Often in tech reporting, you’ll hear a lot about launches, acquisitions and failures. What you don’t hear enough about are the makers who iterate in relative silence. For all of the hyped startups of this world (Coloranyone?), there are a lot of startups that chug away without the fanfare. So to celebrate those startups building … Read more

Tate Museum’s Kirstie Beaven wonders whether museums are using social media creatively enough. She listed some recent activity by Tate: a Twitter discussion around the hashtag #artfilmtitle, a video dialogue with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and a Flickr collaboration. However, complained Beaven, “all of these things are basically one-offs [and] perhaps that’s the nature of … Read more

Michael Stipe is the lead singer of R.E.M., one of the most influential bands of all time. In an interview with Creators Project, Stipe describes how he uses the blogging platform Tumblr to publish his side project art work. “In a way, like the rest of the world, I’m kind of self-publishing on my Tumblr … Read more

In June, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its Windows operating system: Windows 8. This version of Windows will introduce touchscreen technology into the Windows user interface (UI), including desktop and laptop computers. Touchscreens have become popular in smartphones and tablets, primarily due to Apple’s iOS. But does it make sense to reach out and … Read more

Earlier this month the New York Times launched a beta testing playground called Beta620. It’s a site for the news organization to try out new web experiments, some of which may graduate to become full-fledged New York Times products. An interesting Semantic Web experiment went live this week, called Longitude. As the name suggests, it … Read more

Adam Greenfield was the author of what is still my favorite book about the Internet of Things, Everyware (first published in 2006). Greenfield is now walking the talk with a IoT business called Urbanscale. I’ve been following its progress, via Greenfield’s weekly newsletter on the Urbanscale blog. One of Urbanscale’s projects is developing an iOS … Read more

In April, social media startup Kosmix was acquired for $300 million by retailing giant Walmart. Kosmix had built a Semantic Web platform called the Social Genome, which organized social media data. The platform powered 3 products: TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events; Kosmix.com, a topic-based search engine; and RightHealth, a health search … Read more

In May, we analyzed usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s report on iPad design and concluded that it was a welcome return to form for the web veteran. Nielsen and his company have followed up with another excellent usability report, this time about “transmedia” design. It covers mobile, tablets, TVs and even dips a toe into “extreme … Read more

Kevin Kelly wrote a thought-provoking post about how “the impossible” is happening more often nowadays, thanks in no small part to large scale collaboration over the Internet. In other words, the hive mind. He cites eBay and Wikipedia as two examples of things he would’ve thought impossible in decades past. Collaboration over the Web is … Read more

A recent report about the “future Internet” by the UK’s national innovation agency, Technology Strategy Board, has some illuminating information about the emerging Internet of Things. It suggests that converged services and a brokerage model, amongst other things, will define the future Web. The report is available as a free PDF download, but as it’s … Read more

United Airlines has announced it is converting to paperless flight decks and deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. This is yet another sign that tablets – and in particular Apple’s iPad – are changing the way people access and interact with content. We’ve already extensively covered how iPads have impacted the magazine … Read more

Flingo is the latest social TV service to hit the market. It has the ambitious goal of merging your television watching with your Web activity, in real-time. This works two ways: Web content is adapted according to what you’re watching on TV, and your TV screen gets Web features such as checking in and tweeting. … Read more

It’s common knowledge that gaming is one of the most popular activities on the Web, but we often don’t have a good sense of what type of person a modern gamer is. A new research report from Latitude set out to answer the question: who is today’s gamer? As one participant in Latitude’s study noted, … Read more

Futurist and author Kevin Kelly posits that in 10 years time, each of us will carry 2 computing devices on us: “one general purpose combination device, and one specialized device (per your major interests and style).” He also predicts that we will wear on average 10 computing things: “We’ll have devices built into belts, wristbands, … Read more

In a review of Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together, John Battelle notes a familiar experience in regards to technology: “this cake ain’t baked. I mean, think about it. Facebook: Not quite right. Smart phones? Not quite right. Desktop computing? Even though we’ve had nearly three decades of interaction, it’s still not quite right.” This issue … Read more