 2007 is** the ballsiest new feature in the history of computer software**. I’ve been using Office 12 for about six months, and not only has it made me more productive, I’m struck by the...

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to be a good advocate or evangelist for an idea, movement, or cause. The short version is, you gotta have a Malcolm, and you gotta have a Martin. I’ve used the phrase before in referring, of course, to...

Mr. Henninger, I had the good fortune to review your column, in which you express, at length and in some detail, your extreme distaste for people publishing their own opinions on the Internet. I wanted to let you know that I am glad that you have...

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about reinventing desktop office applications on the web. The first (and sometimes second) versions of all the stalwarts are out there: Word processors, spreadsheets, databases. I can think of Writely and...

I was startled by this phenomenally wrong-headed editorial in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond exposes his insecurities by arguing that Craig Newmark’s work in Craigslist doesn’t build communities because it threatens the business models...

Lots of people in both the music/media and technology businesses are obsessed with beating Apple’s work on the iPod and iTunes. With the CES show being this week, that obsession will reach its annual peak, so I figured I’d take the time to post a...

I’ve written about a lot of things on my blog that I felt were important to me over the years, so it’s something of an uncanny feeling to know that I’m writing about the one that’s the most important thing I’ve ever written. On Saturday, I got...

Like many great social software applications, Flickr began its life as something else. Flickr was built on a platform for a game called Game Neverending, which had a lot of great features including an in-game economy based on exchanging various...

Or, “Yahoo bought everyone on my buddy list, and all I got was this t-shirt”. Following up on the discussion about Web 2.0 from last week, the only thing as glaring as who was missing from the room was the talk of a new bubble. I can’t even count how...

I can’t see the date anywhere today without just stopping, freezing in my tracks. It surprises me it’s still that close to the surface, even after four years. Even after writing about it over and over and over and over. Even after being 3000 miles...

Curious about what technologies and techniques are going to be popular in the coming months and into the next year? Well, our crack team of editors here at dashes.com (that is to say, me) have assembled a list of up-and-coming trends that you should...

I guess I should have caught this back on the 20th of last month, but I’ve been blogging here for six years. And living in San Francisco for a year now. I don’t think I could ever have imagined how much life could bring me just by me taking the time...

Just to be a little bit contrary, I’m gonna share some thoughts on products and services and companies I actually like but that I have some skeptical (cynical?) questions about. Consider this a disclaimer: Just because I’m asking a question doesn’t...

So, I’m in the New York Times today, as part of the story called Loosing Google’s Lock on the Past. I’m not a huge fan of how the story turned out, mostly because my quotes are almost incoherent. What I was trying to say is that the expectation for a...

I talk to a lot of consultants, freelancers, and small businesses who do web work, and I used to be a freelancer myself, so sometimes I get asked for advice on how to price one’s goods and services. I think I came up with my best suggestion today,...

On Tuesday, Jason Kottke announced that he was devoting himself full-time to working on maintaining his weblog, and asking for his readers to support him financially so he could do so. There was, of course, a lot of attention and a lot of discussion,...

Today, as an exercise, we will contrast Peter Merholz’s ruminations on Konfabulator with the lyrics to Ghostface Killah’s feelings about the Sun, as expressed in “The Sun”, from Bulletproof Wallets. Ghostface: “Look at the sun so pretty today, it’s...

As I hope anybody who knows me can attest, I’m sick to death of the pointlessly partisan bickering preceding tomorrow’s U.S. Presidential election. I’m annoyed by the assumption that I’m partisan. Sure, I have a preferred candidate in tomorrow’s...

Dear New York, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today. I feel guilty that I couldn’t be present to observe. I had to look up the weather there to find out it was, again, a clear, beautiful day in September. I almost wish it weren’t, because I know that...

I’ve been putting off writing about it because it seems like too much to cover, but then that’s probably the whole point. We make obstacles of things by building them up in our minds, when they were never really that big a deal to begin with. And no...

I’m moving to San Francisco. That probably bears some explanation. As I’m sure all of you know, I work for Six Apart, which is based in the Bay Area, and they’ve been asking me for some time to make the jump to the west coast. But I love New York...

Most of the people I know are geeks, and some large number of geeks are obsessive to one degree or another. (This can be verified by anyone who’s ever mumbled "Asperger’s…" under their breath while watching me arrange my Windows...

[Ed. Note: Today I’m lucky enough to have Danyel Smith as my guest blogger. Danyel’s a former editor at large for Time Inc. and the former editor-in-chief of Vibe, and she’s visiting my site today to promote her book More Like Wrestling. Go pick up a...

The current bane of my existence? Spoiler queens. "Don’t tell meeeeee!" they shriek. You know you’ve got one, too, someone who insists that the world will end if they know the end of a movie or TV show or book or sporting event in advance...

