“Facebook has devolved from a social networking platform to an operating system for third-party applications.” I cringe at the mention of it. It’s more contemptible than “free”, with all that’s been done to make that word utterly meaningless—if not borderline fraudulent—mostly from the lips and keyboards of marketers. It’s more despicable than “f*ck”, which despite [...]

Back in the day—and probably still, in certain dark corners of the Internet—curious n00bs spouting often-asked-and-answered “obvious questions” (at least to those being asked) were quickly booted in the posterior and sent reeling from Usenet newsgroups, IRC,  and (later) discussion forums with the phrase “RTFM!” left ringing in their ears for good measure. Nowadays it’s a much [...]

Since late February I’ve been coping with pain in my right forearm.  At first I thought I’d just temporarily strained something—reached too far too fast—but the pain just got worse over time. This past Monday I reached my breaking point and saw a doctor.  The diagnosis was Right Lateral Epicondylitis, a repetitive strain injury (RSI).  Even though [...]

Here’s a few questions it might be useful to ask before designing a mobile phone case, or alternately, before buying a warehouse full of some other manufacturer’s mobile phone cases: (1.)  Should we use rivets to attach the belt clip to the main body of the case? (2.) How many should we use? (3.) How large [...]

April Fool’s Day and Twitter were made for each other, don’t you think?  Sharing-oriented messages with a shortened URL courtesy of bit.ly or some other tool?  It’s the perfect combination of trust, expectation of useful content, and an obscured link.  The perfect storm. That was my thinking at least.  For the last couple of weeks [...]