July 20, 2017
True story: when Alex was 5, his parents paid him 2 cents for every dandelion he pulled up from the yard. He probably exacerbated the problem by blowing the seeds off the top of every one he pulled up. But we tell this story not only because it was the first line on his resume, but was a […]
June 8, 2017
The Bay Area is undeniably the wild west of new tech. And if Uber and Lyft thought this town ain’t big enough for the both of them, well, they’ve got another thing coming; there’s a new horse in town. The next means of getting from the downtown Oakland saloon to your hideout in the Berkeley hills is called […]
May 18, 2017
In the tech world, if you don’t evolve, you fall behind. And when you fall too far behind, even the most up to date Mapquest directions won’t necesarily get you caught back up. (Just ask Jeeves. Or Yahoo.) About.com, founded at the peak of the .com boom, is re-routing to stave off a slow ride into the […]
April 13, 2017
A lot of shuffling has taken place with Yahoo recently. In February of this year, the terms were finalized in a deal by which Yahoo would be bought over by Verizon. A lot of Yahoo’s value comes from the fact that it owns a 15% stake in the Chinese e-commerce/tech giant and world’s largest retailer, Alibaba. After […]
March 8, 2017
If you are what you eat, then everyone is surely part Mondelez. Mondelez is a food conglomerate that owns many notables, from Chips Ahoy to Philadelphia Cream Cheese to Triscuits and Wheat Thins. Yes, that’s right. The two most polar opposites on the cracker spectrum, Triscuits and Wheat Thins, are actually siblings. And now you […]
February 14, 2017
Caavo is a device that unifies all the doodads plugged into your TV. It’s a home entertainment bundler, connecting your TV, DVR, videogames, streaming channels, laptop, yada yada yada. I’m flipping through channels, trying to find a reason they named it Caavo, and the reception is pretty fuzzy. At first I thought it could be […]
December 6, 2016
Audi has had a few electric versions of their existing models for a while, using the descriptor “e-tron” to designate electronic (e.g., the Audi A3 e-tron). But now, they are gearing up to offer an all new, all-electric SUV that is simply called the Audi e-tron. Now that the brake screeching noise has cleared out of my brain, I […]
November 16, 2016
Donald J. Trump, a man who needs no introduction, is gearing up to launch a new line of hotels in 2017. They’re called “Scion Hotels.” The most conspicuous part of the name is actually an absence… where’s the T word? Why not give some nod to the name Trump, which has been the cornerstone of […]
October 20, 2016
In advance of their IPO, Snapchat is lopping off the “chat” part of their name. Among certain circles, this happened a while ago. For years, teens could be found sitting on the floor of the mall chained to an outlet declaiming, “Gotta check my snaps” or “Just sent you a snap” or “I can’t believe you […]
October 5, 2016
Today, Venmo is THE mobile payment app in the USA. My friends and I use it all the time; splitting checks is a cakewalk. And because of its ubiquity, Venmo is contracted by large companies to process refunds and other transfers of money to or from smartphones. (This is where Venmo takes a cut and […]