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I am noticing a frightening trend. On iOS, there is a growing collection of “security” apps. There is no such thing as a third-party security app on iOS (or on Windows Phone 7 for that matter). They don’t exist. There is no such thing. On iOS, there is (thankfully) no framework for the background task approach that “classic” antivirus has used for the last 25 years. More importantly, due to a vetted application store, the need for such an approach is not…

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I’ve long been critical of Google’s lack of “local” search focus. In particular, I think that they’ve missed a lot of opportunities to try and connect with local restaurants (no, not those with logos with you’d recognize – rather, those with food you’d remember), but it goes far deeper than just restaurants. Google licensed Yelp content for some time, and even tried to acquire Yelp back in 2009 to try and fix things like this, and when that failed, Google…

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I don’t recall the first time I heard VMware say they were working on virtualization for phones. I do recall my response then, and it’s the same as today. Actually, my response is even more focused today. It’s a silly idea that nobody will buy. More importantly, it’s completely the wrong approach to solving any security issues with smartphones today. I’ve been a huge fan of VMware for many many years (it goes back to when I worked at Microsoft,…

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I never met Steve Jobs. It doesn’t matter if I had. What do you say to someone who impacted your life so much, other than a feeble, “Thanks”? My parents tried to expose my brother and I to computing with a IIe. I used it through my first year of college. Honestly, it made me really dislike computers. Sure it technologically pushed the envelope. But the user interface and I never clicked. I have to wonder if Steve Jobs of…

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Most likely, you’ve seen The Polar Express. The animation technique used in it resulted in animation that is said to result in the Uncanny Valley effect. The Uncanny Valley theory says that while human-acting robots/animations or other non-human reenactments can very closely mimic the actions of a human, they cannot truly portray the emotion of the human face. The resulting coldness or unemotionality evokes a strange feeling in observers, who will find the character to be insensitive, unmoving, or sometimes…

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You can cut the split opinions with a knife. Many think that the Kindle Fire will be “an iPad Killer”, many think it’s a disappointment out of the gate (personally, I hate the phrase “* killer”). Both sides are missing the mark(et). The Kindle isn’t a competitor tot he iPad. It’s not intended to be. It’s a content play – CEO Jeff Bezos himself stated it well, saying the Kindle Fire isn’t a tablet, it’s a service. The Kindle Fire…

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It’s often said that Apple is a front runner in design and technology, and when you think about it they are only a front runner in the psychology of how we interact with the device and technology itself, not the sociology of how more than one individual interacts with their technology, or even moreso, how media produced on one iOS device can be shared with family and friends. This is really exemplified when you take a picture, and you try…

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At the BUILD conference during the week of Sept. 12th, 2011, Microsoft stated many things; of course, they also didn’t state many things. Among the things that they stated was that WinRT was their vision of Windows apps in the future. By it’s very name, you can tell a lot about it – stay with me for a second. So what didn’t Microsoft say at BUILD? They didn’t say much about Win32. More importantly, when people were declaring “the desktop” dead on…

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Something struck me during the initial Windows 8 sessions on Tuesday at BUILD, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Later during Jensen Harris’ wonderful user interface session, as I sat there in the audience using my iPad (yes, with a physical keyboard), I realized what it was. My iPad, sitting there in portrait mode, camera on the top staring me in the face, pointed it out. Almost everything up on the stage, and shown that day…

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The other day I posted about a scam involving Facebook credential grifting. Last week was a great one for scam intel… I also got a scam trying to steal Chase credentials that simultaneously evolved into a scam to steal Wells Fargo credentials. I like to describe current spam – especially phishing scams, but it works for most spam, with a hook, line, and sinker metaphor. The email hooks the victim visually, the line (a link to an illegitimate site) lures…

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