I've learned that I need to spell out, even in cases seemingly so blatant, that in fact I am not taking this at face value and am being 'sarcastic.'

I’ve learned that I need to spell out, even in cases seemingly so blatant, that in fact I am not taking this at face value and am being ’sarcastic.

I am about as pro-Google a person as you’re going to find in the media. I’ve had friends at all levels of the company since its founding, and still do now.

There’s no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

I seem to be one of the few people in journalism who never worked or wrote for the ‘Boston Phoenix.’ I certainly read and admired it, and feel the same general malaise at news that it is gone.

Over the eons I’ve been a fan of, and sucker for, each latest automated system to ‘simplify’ and ‘bring order to’ my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers, and Actioneer for the early Palm.

When a company is charging money for a product – as Evernote does for all above its most basic service, and same for Dropbox and SugarSync – you understand its incentive for sticking with that product.

The demise of Google Reader, if logical, is a reminder of how far we’ve come from the cuddly old ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Google days, in which there was a foreseeably-astonishing delight in the way Google’s evolving design tricks anticipated what users would like.

We’re now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work.

Contrary to what you might think, China’s economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries.