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Blog Posts: Riffs and Rants

The iPad: Imperfect, But Enough for Me!

I’ve been lusting after a great tablet device for a long time. The iPad has its faults, but it’s the first that really appeals to me. Bottom line: I can’t wait to get one.

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10 Years Later: Thoughts on PhotoTablet/Fotiva/Adobe

The First Two Years: Conception

It was 10 years ago last week that the idea for PhotoTablet came to me—an Internet tablet that takes care of your pictures. The day that name came to mind, I bought the domain and started writing a business plan.

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Is Facebook Ready for Business?

I’ve been working lately on creating a Facebook presence for my company, Webvanta. It’s been a somewhat painful experience. You can see the primitive results so far.

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The pains of creating an online store

I’ve recently been helping my sister put together an online store, using Volusion. It has been eye-opening how complex they make it and how clunky this system is. This is a product that is ripe for being replaced with something a lot cleaner.

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A Brief History of the Web, and a Glimpse of Its Future

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Ignite Sebastopol, the first-ever local Ignite event. Started a couple years ago by O’Reilly Media, Ignite talks use an unusual, fast-paced format: 20 slides, 5 minutes, and the slides advance automatically every 15 seconds so there’s no such thing as running over. It’s a challenging format but it sure keeps things moving. The event was packed, with more than 150 people at the Hopmonk Tavern.

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Adventures in Social Media

I was not an early adopter of social media, being of twice the optimum age. But in the past few months, I’ve become much more involved with it, and I now believe it is going to be central to the growth of my business.

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Why are Warranty Disclaimers in ALL CAPS?

This is a trivia item for those with some curiosity about common legal agreements.

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HP's Service Disaster

I’ve had HP printers for a long, long time, since the earliest LaserJets. The latest is an all-in-one printer/fax/copier that we bought a few years ago. It is the last HP machine I will buy until I hear that they have completely revamped their service department.

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Coping with the Information Flood

Many years ago, when I was writing Microprocessor Report, I read dozens of magazines a week and sifted through hundreds of printed, mailed press releases each month. It was chronically overwhelming. It’s amazing how the web has eliminated that whole world of keeping up with paper.

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The craigslist Anomaly

craigslist is a fascinating anomaly in the world of large-scale web sites. Take a look at these numbers, as published by Craigslist with October 2006 data from Yahoo! and Alexa:

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