Category Archives: Internet

Highly Misleading NY Times Tech Post

Photo Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times

I was reading some tech news this morning and came across this article on how iWork is going to compete with Microsoft Office by being free for new buyers of Apple hardware.  I read the article and realize more and more that there is no fact-checking in the tech media.  The article states that these apps are free for new buyers of hardware (which is true), but for old buyers, they state the prices as being $9.99 per app.  When I got the App Store on my MacBook Air, these apps run $19.99 each and not $9.99 — why this discrepancy?  Is it to make the $100 per year price for office look worse?  The author does not add the fact that this $100 price includes 5 licenses of the software and includes alot more than the core iWork apps for this price.

I really am getting more and more distrustful of tech media writing and fact checking and this is a misleading article that hammers home my point.

Google+ not working out?

A recent post on the MSNBC.com technolog blog speculates that Google+ is failing due to the lack of daily posts. I can see this and initially might speculate on the same. However, I think it’s too early to make such a grand statement.  There are some limits to Google+ right now that might be limiting the number of users that will actually push content to the site.  For example, I really do not want to start to use the service with my non Google Apps email account, however Google has yet to open the service up to many users because of this.  Their statement on this topic is here, but it has not been updated in 5 months!!  This doesn’t sound like coming soon to me…

Additionally, here is another issue that I think Google+ needs to think about going forward.  Why does Google+ need to be a walled garden like Facebook and Twitter (and to some extent, WordPress)?    I think if Google would support proper cross-posting to all the aforementioned sites, Google+ could gain tons of usage.  I know I find it annoying to make sure all my social media is updated, but I don’t have the time to make them separate entities and maintain a personality at each one.  I don’t get paid for any of this, nor am I famous.  I would love it if Google+ would have real cross-posting capabilities and if they would get their act together on the Apps accounts, I would certainly adopt it as my social media of choice.