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Stories by Mike Elgan

  • How to build a time machine

    Search the Internet for a time machine and you may end up with an empty wallet and painful injuries, if the movie Napoleon Dynamite is accurate.

  • Why Nokia is toast

    It's hard to remember now, but there was a time when Finland was at the center of the cell phone universe. As cell phones overtook pagers, then smartphones overtook cell phones, Nokia was the hottest company in the industry.

  • Why there's no such thing as an Internet kill switch

    My iPhone rang yesterday evening. It was my 22-year-old son calling from his iPhone to ask me how to do something on iTunes. It was a pretty unremarkable call, and the kind of conversation we used to have when he lived at home, except that he was on the other side of the world in Mumbai, India.

  • How Apple and Google will kill the password

    Imagine sitting down at a public PC, surfing the Web, visiting Facebook, checking your online bank account and buying something on Amazon.com -- all without entering passwords or credit card information.

  • Big Business is watching you

    In the 1949 novel 1984, George Orwell imagined a brilliant but depressing future in which the government, a.k.a. "Big Brother," broadcast propaganda while simultaneously watching every citizen via ubiquitous "telescreens" in every home and in public places. Video feeds are monitored by the "Thought Police," who are constantly on the lookout for facial expressions and body language that reveal "thought crimes." They wanted to know what you were thinking.

  • Why Facebook Places is going nowhere

    Only 30 million people have used Facebook Places, one report finds. If that sounds impressive, consider that it represents just six per cent of Facebook users. And that's not the number who use it. That's the number who have tried it.

  • Why HP's Slate isn't anything like the iPad

    HP released its Slate 500 tablet this week. Immediately, everyone started comparing it with Apple's iPad. But the two devices have nothing significant in common. They are in entirely different device categories and can even be thought of as opposites.

  • 10 things I don't 'get' about consumer technology

    We live in an age of invention and scientific discovery. But there are things about some inventions that science simply cannot explain. Here are 10 things that I simply do not understand about consumer technology:

  • The wristwatch will rise again

    Conventional wisdom says people don't wear wristwatches anymore -- especially young people. The story goes that because we now have cell phones, we no longer need to lash anything to our wrists.

  • Is augmented reality just a cheap gimmick?

    Augmented reality, long a staple of science fiction, is here, there and everywhere. A search on Google News brings up nearly 700 recent stories about the technology and the companies that claim to offer it.

  • Why the $35 tablet will never exist

    "India unveils $35 computer for students," says CNN.com. "India unveils prototype for $35 touch-screen computer," reports BBC News. "India to provide $35 computing device to students," says BusinessWeek.

  • Why you'll use Foursquare

    Suddenly, there are two kinds of people. The first kind loves location-based social networking services like Foursquare. They speak in an alien language about "Mayors" and "Badges" and broadcast their locations to the world.