Commerical GPS Turns 25: How the Unwanted Military Tech Found Its True Calling

Posted on 30 May 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

MAG NAV100 It Floats copy

Here’s the fascinating – and heretofore untold – story behind the first consumer GPS handheld device, the GPS NAV 1000 from Magellan, which went on sale on May 25, 1989, posted here at Mashable.com.

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The Videophone Turns 50: The Historic Failure That Everybody Wanted

Posted on 21 April 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

bell_picturephoneConsumer videophone service turns 50 – except how we videophone today (Skype, Facetime, et al) differs radically from how engineers and futurists originally envisioned and implemented it. Read about AT&T’s historic videophone failure(s) that set the stage for today’s video chatting ubiquity at Mashable here.

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Time to Change the ‘Save’ Paradigm

Posted on 18 April 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

14 3-28 save paradigm transporter

In this Huffington Post column, I explore how the cloud is changing how we save and backup our digital files – but how Microsoft Office and other document creation programs don’t recognize how we might want to save our stuff to multiple locations simultaneously.

Oh, and I also review the excellent create-your-own-cloud Transporter system.

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How an LED Light Bulb is Like a Smartphone

Posted on 18 April 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

14 3-27 LED smartphone

IMHO, I believe the LED light bulb is a tabula rasa, a blank slate that will prove to be the next major developmental platform now that the smartphone seems to be reaching its tech innovation limits. Read why in my DVICE column here

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How the Digital Divide Fuels the Income Divide

Posted on 19 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

There has been a great deal of political sturm und drang in political circles about the yawning income inequality gap, which is now the highest its been in the U.S. since 1928. 

But three disparate events got me thinking about one possible cause of that income divide — the digital divide.

Read the rest of this column here at Huffington Post.

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Will Cell Phones Prove as Cancerous as Cigarettes?

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

My latest bloviation for the Huffington Post explores the potential for cell phones to one day prove to be as cancer-causing as cigarettes have proven to be.

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The First Cellphone Went on Sale 30 Years Ago for $4,000

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

motorola dynatac 8000xPossibly the most read story I’ve ever written – a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the first handheld cell phone (the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X) going on sale to the public – from Mashable.com.

 

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Opinion: Why We Really Don’t Need More Cell Spectrum

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

14 2-28 cooper dynatac copyMy buddy Marty Cooper, the father of the cell phone, explains why simply adding more spectrum isn’t the answer to crowded cellular super highways in this DVICE.com column.

 

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Mobile’s End of the Beginning

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

It’s official: mobile devices have taken over the consumer electronics business, ending the first phase of mobile tech’s ubiquitousness. Read how infrastructure technologies form the future of cool mobile advances here.

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The New Smartphone Normal

Posted on 17 March 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

An examination of potential smartphone/mobile futures, which you can read here.

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