No self-driving cars, no virtual-reality PCs. For all the promise of futuristic technology, it ends up entering our lives as a series of annoyances: spam, impossible-to-open plastic packaging, those pagers you hold while waiting for your table at Applebee's. Laptop users invade our cafes. Cell phone rings interrupt…
NICK DOUGLAS — In the pure marketplace, the best idea should win, and a superior business should always trump the old behemoth, right? Yeah right. Marketing makes Go Daddy the most-used domain registrar; inertia keeps Starbucks on top even though the quality's gone to hell. Here are eight tech businesses we all use…
NICK DOUGLAS — God, these people are uptight! The recent tiffs over some startupper dissing the women of Microsoft and another startupper's wandering wifi sniffer reminded me one of the reasons this culture bores me to tears: You can't say anything interesting without offending a crowd of prigs that make anyone of…
NICK DOUGLAS — Dear friend, I regret to inform you I cannot use your product just because I know you. I know this hurts, especially since you see me using a competing product, but you have to understand me. Hear me out, and you won't — hey, hey, calm down, it's gonna be okay — hear me out and you won't feel so bad,…
