Back a long, long time ago, I had my first encounters with instant messaging, in the form of AOL’s Instant Messenger. An outgrowth of the way things worked with those original bulletin board systems, it sure was convenient, being able to have an online text-based conversation with someone without having to actually talk to them, […]

When Apple first brought Push Notification to the iOS, there were howls of protest across the user base. Sure it was nice to be notified of, say, a waiting text message, or a chat invitation from AIM, but why must it be so intrusive? You couldn’t do a thing until you clicked on the message […]

If you can believe the critics, Apple penchant for control may be so paranoiac that they deliberately withhold multitasking from their mobile devices. After all, how can you be allowed to run more than one app at a time, unless it’s from Apple of course? Wouldn’t that interfere with — well, something or other? If […]

Just the other day, author and columnist Kirk McElhearn said he was going to close his Gmail account. Yes, it’s free, so what’s the beef? Well, Kirk is extremely concerned about the way Google tracks everything you’re doing and delivers targeted ads, hoping you’ll click on them and thus boost their revenue. I suppose that’s […]