The headline pretty much says it all. What is the point of the iPad? I think this may be the perfect example of the consumer product that exists first and foremost to fleece its buyers out of their money. Goal #2: To convince them that it's great in the absence of these customers having better reasons for living.

The wonderful iPad. Frankly, iDontGiveADamn.

Too cynical? Perhaps. Granted, the last thing I should probably do is dare to question the uber-smart-and-savvy Steve Jobs. After all, every high-tech, game-changing, mega-hyped, life-altering, blockbuster piece of techo-wizardry that Apple has released in the past decade has been a slam-bang success, right?

The very first "i" product, the iMac, basically saved Apple from oblivion shortly before the turn of the millennium. After that came the iPod and the iPhone, both of which redefined the notion of success when it comes to cool-ass gadgets. The iPod announced Apple as a company that owned the gadget zeitgeist, and the iPhone was so hyped it confirmed Apple's lightning-in-a-bottle reputation well before it even came out. For me to question the potential success of the iPad is probably betting against the house, where the house has long ago rigged the game. (Read more...)

Last year, I posted my position that was not exactly anti-Twitter, but certainly not at all for it, either. I wondered whether it was a fad, and questioned its utility as a worthwhile endeavor on the Internets, where we use the Google and stuff.

Twitter. A-holes. Silly bird and cartoon T make me feel compelled to tweet. Too bad Conan's Twitter Tracker is no more; now he can't follow me.

Even then, I knew that post was the blogging equivalent of ice-skating uphill and revealing myself as an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy.

I think that column reveals more about me personally than about the Way We Live Now. I also think that it's time to backtrack and take advantage of The Way We Live Now, rather than fighting it merely because it allows me to be a quieter and less plugged-in procrastinator. I should opt to be a noisier and more technologically dependent procrastinator.

Twitter, of course, represents a format of brevity and here's-what-I'm-thinking-right-now. I've always assumed that people don't particularly care what I'm thinking right now and would rather wait until I have a more comprehensive and organized collections of written-down thoughts that can be consumed over the course of 10 minutes rather than five seconds. You know, something that would necessitate — oh, I don't know — at the very least 200 words, and more likely my more typical 2,000. (Read more...)

The film industry has been trying to push 3D on its customers for a while now, but it has just in the past year or so shifted that campaign into high gear. 2009 had a number of notable titles to be released in movie theaters in 3D (most of them CGI-animated productions that easily lend themselves to the 3D process because they are completely digitally created).

Avatar and 3D: The future of cinema? Not so fast.

Now comes the 3D "game changer" behemoth: Avatar. This is going to be the movie that changes everything, right?

Well, not so fast.

Avatar is the first modern 3D feature film that I've seen. By "modern," I mean the sort of 3D by way of modern techniques like circular polarization, as opposed to those 1950s-style red/blue glasses.

Avatar is a wonderfully entertaining and unsubtle message movie and a visual achievement (and no, I will not be reviewing it), but I am not convinced that it needs to be seen in 3D. Granted, the 3D was pretty damn cool. There were scenes where you could literally focus on foreground objects on the screen as if they were really there, and then switch your focus to objects behind them, and the foreground object would go double, just like in real life. There are some breathtaking shots in 3D, where the experience becomes immersive. And impressive. (Read more...)

Actually, this isn't a review, but an announcement that there will not be a review of Windows 7, because I find Windows 7 to be inexplicable. (Read more...)

I don't understand why people are so afraid of spam in this day and age. It seems to me that people get overly concerned about giving out their e-mail address to companies or web sites or what-have-you, because "they're going to send me a bunch of stuff I don't want."

Well, I suppose there's a kernel of truth there. After all, why would someone want your e-mail address unless they wanted to e-mail you? And I admit that I have a tendency to omit my e-mail address from forms where it's not needed. But then there are those who feel a need to create a separate e-mail account specifically because they don't want to see spam in their "real" inbox. At which point, it seems to me that the cure is taking more effort than dealing with the mild symptoms of the disease. (Read more...)

The Internet is particularly susceptible to media fad mentality. Back in the early days of the Web's mainstreaming (about 1995), people in the media loved throwing around goofy fad terms like "Cyberspace," "Virtual Realm," and the "Information Superhighway."

Twitter provides you with plenty of Tweets, which are sort of like dumber versions of blog entries.

The latter was always my favorite, because it managed to take a one-syllable concept — the "Web" — and turn it into needless four-syllable jargonese. These names existed only because journalists wanted to sound cooler when they reported them.

Such is the case with the Internet's latest mega-craze, Twitter. I gotta be honest with you. I fail to see the value of Twitter in about 95 percent of its application. Who needs a status update on you eating lunch, or going to a movie, or DRIVING A CAR? (Dude: Drive your car; don't "tweet" your status for those of us "following" you.) There's even a microblogging cat on Twitter. (Read more...)

After two years, the war is finally over. I'm talking, of course, about the format war between rival high-def next-generation DVD formats HD DVD (manufactured by Toshiba) and Blu-ray (Sony).

The writing has been on the wall for about a month now, as media companies — some that had remained neutral until recently — have been slowly aligning themselves into Blu-ray's camp and tipping the scales of the stalemate. But today Toshiba made it official with their announcement that they will discontinue all manufacturing operations for HD DVD players. (Read more...)

The Internet is the future of video, as has been proven by the WGA strike (which looks to be officially ending this week). But watching movies on the Internet is still not a particularly good option, in my opinion. It can provide a substitute in a pinch, but with current technology and bandwidth, it's not a way I would ever choose to watch a movie, given the alternative. (Read more...)

With some technology, for some reason or another, I end up being a slow adopter. This includes two of the most mainstream and useful media technologies of the past decade: RSS and DVR. (Read more...)

Spam is one of the scourges of the Internet. (How's that for the most obvious statement of the year?) There was a time not long ago, before I eliminated one of my constantly-spammed e-mail addresses, that I was getting upwards of 250 spam messages a day. I'm sure that number is low by some people's standards, but it was absurd by mine. (Read more...)