Kodak filed for bankruptcy this week. Everyone knew it was coming, but still it’s very sad. Kodak was the Google of their day. Kodak always attracted the best and brightest engineers to their campus, funding research projects far afield from their core business (the first OLED screen is...

I recently became concerned that I might have sleep apnea, a sleep disorder characterized by abnormally low breathing or missed breaths during sleep. Although an individual with sleep apnea is often unaware of having difficulty breathing, even after they awaken, the condition can cause the...

Writing about all of my bad customer service experiences would be a full-time job, so I let most of them roll by with a shrug or a sad shake of the head. Yet every now and then, someone sets the bar so low, it’s remarkable. Take, for example, my experience with American Airlines yesterday....

Decades ago I fell terribly and hopelessly in love with a young woman named Elaine. Any stranger on the street could see that we were doomed. I lived on the West Coast, she lived on the East Coast. She was smart and sophisticated and worldly. I, on the other hand, was a caricature of the...

The moment you think you’ve lost your wallet, you get that panicky feeling. All of your cash, your ID, and your credit cards are suddenly gone. Your range of options is dramatically limited. You might be stranded somewhere, unable to get home or into the club where your friends are. You...

At this time of year it’s easy to get caught up in the hubbub of friends and family, parties and presents, and forget the real reason for Christmas: we are primitive, superstitious Neanderthals. For millennia any tribe with enough brains to recognize patterns in the night sky has held a...

What is the world’s biggest secret? Perhaps you are thinking “the formula for Coca-Cola”, “who shot Kennedy”,” what happened to the Holy Grail”, or “the location of Atlantis”. All good guesses, but these are merely historical...

Every now and then a product comes along that makes me want to sit down with the product manager, buy them a beer and ask “So…What was going through your mind when you made these decisions?” The Galaxy Tab is one such product. First of all, it’s an awkward size; just a...

The 1960′s made a lot of cultural contributions; the Beatles, Hippies, psychedelic colors, and granola come to mind. Granola is a great breakfast food. It’s yummy, high in fiber, full of oatey goodness (which supposedly lowers cholesterol), and versatile (you can have it hot or...

One of the news stories rapidly gaining ground this week is the “Rare Earth Crisis.” The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BBC are all reporting that the Chinese are flexing their economic muscle to force the West to do their bidding (or, at the very least, to overlooking...

For years now, environmental lobbyists have been warning us about environmental disasters like the one we just witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico. At first glance, we might see this as proof of their position. In fact, the opposite is true. Their premise has been that, with sufficient political...