Sometimes it seems that Google wants to break out the old Microsoft playbook in getting your business. Certainly insinuating Google everywhere, from search, to maps, to hardware, may bring to mind Microsoft’s attempts to try to force us to accept Windows everywhere. You had it on your PC, your smartphone, and wherever else they can […]

Certainly no consumer electronics product is necessarily perfect, but you have to hope you can get these gadgets to perform their basic tasks without having force you to jump through hoops, or navigate difficult-to-configure settings. With a TV set, things aren’t so bad. Turn it on, and press a button on the remote to change […]

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, […]

Certainly the skies must seem cloudy to the executives at Microsoft these days. PC sales are flat, so Windows 7 sales are still growing, but not as fast as before. Microsoft’s efforts to turn Bing into a true Google competitor appear to have faltered; most of the share gains come at the expense of Yahoo!, […]