One of the happiest pieces of news to cross my email lately is the announcement that Microsoft is doing away with its oh-so-tacky clip art and replacing it with something much better and more useful. It’s a Bing search for images you can use for free, built into Office. Nobody will confuse Microsoft with a ...

After Thanksgiving’s feast, you may want to unstuff something. I recommend your inbox. And today is the very best day to do it! Why? Because if a vendor is going to send you consumer email, it’s probably occupying your inbox right now. Over the course of a year (or years), it’s easy to lose track ...

Much is being made of an IDC prediction of falling worldwide tablet sales and the first year-over-year decrease in Apple Inc. iPad purchases. Business Insider deems this “So much for the tablet market – the iPad has hit the wall.” But isn’t this to be expected? And even not in such a bad way? IDC ...

There are all sorts of excuses to be made, but as someone who joined personal computing in 1980, I need to tell my fellow users that we’ve failed you. The goal of personal  computing was to make you more productive, entertain you and make the world a better place. In retrospect, we should have said ...

Dear Evernote: I love you, but you are getting on my nerves. I realize what we used to call “groupware” has never developed as most of us hoped, but if I wanted SharePoint, I wouldn’t have subscribed to Evernote in the first place. In short: Why can’t software companies just leave well enough? Why do ...

After years of circling the drain, BlackBerry Ltd. did a big layoff and went silent. At least that is what I remember, for I had long ago decided Research In Motion, as it was then called, was a lost cause. Fast forward to today and BlackBerry is back in the news, but not with more ...

There is such a thing as industry analysts kissing up to customers, and then there is this press release received this morning from Strand Consult: “It’s an irony that the world’s operators, which provide communication services, should frequently do such a poor job at communicating. There are few services in the world more demanded than ...

Interesting research, compiled by Digital Trends, says digital glasses — think those awful Google Glasses and their ilk — will remain niche products until 2018. And maybe longer. Forever would be fine by me. If smart glasses never reach mainstream, I’ll be thrilled. Yet, there are niches where they make sense or offer real user and ...

Making good on his promise that Microsoft will stop foisting Windows on folks who would rather use something else, CEO Satya Nadella this week announced that Office 365 can now work with apps written for Android and iOS. This is a payoff on something CEO Nadella stated a few weeks ago: Office 365 is now ...

It has always been easy to point and laugh at Android. Just give an Android smart phone user a handset from a different manufacturer and watch the fun. Unlike Apple, which totally controls the iPhone user experience, Google allowed Android vendors to each go their own way. Android L, introduced last month and rolling out ...