In the future, you are encouraged to refer to the social network sometimes called “Google Plus” or “G+” by its proper name:

“The Plusterfuck”

Additionally, the act of partially or completely breaking a formerly useful service in order to coerce people into using G+ when they have no desire to do so is to be referred to as “plusterfuckery.”  Example ( Read more... )

Most of the photos I’ve taken of my daughter are with a now nearly eight year old Canon SD500.  Every once in a while, I think that I should replace it with something newer and faster: Theda tends to move at near-mach velocities in her calmer moments, and I miss a lot of shots waiting for the autofocus.  I’ve been thinking this now for a good two ( Read more... )

(An actual letter I just had to send to someone who almost certainly did not deserve it.)

Dear Ms. [Elided]:

My apologies for the intrusion.  My friend [elided] was kind enough to share your contact information with me ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Reading the coverage of “The Social Network” has made two things apparent to me:

1. No amount of effusively positive reviews - hell, not even an effectively infinite number of them - is enough to make me even slightly interested in watching a movie about Mark Zuckerberg’s journey from douchebag Harvard student to douchebag baby billionaire.  ( Read more... )

“You know, I don’t think iTunes is bloated, baroque or feature-overstuffed enough yet.  How can we fix that?”

“Dude, we’ll totally ad a social network to it!  The kids love those!”

(Alternate version: “YO DAWG, I HEARD YOU LIKED SOCIAL NETWORKS…”)

Mostly, I snark to note that in here in C.E. 2010, “…we’ll add a social network/connection to facebook” ( Read more... )

Today it finally happened: on my way out of the house this morning, I realized that I’d just finished the last book I was reading, and it was therefore time to pop the next one off the to-read stack.  The next one being a luscious-looking hardcover volume.  I looked at it, looked at my backpack, felt my shoulders a bit, took a deep breath…

…and ( Read more... )

Oh for the love of god, Canon.  TWENTY-FIVE separate consumer camcorder models?  Coupled with a website that lets you compare - hold your breath for the awesome here - a whopping three models at a time?

Lordy.  It’s like looking at Apple’s product line circa 1988:  “Do I want the Centris 610, the Centris 650, the Performa 455, the Performa 457, the ( Read more... )

The (more or less) complete list of things that constantly annoy me about my iPhone that are apparently not going to be fixed in version 4.0:

• Ugly, modal, history-less, illegible alert dialogs. 
  • In fact, with “local alerts” subbing in for any sort of actual IPC, this is going to get much, much worse.
• No custom SMS/calendar/voicemail alert sounds.  ( ( Read more... )

True story: the now-former CEO of Sun Microsystems, the day after his company ignominiously succumbed to a buyout by Oracle, announced his inevitable resignation by posting a cute haiku to Twitter:

“Financial crisis / Stalled too many customers / CEO no more.”

For those of us who watched Schwartz preside over the decade-long destruction of what was ( Read more... )