Category: Software

  • Why Decentralized Software Is 10x Harder

    The Diaspora* guys announced today: Today, we are giving control of Diaspora to the community. which has widely been interpreted as giving up on the grand vision of decentralized social networking. The remaining Diaspora team apparently (I’d guess based on advice they got from YCombinator) will focus on a more standard “we run an ad-supported […]

  • Finally somebody does it: HealthTAP

    Healthtap is a startup in Palo Alto that does something I’d been hoping for: it connects patients and doctors directly, via an iPad app, instead of indirectly through layers of receptionists, offices, schedules, and insurance policies. They are still young, and the functionality they offer is very limited, but one can see where this is […]

  • Is iCloud a Personal Cloud?

    It’s amazing how my personal photos move around effortlessly between my iPhone, the iPad and iPhoto on the MacBook, by virtue of Apple’s iCloud. They just “show up” when I want them, as if by magic (sorry, but this marketing slogan is somewhat appropriate here). So is iCloud a Personal Cloud, in the sense it […]

  • The Fundamental Remaking of Several Industries

    @parislemon neatly summarized today’s news about H-P getting out of the PC business: HP To Apple: You Win. I hope he meant more than tablets, because the victory of the Apple model is much broader. Just a few days ago, Google caused a major earthquake with the announcement that it would acquire Motorola, one of […]

  • Reframing the Open-Source vs. Proprietary Software Licensing Debate

    Much ink has been spilled on open-source vs. proprietary licensing, and in the end, it’s a clash of civilizations: one whose goal it is to better humanity by making valuable technology freely available, vs. one whose members must return more money to their investors than they had to pay to the developers creating the software. […]