It probably comes as little surprise to most of my readers that I’m known for being something of a Scrooge. A healthy skepticism over the sincerity of holiday wishes when extended by complete strangers combined with a bone-deep contempt for...

For those of you who live in the United States or are familiar with its culture, imagine a place that starts with a political and social system that’s identical to today’s United States, but has a few significant differences. In this place, most...

I keep returning to the concept that software provides an environment for creativity, and that these tools create a context for the content we create within them. What we publish is shaped by the way we publish it. The canonical example is Microsoft...

I’ve never been mugged. I grew up in a town where the impression of New York City was basically either "That place you go to get mugged." or "That place you go to see a Broadway show, but be careful you don’t get mugged!" Still,...

Now that Netscape’s more or less officially dead, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile for Google to bankroll the Mozilla Foundation, either by donating a substantial sum or by hiring several of the browser engineers. Google’s shown a penchant...

I have, I must concede, a bit of a sympathy for barley. I’ve probably always known it, but it wasn’t something I was conscious of until last year some time when I finally got around to reading Jared Diamond’s excellent Guns, Germs and Steel Among...

A few weeks ago, I had started an entry with the phrase, "Though I work in the weblog industry…" and I had done so mainly as a tongue-in-cheek joke about how seriously the blogosphere takes itself. I was talking to Matt a few days later and...

One of the recurrent ideas that surfaces in science fiction and in the predictions of futurists is an always-on record of a person’s life. Typically, it’s presented as the stuff of a dystopian nightmare future, where the record is falsified and you...

So, yeah, everybody’s gonna be buzzing about Google buying Pyra, but my take is that it’s not really that great a fit. Of course, Google bought Deja, which is the closest parallel as far as their acquisitions go. But Deja archived everything in...

So I got a copy of another extremist "manifesto" today, this one by a bunch of anti-American idiotarians who just don’t seem to understand the basic principles that our great country was founded upon. What this piece of Berkeley leftist...

So, we all know that diamonds are intrinsically worthless stones whose popularity and value are a recent creation, the result of a concerted marketing efffort by a monopolist cartel whose control on its market makes Microsoft look like amateurs. And...

Every time there’s a resurgence in general-audience (non-techie) interest in Google, as after Newsweek’s recent Google fawning, the issue of privacy in a presence of a pervasive and permanent record rears its ugly head. People who aren’t...

Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical limitations of the software and devices that we use to view digital content today. We’ve...

Yesterday was the 33rd NYC Marathon. Every year since I moved to New York, I’ve tried to get out there to support the runners, but watching the race this year was even more fun in the past. So I’ve compiled a list of ways that people who are lazy...

I wasn’t going to write about it, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it, so maybe writing it out will get it out of my head… I’m surprised just how affected I am by Jam Master Jay’s passing. You probably already know, if you didn’t before, that...

The drums, of course, are beating. The Anniversary is coming up, and everyone is insisting not just that we remember, not just that we mourn, but that we do it The Right Way. I’m a bit saddened to see that the unity I saw in my city just after the...

Discussions about flexible straws, huh? Trivial? Absolutely. But what if there were, say, some larger point? What if I were pleased that my audience could accept that I’m both forandagainst them? What if we could use an example that pointless to see...

It’s not that we must have bendy straws, it’s that we can have them. There are simpler ways. There is the "good enough" of a utiltitarian assistant, delivering your drink with no fuss. But also delivering it, and this is the important part,...

This is the thing: bendy straws are like little plastic tubes of unfulfilled promise. The articulation, the flexibility, that’s the appeal, right? But is it such a hardship to lean in on a drink when you’re sipping? Is it, you lazy bastard? Do you...

Interesting. About a year ago, I wrote Pardon Me For Being Forward, which got a pretty decent amount of traffic. I’ve still never gotten it forwarded to me by someone who thought I’d appreciate it, though I know people who have. After seeing it pop...

The current world wide web consists almost entirely of pages that are either stories or tools. A few ambitious sites combine these two types of web pages in varying ratios, with results that range from unsatisfying to disastrous. But I asserted a few...

Success! If you’ll kindly look back to 11 September, you’ll see that we had sent a message to Shaun Reilly, proprietor of ReillyBurger.com to congratulate him on his culinary achievements. The message we sent was as follows: Mr. Reilly, Upon...

Prepare to be impressed. There exists among us a man like no other. Sure, we are all exceptional in some way. But truly few are as blessed with a gift as this Boston University senior. I have two words for you: 20,000 Calories. It really does give a...

Little bit of not-quite-wisdom which I have realized is very, very true: We hate most in others that which he have failed to see in ourselves. Or, as I like to say, if it pisses me off, it’s probably something I do...