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The Chinese Auto Invasion
I lived in Israel for two decades, and in all that time the cars available were fairly consistent. Compared to…
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The dirty little secret of global egg production
Eggs are an indispensable part of the global food market. Not just for that omelette you had for breakfast, eggs…
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Woodworking to take up COVID-19 time
It’s been an interesting few months. Lots of time at home. In trying to fill my time, I started working…
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Right to repair is important, but we should be designing for repair instead
We live in a world today that more and more items we buy are either intended to be disposable, or…
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The Internet never forgets
Recently Facebook released a tool called Off-Facebook Activity, which allows you to review and remove data collected by Facebook from…
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Sharing is caring
I’ve written a bit about the sharing economy before, such as Uber meets Pretty Woman and Transportation technology and the…
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Transportation technology and the unknown
“When I was a kid” is the beginning of many a discussion on how things were better in past generations.…
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Senior monitoring – security flipped on its head
Let’s say you want to set up a security system for your home. In days past that would mean hiring…
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Why product design is like writing a recipe
While reading a cookbook recently I realized the goal of the cookbook author is not entirely different than a product…
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The world of Mac software development
I was recently sent an offer to beta test a new service. The service is interesting – it is a…
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Three delayed keyboards (or four future keyboards)
Anyone who has been involved with crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, and particularly those who have backed hardware products,…
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Who watches the watchmen? Apple vs. The FBI
The confrontation between the FBI and Apple over decrypting an Apple iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of…
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A keyboard with swappable switches
It started out with a post to Reddit that linked to a series of photos on Imgur of a new keyboard…
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E-mail security stinks, and that makes hackers (and the NSA) happy
The Better Mousetrap Making the perfect e-mail client seems like the build-a-better-mousetrap challenge of our day. Every year or so…
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Another font evolves in the digital realm
Recently, I’ve been reading about T.E. Lawrence (also known as John Hume Ross, T.E. Shaw, and thanks to Hollywood – Lawrence of…
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Hand-wiring a keyboard
As part of an effort to teach myself hardware design, I’ve wanted to hand-build a keyboard. I ordered a top…
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The evolution and commercialization of the ErgoDox keyboard
I mentioned the ErgoDox keyboard in my article A few interesting keyboards nearly in existence…. Strictly speaking, the ErgoDox was…
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How many keys are there on a keyboard?
Longtime readers of this blog might have noticed my interest in computer keyboards. Most people today just use the keyboard…
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Teaching Computer Science (in Saudi Arabia)
Recently I came across two computer programming products, whose creators have mentioned they’re being used in the high school curricula…
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From bibles to web sites, the century-long trek of one font
I appreciate a good font, and I certainly appreciate good typography. Reading badly laid out books can be painful (although…
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Time for some Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a single-board credit-card-sized computer introduced in 2012. The computer was designed for use in teaching computer…
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Privacy in the age of technology
The recent kerfuffle over Uber and Lyft employees being able to track the locations that individual customers get picked up and…
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What if Apple made watch movements instead of watches?
I’ve written what features I think future all-in-one wearables will have, took a second look at that on the eve…
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What was not said about the Apple Watch
So the keynote just ended. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were about as expected. Other than the obvious screen…
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On the brink of an Apple wearable
Back in April I wrote a post titled One Wearable to Rule Them All? Not likely. predicting where I thought the…
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Uber meets Pretty Woman
Robert Altman’s The Player, a 1992 crime drama that at the same time skewers Hollywood as an industry (the main…
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The rise of hardware startups – thank you crowdfunding
I’ve worked in both hardware and software companies over the years, and both are interesting and challenging, but there there…
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Crowdfunding hardware and Sous Vide cooking
This is not a post about cooking. This is a post about crowdfunding and how it is changing how many…
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A Lean Canvas you can edit
One of the simplest (and simplicity is key) ways to outline a business model is using Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas.…
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What differentiates a business messaging app?
Messaging has become a hot area of late (for a look at the history of messaging over the past few…
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One Wearable to Rule Them All? Not likely.
This is actually one of the first articles I planned on writing when I started this blog, but I felt…
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How I would re-design the Kinesis Advantage keyboard
I’m a fan of the Kinesis Advantage keyboard, but it’s definitely long-in-the-tooth these days. The keyboard’s basic design reaches back…
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Samsung looking to Israeli tech to compete with Apple’s iBeacon
A couple of months ago I tweeted about an Israeli startup named ShopCloud that was showing off some fairly amazing…
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A few interesting keyboards, nearly in existence…
My last post, Why haven’t there been any keyboard innovations in decades?, got some interesting responses. A couple of people…
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Why haven’t there been any keyboard innovations in decades?
This might seem surprising coming from someone whose first job was for a speech recognition company more than 20 years…
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IsraCoin, the new Israeli national cryptocurrency
This month a new phase in cryptocurrencies began, with the introduction of a series of national cryptocurrencies, including Auroracoin (Iceland),…
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Who do you trust with your identity?
This is the second in a series of articles, which started with The long goodbye to passwords. You might want…
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Replacing the battery in my iPhone (10 minutes + 1 month)
I use an iPhone 4s as my main phone. While Apple still sells this model, as someone who has been…
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Are cell phone photos the 110/disc/APS photos of our day?
I’ve heard it said that the best camera is the one you have with you. Sure, any picture is better…
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What ever happened to the Open Handset Alliance?
What ever happened to the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)? Some of you are probably scratching your heads wondering that the…
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The long goodbye to passwords
First of all, if what’s written above is your password, you need to change it now. I’ll wait. Okay, good,…
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Stephen Wolfram never disappoints…
No one will come away from this video amazed at how humble Stephen Wolfram is, but that’s not the point…
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Jon Medved interviewed on recent Israeli exits
Great interview with Jonathan Medved, on Bloomberg TV in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress (MWC), about Israeli companies and…
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What happens when you try to video mountain biking using your phone?
This is just a fun post of some video I filmed last week while mountain biking in my hometown of…
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What the heck are stickers? A half billion dollar and growing business…
I’ve noticed something when talking to friends about messaging. If they’re not from Asia (yes, technically I live in Asia,…
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Lots going on in the mobile messaging space
It’s an interesting time to be in the mobile messaging space. I discussed the history of Internet and mobile messaging…
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More than I wanted to know about Twitter
While I’ve used Twitter since 2007, I was generally a fairly passive user. One account I used was mainly automated…
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The history of messaging, and where it’s going
There are in my view four main phases in the history of online and mobile messaging. The first phase included…
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The first public introduction of the Macintosh was in Boston
In 1984, Apple famously announced the Macintosh on January 22 in the iconic Ridley Scott directed ‘1984‘ commercial during the…
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Renting a Bicycle in Tel Aviv
Yesterday I spent some time at the Tel Aviv Port, a formerly run-down area that has been turned into a…
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The end of paper?
Do the success of tablets signal the end of paper? I think we can never truly understand understand what…
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A new blog
I’ve blogged in the past on a variety of topics, but not on technology and business, which is odd considering…
