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Twenty years ago America Online (AOL) was pretty much how most of us accessed the internet.  It seemed like everyday we got AOL CDs in the mail, even if you already had AOL.  For $19.99 per month you dialed on to the service and cruised the internet at 56 Kbps (yes, that is a “K”!).  When we received a new email a mail voice announced “you’ve got mail!”  So exciting!!

In 1996, AOL made a deal…

Google announced on Wednesday the launch of Project Fi, a low cost wireless plan where for $20 per month, subscibers will get unlimited talk and texts, including international coverage in more than 120 countries, and another $10 per gigabyte of data used each month.  If you don’t use all of the data on your plan, you will receive a credit on your next bill.  Subscribers will be able to seemlessly…

On Monday, AT&T announced they were acquiring Nextel Mexico for about $1.8 billion.  This comes a week after AT&T completed its acquisition of Iusacell.  The combination of Nextel Mexico and Iusacell would give AT&T 12.5 million subscribers making it the third largest mobile carrier in Mexico behind Telcel (71 million) and Movistar (18.3 million).

Why the sudden fascination with Mexico.  The U.S.…

1. Nothing 2. The Hacking is the New Extortion

Hackers are sort of like the Don Fanucci character from the Godfather Part 2.  Don Fanucci was a thug who made living extorting money from the local merchants in New York’s “Little Italy” section of lower Manhattan.  They are not huge sums of money, so the merchants pay him rather than face his wrath.  Don Fanucci attempts to extort money from a young…

http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/18/how-big-data-can-change-the-music-industry/ Interesting article on how Big Data can help boost music sales. Revenue from music is down by about 1/2 from what it was 10 years ago. The bottom line is that the traditional business model of selling CDs,  MP3s,  etc. no longer works, as hard as musicians and the labels try to make it work. That ship has passed.…

Article: You Can’t Have These Tech Gadgets for Christmas

You Can’t Have These Tech Gadgets for Christmas

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dieter-holger/you-cant-have-these-tech-_b_6296794.html

More Movie Comparisons – 1994 Movies

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since some of our favorite movies were released.  1994 was arguably the best year for movies.

Let’s start with the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture

Forrest Gump– Won the Best Picture Oscar in 1994.  While there were so many other movies that also deserved to win, it’s hard to say that Forrest Gump didn’t deserve it.  I’m a sucker for…

Marco Polo: The Risk Netflix Takes by Solely Relying on Big Data

Anyone who saw the movie or read the book Moneyball could see the rift caused by the sole use of quantitative analysis.  The new school baseball executives led by Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt in the movie) championed new statistics and quantitative analysis to measure player performance.  Think Big Data for baseball.

The scouts that worked for him were using old school…

“Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you.”  Those were the first words ever spoken on a telephone.  The year was 1875, the speaker was its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell and the listener was his assistant, Thomas Watson (not to be confused with the founder of IBM).  Shortly afterward, Bell made it to the patent office ahead of Elisha Grey and thus an industry was born.

In 1877, the Bell…

In 2001, Apple launched the first of its retail stores in the Tyson’s Corner Center mall in Northern Virginia.  It seemed like an odd move.  A technology company offering its products in its own stores? Why not simply sell everything online? Why pay costly overhead to run a brick and mortar?

What Apple did was rewrite the rules of retail.  Guy Kawasaki, one of the first technology evangelists at…

What Does Wi-Fi Sound Like?

According to one of my favorite sites iflscience.com (guess what Ifl stands for) a man can actually hear Wi-Fi. Frank Swain has been steadily losing his hearing for years. Two years ago he was fitted for ear plugs. The ear plugs and some software developed by a friend enables him to actually hear Wi-Fi signals. Embedded in the article is a Soundcloud link that plays what he hears. Kind of sounds…