Mike Elgan

Google has a “Facebook killer” on its hands. And, no, I’m not talking about Google’s Orkut social network (unless you live in Brazil, where Orkut has already “killed” Facebook). Google is just one acquisition away from offering a social network that does everything Facebook does, minus all the things everybody hates about Facebook. This social […]

New technology requires the invention of new words — which used to be coined by engineers. Some were descriptive (“electronic mail”), others whimsical (“mouse”). Fast forward to today, and technology is big business. The marketing people now coin words, motivated less by descriptiveness or amusement and more by profit. Sure, It’s the job of marketers […]

The netbook craze happened almost by accident. While the deep-pocketed industry leaders, including Microsoft, Intel and a gaggle of Asian consumer electronics giants tried to sell Ultra Mobile PCs, it took ASUS, of all companies, to finally figure out what the public really wanted: A regular notebook, but really small and really cheap. That was […]

The recession is bad. And it could get worse before it gets better. But the downturn will end. And when it does, the consumer electronics and IT industries will look very different from those that entered the recession in late 2007. There will be winners and losers — many companies that have been with us […]

Since the recession started in December 2007, 4.4 million Americans have lost their jobs. Such record job losses are prompting some to call for a crackdown on the H-1B visa program. The H-1B is a temporary visa for foreign workers with special and valuable skills that are theoretically unavailable among American workers. This whole financial […]

Amazon’s new Kindle for iPhone application shipped this morning. The software lets you read any of Amazon’s 240,000 Kindle books on an iPhone much like you would on an over-priced Amazon Kindle. Unfortunately, the launch exposes Apple’s biggest blunder since the Apple Newton. Apple could have, and should have, competed head-to-head with Amazon in the […]

When Twitter was a scrappy underdog in the Web 2.0 eyeball wars, chatter about the service was like some kind of 1969 San Francisco love-in. But now that major newspapers are writing about it, celebrities are using it and Congressmen are abusing it, the haters are coming out of the woodwork. I understand. Twitter feels […]

Facebook quietly changed its terms of service agreement (TOS) recently. Bloggers freaked, triggering a public uproar that forced Facebook to revert back to the older version and come up with a better TOS agreement. The Facebook TOS always said, essentially, that the good people at Facebook can do anything they want with pictures and other […]

As the shameless co-opting of social media by cable and network TV news accelerates, the flaws and inadequacies of those TV news programs becomes ever more obvious. Almost every day, I take a break or two from my PC, where I’m constantly monitoring social media, and I check out CNN, MSNBC, and Fox news or, […]

Google does it again, with its new Google Latitude offering. Latitude lets you automatically share your location with friends, and let them share theirs with you. By using your phone or Web browser, you can simply look at a Latitude Google Maps mash-up, and see where everybody is. Like many Google offerings, Latitude is cool, […]