Lessig is right. The US needs a CTO.

Scoble posted a very interesting piece regarding Larry Lessig’s belief for the need the nation has for a CTO-like position. I agree that this is a necessary position as we continue to evolve into a nation of knowledge workers that rely on and create new technology that makes us and the rest of the world [...]

Quick App Review: Evernote

I have officially solved my digital notebook issue.
The need for the notebook comes from the need for a repository for the myriad of details that collect each day that don’t warrant a separate doc, but still have value to later projects or later recall.
I was looking for a solution that would sync among all my [...]

Wifi in the air… Good or Bad?

My first thought about this article about American Airllines wifi-enabled planes was: “Cool”
But now I have second thoughts.
I usually go cross country once or twice a quarter and I get A LOT done in a cramped, quiet environment. What I believe makes me productive on these trips is the lack of distractions and the resulting [...]

Why the iPhone won’t dominate in business email…yet

short answer: The keyboard and lack of push email.
long answer: While on the road recently, I was forced to use the email functions in the iphone more than I had in the past. The vertical mail keyboard is too narrow for my big hands and often the predictive software slows down the process of writing [...]

Microsoft Office 2008 quick review

Entourage: Big omision in the lack of ability to subscribe to RSS calendar feeds. Most mac users use iCal because of the ease of maintaining separate calendars and the ease in subscribing to other ical or RSS calendar feeds. Entourage dropped the ball here. I would use the app if I could pipe in feeds [...]

Smartphone Mashup Update 4 — B2B (Back to Blackberry)

I have come full circle back to what works. I just bought the Blackberry 8703e on the Verizon network. The reason for the purchase is this: the Palm 700p is half-baked. While I love the tethering feature (the 8703e has it, too), it wasn’t enough to get past the cludgy Palm OS. There are [...]

Smartphone Mashup part 3 — Palm Treo 700p Reviewed

OK, I have to say that so far this phone seems to do it all. It has great voice (prolly because I switched to Verizon) and the Palm OS so far has shown me quite a lot in terms of its ability to manage all the crap I need to manage (mail, contacts, web and [...]

Smartphone Mashup: Can somebody step up and get this right?

The obvious question is why is there no de facto winner in the smartphone space? In my quest to find the right smartphone, I have been through the following phones in the last three years (thankfully I can sell all the old ones on Ebay!).
PHONE CARRIER OS
Motorola v-60 [...]

Late breaking News! More web based AJAX Calendars!

There are more online calendars hitting the market these days. I just read on TechCrunch about a few more AJAX based clandars that don’t sem to be doing anything that new. I must admit, this new gen of calendars have some pretty slick and desktop-like features. It seems like most of these are after ad [...]

Non-earthshattering Observation #1

There are too many things that compete for our attentions each day:

There’s the stuff we need to focus on: tasks, projects, family, friends, kids, etc.
There’s the stuff we want to focus on at some point: books, magazines, tasks, projects, TV programs, websites, blogs, podcasts, family, friends, etc.
Then there’s the stuff that we don’t necessarily want [...]