20 Years Ago, Apple and Kodak Launched the Digital Camera Revolution

Posted on 22 June 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

Sasson camera 1 copy 2This is Steve Sasson. In 1975, he was a 23-year-old Kodak junior engineer and he invented the digital camera. After 19 years of development – 20 years ago this week – Apple started selling the Kodak-designed QuickTake 100, the first consumer digital camera, launching the digital imaging revolution.  You can read the story on Mashable.com here. (I took this picture in December 2006; in addition to being a smart man, he’s a nice man.)

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Hands On with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S

Posted on 13 June 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

Tab S 10.5 main front

I attended the grand unveiling of Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S Tablet at The Theater @ Madison Square Garden, and wrote an initial impressions hands-on for Techlicious, which you can read here.

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Has Apple entered comfortable middle age?

Posted on 8 June 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

Roundel_OSX_Yosemite-PRINT

I wrote this column before Apple’s purchase of the cooler Beats and announced plain (and sometimes catch-up) updates of its mobile and desktop operating systems at its Wordlwide Developers Conference – and nothing else new. YAWN! Is Apple merely resting on its well-earned laurels, willing to buy instead of create cool, as it enters corporate middle age? I explore the possibility in this DVICE column.

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T-Mobile’s ‘We’ll Pay Your ETF’ Problem

Posted on 8 June 2014 by Stewart Wolpin

Screenshot 2014-06-03 16.34.41

T-Mobile screams from its TV commercials, billboard and subway ads and its Web site that it will pay your early termination fees (ETFs) when you switch from another carrier. While arguably symantically correct, this claim is extraordinarily misleading. Read why in my latest Huffington Post screed here.

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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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