Time

"The die is cast," declared Julius Caesar, anticipating Microsoft's fateful decision to protect its Windows cash cow at all costs.

Years later, as Joe Nocera eloquently opines in The New York Times, Microsoft has tethered itself to its Windows operating system and almost certainly lost its way on the Internet as a result:

Windows is already dying a death by a thousand cuts. Yes, Microsoft still makes billions by selling pre-installed Windows via computer manufacturers. But ever-so-gradually, the Internet is upending its business model just as surely as it has upended models for the music, television and … Read more

The Multiverse Network, a developer of virtual world platform software, announced Wednesday that it was unveiling what it calls Places, two related social elements that tie Multiverse users together.

Essentially connective tissue for users of the Multiverse platform, Places has two separate components.

The first is a social networks application that automatically connects people using Multiverse virtual worlds together with others who are also friends in social networks like Facebook.

The second part of Places is a new virtual world centered around a digital representation of Manhattan's Times Square. Now anyone who installs Multiverse's World Browser--the basic Multiverse … Read more

Thomas Friedman visited a wind farm near the East Asian gambling capital, Macao. But his rhetoric outsizes his quantitative skills in setting up another "dichotomy" in a "flat" world.

The column is a dizzying and logically disjointed ramble through some well-worn tropes on China's economy that have developed during the media's concurrent green awakening and Olympic China craze in recent months.

This is not so surprising from a columnist specialists love to lambaste, but this opening left me more confused than usual:

[T]he Chinese engineers showed me their control room, which has a … Read more

Back in 1957, Time magazine reported on "audiophilia," a disease that afflicted the "middle-aged, male and intelligent" and found them to be compulsive and fascinated with bizarre sounds. Hey, that describes me!

My wife happened to find the article, "Audiophilia," online with no author listed. The article reported that a new neurosis was discovered, audiophilia, an excessive passion for hi-fi sound and equipment. The Audiophiliac was amused.

I admit it, we audiophiles are an obsessive bunch who endlessly fuss over our hi-fis, but no more than car freaks fiddle with their fuel injectors, or computer geeks agonize over bits and apps. Each group has its nut jobs, but they're at least passionate about what they do. … Read more

There's nothing like a quick YouTube break to shake up the workday monotony, but nothing will stop the show faster than a stalled video stream or a crashing media player. Make these sites your first stops when your media player goes on strike.

YouTube Help Center The service's own troubleshooting page is a bit too quick to recommend that you uninstall and then reinstall the Adobe Flash Player (cutesy instructional video, though). This may be the surest cure for all types of glitches, but I would begin with the simpler steps the site suggests, such as restarting your … Read more

The meeting time broker TimeDriver, which has been in closed testing since I covered it back in January, will finally enter its public beta period on Monday. I had a chance to play with the product Thursday. For a lot of people, this service could be a great help.

TimeDriver is designed to help people who need to schedule a lot of one-on-one meetings. If you're interviewing job candidates, for example, or taking appointments with customers, you can set up either one-time or recurring blocks of time, and send people links that let them grab appointment times in those … Read more

Newspapers are doomed because of the Internet.

That's the conventional wisdom one hears in the U.S., but according to a story last week in BusinessWeek, some German newspapers are defying the odds and are using technology to boost sales.

Some of Germany's biggest papers are seeing growth, even double-digit growth, at a time when some of this country's biggest daily papers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, are posting declining earnings.

So the U.S. could learn a thing or two from the Germans, right?

"It's too … Read more

With its tagline, "upload. share. archive.", it may have been inevitable that the magazine-sharing Web site Mygazines.com would face allegations of copyright infringement.

Mygazines, which announced its launch in late July, allows users to upload and share magazines. Digital copies of the magazines on the site are easy to read, and users can comment on them, leave ratings, and use articles to create their own "custom" magazines.

The site is free to join, and there are no advertisements, but that hasn't allayed concerns of magazine publishers.

Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Warner's … Read more

Like many of you, I'm a geek, and it extends well beyond my interest in technology. I still read an occasional science fiction novel and look forward to the release of superhero and James Bond movies.

Lately, I've been wondering how close we are to achieving some of the scientific "miracles" that had previously belonged solely to the realm of science fiction. Advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other fields are certainly making lots of exciting things possible in the laboratory, but that's just the beginning.

What I'm interested in is early academic, defense, medical, or even hobbyist applications. Remember, that's where computing and communications started, and look where we are now.

Here are six off the top of my head. And yes, some of them are out there, but my goal was to leapfrog all the usual stuff, like virtual reality, robotics, and the like, which I've written about previously. Some of it may surprise you.… Read more