Author: Navneet Alang

Now that the Internet has ever-so-slightly calmed down after another Apple-induced frenzy, it’s time to step back and think about the significance of Apple’s announcements on Wednesday afternoon. What did Apple bestow upon us from up high? Well, as you probably know by now, we got new iPods and a revamped Apple TV. The iPod Shuffle got its groove – um, I mean buttons – back; the iPod Nano is now basically all screen; the iPod Touch is, once again, just like an iPhone without a phone; and Apple also announced iOS 4.1, and a product you may have heard one or four-hundred rumors about, the Apple TV. How did…

For years now, what web sites do with our data has become a serious problem in the online world. From confusing settings on Facebook – like their recent decision to again set strange defaults in Facebook Places – to online banking, how information about our lives is protected, distributed and use online has become a real issue. The big sticking point? Every individual site has its own rules about how it uses data. That means that not only do users have to carefully parse the user agreements for each site, they have to keep track of any ongoing changes. Think about that: that’s like you having to read…

Regular readers of Techi know that we love Digg and that, most of the time anyway, Digg loves us. So when Digg rolled out version 4 of its social aggregation site – or v4 as many have called it – many, including us, were excited, particularly because there have been rumors of Digg’s waning influence. The refresh promised to not only reinvigorate the platform, but also make it competitive with the massive influence of Facebook and increasing presence of Twitter. Alas, not all is well with the new Digg. In fact, many people are downright angry at some of the changes and flaws with the new site. Complaints…

Net Neutrality – the idea that all internet traffic should be treated equally regardless of source or purpose – is, to put it mildly, a hotly debated topic. There is a huge variety of arguments on both sides of the fence, many of them both compelling and complex – and in light of the recent agreement between Google and Verizon, many have been revisiting the debate. At stake is an essential question: whether or not the growth and development of the internet should be something regulated by government or guided by free enterprise. But also at stake in the debate is whether or not the internet will be a new…

Though the Apple rumor mill is always a fickle beast that’s more often wrong than not, when rumors from a variety of sources start to come together, you can be assured there’s something behind it. Now that we’ve been hearing about a revamped AppleTV – dubbed iTV – for some months now, it seems safe to say that something is coming down the pipes. Most people seem to agree that iTV will be smaller than the AppleTV, come in at a low price like $99, and run some form of iOS. Most recently, it was Kevin Rose of Digg fame who provided the newest burst of speculation, and what his sources tell him seems to line up with…

Sitting in front of a modern, fancy laptop or blazing fast quad-core desktop, it can be easy to forget just how much technology has changed in the past few years. Your average computer is now full of incredible technology, much of which represents the refinement of ideas that began a long time ago. But like we often forget the bit players, artists and crew who make movies so amazing, we also sometimes forget the various parts and components that make our bits and bytes work better. And isn’t it about time we remembered some things that led to the incredible speed, power and ease our technology delivers…

First, just to be clear: the web is not dead. Despite Chris Anderson’s attempt to create another catchphrase like the “long tail”, his attempt to say that the traditional browser-based web is finished – and was about to be replaced by closed ecosystems like Apple’s App Store – was a stretch. There are variety of reasons that Anderson was wrong. As Boing Boing pointed out, web traffic is still growing, even if as a percentage of internet use, it’s less than in the past. This is obvious; all that other stuff like mobile and video didn’t exist before, so of course its use would proportionally go up. What’s…

That, I freely admit, is a controversial title. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less true. While there is always chatter online about what the web will or won’t do to ‘old media’, a couple of recent developments have popped up this week: first, that News Corp (the same people who run Fox and The Wall Street Journal) may launch a tablet-only ‘publication’; and secondly, a report (pdf link) by Next Issue Media that suggests that, if magazines expand beyond the iPad, they’ll rake in about $3 billion by 2014. What’s  more, the same study said that consumers actually don’t mind paying near print…

When rumors of a possible Playstation-branded “PSP Phone” recently broke, the tech world was, more than anything, a bit baffled. Here we had a rumor of a potential collaboration between Google and Sony, both of whom already have their own mobile ecosystems (Android on the one hand, and the Playstation Store on the other). What’s more, no-one, it seems, is quite sure what to think of the rumored device, which is suggested to be a mix of a slider phone and the PSP Go. “Hardcore” gaming communities like Neogaf seemed a bit on the fence. Some saw the business possibilities for both Google and Sony, while…

A few years ago, iTunes seemed like the future. In fact, in a sense, it was the future we’d all been promised. Here, finally, was a digital business that worked! The music labels, film studios and TV stations were on board. Selection was good. Sure it was closed, but everyone and their mother had an iPod or, later, an iPhone or iPad. This was the dream of ‘digital content’ realized. Trouble is, iTunes and other services like it are starting to feel a bit quaint. Don’t get me wrong: for what they are, they still work beautifully (well, the service I mean, not the software), and the selection on iTunes is…