I’m going to do the unthinkable. I am going to actually defend the practice that many consider “anti-competitive”, the practice of so called “vendor lock-in” often employed by technology companies such as Apple and Microsoft. In a nutshell the practice of lock-in involves building pieces of technology that work only in certain predefined circumstances and interoperates with only a selection of other technology. A typical example are proprietary file formats which are designed to work only with the software sold by the same company that created the file format. The Read More

The US Government on Friday nonchalantly shut down the entire multi-million dollar business, arrested its founder, and expropriated millions of dollars worth of property. The business in question wasn’t even located in the US, but in New Zealand. MegaUpload was, of course, accused of piracy, but whatever the charge this is a clear cut case of administering punishment before trial, or being assumed “guilty until proven innocent”. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that this government would be doing such a thing at a time when indefinite detainment of even Read More

Consumer Electronics Show is one of the biggest technology shows on the planet. It is like christmas after christmas for techies as they get to see and try the latest and greatest gadgets, some of which could be months before their actual release to market. On top of that the show happens in Las Vegas providing attendees with an opportunity for a great post-show nightlife. In a nutshell CES 2012 was mainly about ultrabooks, yet more tablets, yet more smartphones, and the emergence of incredibly thin 55-inch (or bigger) OLED Read More