Author: Navneet Alang

Every so often, almost like clockwork, someone will come out and say that the internet is ruining everything. This week, it’s the New York Times’  Bill Keller, who fears that “we may be unlearning, tweet by tweet… complexity, acuity, patience, wisdom, intimacy” The usual response to this from web-heads and technologists is a slightly more nuanced version of “OMG, Bill Keller is soooo stupid!”. And given the number of times it happens, that’s understandable. It gets frustrating to see people repeating the same arguments over and over again. Yet, at the same time, people are clearly worried….

There once was a time on this grand internet of ours that finding information was hard. You knew there was lots of it out there, but actually getting to it took real work. Now, in 2011, we have the opposite problem. We have too much information. Social networks, aggregators like Reddit and our RSS feeds all bring us far more than we can handle. So what’s a web nerd to do? Here are four tools I recommend to help you better organize and manage how you relate to information online: Feedly RSS readers are a dime a dozen these days, and Google Reader still sits atop the heap. But the problem with Google’s RSS client…

So, let’s get this out of the way now: there is no ‘tablet market’. There is no huge demographic out there craving and desiring a tablet computer. There are millions of iPad customers. And there a few hundred thousand people – maybe even a few million worldwide – who desperately want a tablet running Android, WebOS or QNX. Yet because that’s true right now, it doesn’t mean things won’t change. The tablet is just too inevitably necessary for the (lack of a) market to stay that way. The need for a web-connected frame for content of all sorts is just too obvious. And while tablets will not and are not meant…

If you were in the management team at Sony – especially Sony Computer Entertainment – life is probably a little stressful right now. Knowing that you may have lost the personal data of 77 million of your customers, maybe even including their credit card info is cataclysmic. All companies have their ups and downs but this is a huge deal, and the impact of Sony’s Good thing Sony weren’t trying to start a business in the cloud or anything. Oh, right. Oops. But presented with a massive PR bungle, companies have no choice but to try and repair the damage and recover. So how does Sony, a company that already…

Flipboard is, on the surface, a pretty, user-friendly iPad app that creates a personalized magazine for you. But it’s also a sign of what could be a coming catastrophe for web media. Flipboard works by pulling in RSS feeds and links from Facebook and Twitter to produce a content delivery vehicle tailored just for you. But the core of that idea is that the app creates a reading experience suited to the tablet and, soon, the smartphone. This is a big deal because prior to this, content has always been delivered in a form that was only partly about the content itself. It was largely about delivering ads….

Google is cracking down on Android’s “openness”. This much is clear. And really, let’s be honest: Android never was fully open. If you wanted a full-service smartphone that used Google’s applications – Gmail, Maps etc. – you had to sign a contract with Google to use the OS in particular ways. But now that Google are not letting Android 3.0 out into the world, it’s clear something is changing. Google are exerting more control over Android, and in comments on every story about it across the web, people seem a bit upset about it. But a more closed, more tightly closed Android will be better for everyone….

Piracy has become part and parcel of discussions about media and the internet. And everywhere in online discussion, from the biggest tech blogs to the smallest forum, people seem to have the same basic idea about piracy. Piracy is an evil that stems from entitled people wanting to get things for free. Furthermore, if we could find a way to do away with piracy – with the illicit copying of media using digital tools – the world will be a better, more prosperous place place. But a new sweeping report, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, lays bare a number of false assumptions about piracy and the laws we…

Capitalism, though a big, incredibly complex concept, can be boiled down to a few basic ideas: there should be private property; you should have a free market; and people should exchange currency for goods and services at the price the market will bear. In many ways, the web seems like it is the best place for capitalism and a free market to flourish. The internet is full of success stories of massive growth and humble beginnings, and the lack of many barriers that plague the physical world has seen online business grow at an exponential rate. Yet, at the same time, the web seems to have a knack to kill…

The conversation about the shift from “old” to “new” media usually goes something like this: 1) the media business has fundamentally changed; 2) media companies need to think in new ways due to the problems of fragmentation, the attention economy and a whole range of platforms; 3) those that adapt to the new will win; those that won’t, will fold – and they deserve it too. So the advice from new media gurus is always the same: existing media companies – and indeed, even new media companies like Netflix – need to find a way to replicate their success, albeit with a new business model. With a few mergers,…

It has become common wisdom in the tech world that old media represents an obsolete mode of thinking that should be discarded as quickly as possible. The attitude to physical, broadcast or film media could generally be summed up by saying “Newspapers? Print books? Those things are ancient and of no use to anyone ever, amirite?” But those with a little more patience and scope know that isn’t entirely true. Media is an enterprise that forms a core part of modern societies, and digital media is but a few years old. So maybe there are still some lessons that old media has to teach those young upstart digiphiles….