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Outside the Lines

Macintosh at 25: Still the innovation leaderDecember 31 2008

On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh came into the world, starting the second major revolution in the personal computer industry. Steve Jobs and team took some lessons from Xerox PARC and created the first user-friendly, mass market computer.

By today's standards, it wasn't that user-friendly (some will remember disk-swapping with the original Mac, which had 128KB of RAM and a 400KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive), but compared with Microsoft's DOS operating system, it was a major technical innovation.

The Macintosh at 25: 1984 - 2009.

The 128K Mac version of the graphical user interface, with icons, fonts, folders, audio and a mouse, started a new era of computing that hasn't yet run its full course. MacPaint, MacWrite, and eventually LaserWriter, PageMaker, and Photoshop led to a revolution in desktop publishing, and AppleTalk made networking relatively simple.

The Macintosh introduced typography to personal computers.

(Credit: Susan Kare)

After nearly 25 years, the Macintosh and its offspring, such as the iPod and iPhone, are still leading in terms of setting the pace for innovation. Mac sales climbed over the past several yea

Print news is fading, but the content lives onDecember 25 2008

It's been about 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on the back of the Internet. For more than a billion people on the planet, the Web today is an alternate, digital universe that is gradually overtaking the analog, physical world as a source of information and connections.

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted a survey that rendered two obvious conclusions: the Internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of national and international news, and television, led by CNN, continues to serve as the main source.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

According to the Pew survey, 40 percent of respondents (versus 24 percent in 2007) said the Internet is their primary source for national and international news. That compares with 35 percent (versus 34 percent 2007) who rely on newspapers and 70 percent (versus 74 percent in 2007) who use television as their main source. Given the historic presidential campaign and economic woes this year, the large percentage increase ye

More speculation on Yahoo's CEO choicesDecember 13 2008

Speculation about the choice for the new Yahoo CEO search continues in the wake of the layoffs Yahoo announced last week. And Kara Swisher continues her search for Jerry Yang's replacement, gathering picks from the raft of ex-Yahoo employees in her blog post today.

Some respondents said that a media mogul, such as Disney's Bob Iger or News Corp.'s Peter Chernin, is the right medicine for Yahoo. Former COO Dan Rosensweig comes up in the context of someone who could hit the ground running and has a product focus, as well as former Yahoo execs Jeff Weiner and Jeff Mallet. Others who surfaced were Yahoo board members, Vodafone's Arun Sarin, Microsoft and Google execs, and even Steve Jobs (Apple would buy Yahoo).

The Yahoo board clearly has many choices. The best pick will be someone who, like Jerry Yang, can bleed purple in terms of motivating the 10,000-plus employees, but also can unleash the potential of the products and services, and right-size the business. With leading news, finance, and communications services, and even profits, Yahoo is bent but not broken.

Google's 2008 Zeitgeist lists of most popular searchesDecember 10 2008

With 2008 coming to an end, the data miners at Google, which performs more than 60 percent of searches worldwide, have compiled their Zeitgeist lists of the most popular search terms.

These latest lists include these categories: U.S., top of mind, politics, trendsetters, showbiz, sports, and around the world.

In the category of fastest-rising global searches (comparing 2007 with 2008 searches), Sarah Palin comes in at No. 1 and President elect Barack Obama at No. 6, trailing "beijing 2008," "facebook login," Tuenti" (the equivalent of Facebook in Spain), and "Heath Ledger."

In other words, Sarah Palin's more than 15 minutes of fame catapulted her into the search stratosphere.

Fastest rising global searches
1. sarah palin

2. beijing 2008

3. facebook login

4. tuenti

5. heath ledger

6. obama

7. nasza klasa

8. wer kennt wen

9. euro 2008

10. jonas brothers

Google also looked at trends, such as green issues, social networks, and most popular cocktails. The venerable martini tops the cocktail list, while Facebook is the top social-network search term.

(Credit: Google)

From a

The information flow from MumbaiNovember 27 2008

As the tragic events unfolded in Mumbai, India, the Internet backchannel came to the foreground with messages, photos, and videos from the masses using Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and so-called citizen reporting sites such as Global Voices, as well as CNN and NDTV.

The terrorist attacks have left more than 100 dead and several hundred wounded in Mumbai, the country's financial center.

In major disasters, Twitter has become a conduit for real-time information and conversation.

As you would expect, the flow of information has been chaotic and potentially unreliable, which presents some problems, especially for those with family or friends at risk. A few posts on Techmeme question the quality of Twitter messages, which are not easily verified or tracked.