Mike Elgan

Social networking is huge and growing. Some people don’t “get it.” Others participate, but reluctantly. And, of course, still others are rabid enthusiasts (including Yours Truly). There are three types of people in this world: 1) anti social networkers; 2) closed social networkers; and 3) open social networkers. Anti social networkers think social networking is […]

The consumer electronics industry is finally discovering what other industries have known for a long time: “Green” products sell. I’ve got nothing against the environment. I’m all for real improvements in the manufacturing, distribution, sales, use, reuse and disposal of products that cut carbon footprints, gag greenhouse gases and put a lid on pollution. But […]

Everybody is talking about “cloud computing,” the latest and most problematic major buzzword to plague IT jargon. Here’s why I think we should all just stop using it. “Cloud computing” is confusing. Just about everyone in technology seems to like throwing around “cloud computing,” but either don’t know, or don’t agree on, what it means. […]

By the end of the Olympic games, we’ll know whether the Chinese government’s unprecedented application of state-of-the-art digital technology to Orwellian social control can actually work. Call it Orwellian IT. If you’re attending the Olympics: Oh, boy, is Big Brother watching you. According to Chinese authorities, the government has installed: • 300,000 surveillance cameras • […]

The conventional wisdom about Microsoft Windows Vista is that it’s a mixed bag, and generally inferior to Windows XP. Problems with Vista fall broadly into categories of compatibility, performance and usability: • Compatibility. The company launched Vista before the industry was ready, and during the first six months driver issues were pandemic. This is where […]

The Beijing Olympics begin in two weeks. But for Apple, the China games have already begun. The company opened a shiny new Apple store in Beijing Saturday — the “first of many” in China, according to an Apple official. The race is on. But is this an event Apple can win? China is a coveted […]

Think of Apple, and elegant, minimalist product design comes to mind. But the less-glamorous unseen force behind the products is Apple’s amazing ability to execute — to coordinate things like hardware supply and distribution, software rollouts and updates, network functionality and availability, and forcing suppliers and partners to march in lock-step with the Cupertino giant. […]

Google launched a “beta” 3D virtual environment platform yesterday called Lively. The product has been compared to the virtual world “Second Life,” but with a difference: Lively isn’t one giant world, but individual “rooms” or size-limited “spaces” that can be embedded into Web pages or even FaceBook profiles. (I created one and embedded it into […]

Every week, it seems, the press labels some new phone the latest “iPhone Killer.” This week, of course, the first-ever true “iPhone Killer” — the new iPhone — was announced. The “3Gesus Phone” adds me-too, “catch-up” features that competitive phones have offered for quite a while, such as 3G and GPS. The “iPhone Killers,” including […]

Asus shook up the industry with its $300 — $600 mini notebook last year. Asus continues to dominate the market for super small, super cheap mini-notebooks. It may sell as many as 5 million Eee PCs by the end of the year – far more than all other competitors combined. It wasn’t supposed to happen […]

We all want to succeed in our careers. We go to school for at least 16 years. We study late at night to pass exams and get certifications. We take on-the-job training, and try to teach ourselves new skills. We attend industry conferences to build our knowledge and cultivate peer contacts. We read productivity books […]

Saturday is International Shutdown Day, a worldwide event put together by a Canadian organization of the same name (Shutdown Day) to get as many people as possible to ignore their computers for 24 hours. According to the organizer’s Web site: “The idea of Shutdown Day project is simple — just shutdown your computer for one […]