David Pogue (NY Times) has written a blog entry about his experience as an author selling an ebook with no DRM... and it wasn't the end of the world, or even his career as an author. With the nook and a possible Apple tablet coming to contend with the Kindle …

Crunks 2009: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections is well worth a read to anyone who watches the media at all. In particular, the "Correction of the Year" (a 9/11 vs 911 confusion) and the pointer to When should editors "unpublish" online news reports? from the Canadian Journalism …

I'm an iPhone user... my wife (Hi, Carol!) is an iPhone user, and I even have an iPhone set up for development purposes that doesn't get used for anything else (despite the fact that we pay for it monthly). I also have an AT&T Data card, for use when …

For those of you digital photography enthusiasts who use Aperture, here's a little bit of info on how I deal with going out of town with my laptop, but wanting to do the "real work" on my desktop when I get home. It turns out that if you are careful …

Ah, a new release.... must be time for another slew of articles aimed at getting press and money for the "security" folks out there. For those of us with Macintoshes, here is my take on the whole Macintosh virus situation. Every time a new OS release comes out, a whole …

This is a pretty esoteric topic, but I ran into it and maybe the google will help somebody find my solution before they waste too much time. I have a custom control with a custom IBPlugin which we use in Cartographica. The IBPlugin compiles in all 4 binary modes, but …

Cool piece on Gizmodo about Alton Brown's favorite Kitchen hacks.

Many of you have already seen that Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) will be releasing on Friday. I've been running it as my primary OS on my laptop since the WWDC in June and look forward to getting a real install on there. You're probably also aware that PPC …

In line with my BackUPS/SmartUPS story earlier today, I wanted to say a little something about how I "watched" it. First, I am very pleased with my KILL-A-WATT for figuring out the real load (not needing to trust the meter on the UPS, which was reasonably accurate), so I …

This is one of those "should have figured that out myself" problems, but I figure I will warn anyone who might be in my shoes.... Check the specifications carefully before investing in an APC UPS. Not that I'm going to suggest going with another manufacturer, just that I'm going to …

In the process of moving, I had occasion to find my CD collection (yes, intellectual property fans, I have every single CD that I used to load my iPod with). I decided that it was time to replace the nasty 128kbps CBR MP3 encoded with the zing encoder using a …

Due to a problem encountered by a friend recently when trying to deal with a lost admin password on a relative's Macintosh, I had occasion to revisit the topic of resetting Macintosh passwords. This is both an interesting tip, and a cautionary tale for those with important data on their …

I didn't realize the Blendtec guys would do this, but it's a very cute advertisement, especially for a tech-savvy camera, like the new Olympus, which has been getting rave reviews. Watch as fearless blender, Tom Dickson, discovers there's something more to blending than destruction.

With Apple having announced some new machines with really nice price points within the last week, I've been asked by some friends what my suggestions would be for copying the data to a new machine and removing data from the old one. Here, I'll try to put forth my current …

Thanks to Amanda for pointing me at this article from author/blogger JA Konrath about the future of publishing and eBooks.

Editor's Note: this piece is quite long in the tooth at this point. I'm leaving it here for historical purposes, but I've got some updated commentary in the follow-on article Looking for a Nav system (revisited: 2018). A friend (Hi, Laura) asked yesterday what Nav system that I would suggest …

As I write this today, I'm the happy owner of a new MacBook Pro (the "unibody" or "late 2008" version). So, what of it? So far, so great. I'm very happy with the purchase and I'm looking forward to making a happy new Mac user of the designated recipient of …

The Atlantic has a scathing article about TSA airport security, citing a number of demonstrated attempts (with success) to get past the "security theater" that is our current airport security system. Don't read this article if you believe that TSA security works and you're safer because of it--it might be …

It is apparent now, after the airing of New Family (the second installment in Microsoft's new ad campaign), that the object of the ads is to create a more sympathetic, approachable, and perhaps even more "human" Bill Gates. My only guess here is that he's being groomed to be the …

OK, I'm still confused by this oft-quoted figure from the McCain/Palin campaign that "[Alaska] produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." (Gibson interview with Palin, September 11, 2008, as noted on The Times). From my calculations, even when only Oil is taken into account …