In the olden days a writer needed a publisher in order to get their book in front of their audience. But with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Kindle and iBook stores, that’s no longer the case. And while I could argue for their usefulness still, one thing I continue to see makes me hope for the DEATH of publishing houses in the near future… ..if you charge the same price (or even close) for a digital copy of a book as you do for a physical copy, you are ripping people off. But I see that happen over and over again. And not just on new books, but older ones as well. Here’s a book from the...

Yesterday I exchanged my normal cable box for one that handles HD signals. I didn’t need to do it before now because until my birthday recently I didn’t even have an HDTV and rarely watched a “channel” at all. First thing I noticed with the new box is that stuff looked *really* different. In a good way. Clarity and vibrant colors. The trade-in was definitely worth the extra $8 per month. As cool as the enhanced picture is, during my TV watching session yesterday I noticed three things that made me realize (once again) why watching TV is mainly just a waste of time. 1st Stupid...

I’ve been the owner of a Kindle Fire for just about 12 hours now so I don’t have a lot of experience, but my initial reaction — overall — is that it’s the wrong size. At the risk of being called a fanboy (or even fanboi) I think Steve Jobs was right about 7″ tablets not being a good size. (Now watch them come out with one…) Here’s why: If I’m in a “mobile” situation, stopped at a red light, standing in line, etc., my iPhone is the perfect size. And if I’m in a “settled” situation like sitting in bed or on the couch,...

On his parislemon.com blog MG Siegler said (in a post about commenting on blogs): “If you’re saying something that you think is great, why would you want to do it as a comment on another site anyway?” Obvious answer — because I want to have a conversation, not give a speech. While a conversation can consist of a post on one blog, a couple Tweets, a post on another blog, etc., that’s not usually very satisfying. Or efficient.

Laptops are outselling desktop machines (by a huge margin) and tablets (iPads, specifically) are being used to replace laptops by more and more people. I can see a time within a couple years (yeah, that soon) where the only computer most people will need will be an iPhone. Sidebar: Yeah, someone using Android could pull off what I’m suggesting, but Apple has a proven track record of doing more cool things. Sorry, just a fact. A “home computer” could consist of a monitor and a keyboard — and your iPhone. Sit down in front of the keyboard and connect your iPhone to the monitor...