August 2011
1 post
Picking the right frame
So I’ve changed the hed on my patents piece. It used to be “The patent system isn’t broken — we are” and now it’s “The ‘broken patent system’: how we got here and how to fix it.” Everything else remains unchanged.
Why the swap? I struggled mightily to put a title on this piece after I wrote it — my main point was to provide a well-researched foundation to the argument for people, and to identify...
April 2011
5 posts
AT&T and the case of the hobbled Samsung Focus
AT&T finally dished out the Windows Phone 7 copy-and-paste update to Samsung Focus owners… but in the process they disabled HSUPA upload speeds. Chris has it exactly right: that’s like kicking a one-legged dog.
Copyright law: no one understands it
So as I noted in my breakdown of Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, it looks like Apple’s law firm made an embarrassing copyright mistake: they used photos of Samsung products taken by Myriam Joire and AndroidCommunity without permission. Hell, they even cropped AndroidCommunity’s watermark.
That’s more than just a minor faux pas; I’m pretty sure it’s...
“From: warsaw@inc.net (Nilay Patel)
Subject: minidisc storage
Date: ...”
– Chris Ziegler and I were chatting today about how jaded some of our younger readers are towards technology companies, and I remarked that I was probably just as cynical back then. Here, then, is proof — a post I wrote on comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage decrying Sony’s mishandling of the MiniDisc. I...
The Android multitouch story gets even murkier
There’s been a lot of chatter these past few weeks about Steven Levy’s new Google book In the Plex, and particularly some revelations in the book about Steve Jobs — specifically, that Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted him to be the first CEO of Google, and that Jobs mentored the two founders until he later saw pinch-to-zoom in Android and everything went to hell. The acrimony was...
The next step
As you may have heard, I’m joining my man Josh Topolsky (and some other good friends) at SB Nation, and we’re going to be building a new tech site from scratch. It’s easily the most exciting career decision I’ve ever made — you don’t often get the chance to completely start over and create something new. And trust me when I say we don’t have any small...
March 2011
2 posts
Amazon Cloud Player and how bandwidth killed the...
If you’re reading this you probably don’t need much background on Amazon Cloud Player — suffice it to say that Amazon launched a new “freemium” cloud storage service that’s tied into their music store. You get 5GB of online storage for free and 20GB if you buy an MP3 album from Amazon, and subsequent MP3 purchases don’t count against the cap. There’s...
It's tomorrow.
Yes, I’m leaving Engadget as well. In fact, I’m already gone — my last day was March 4th. I hadn’t told anyone in order to afford our team the chance to transition in relative peace and quiet. Not that there’s anything quiet about an Engadget workday.
Leaving Engadget is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Not only am I leaving my current position as...
