est things about working as a journalist? The freedom to ask any question (sometimes more than once), and the opportunity to learn new things from every assignment.
Here's a selection of stories from the past few years; it's not updated all that regularly, though I do try to link to most new articles from my blog.
Boston Globe | Fast Company | Salon | Wired Magazine | New York Times | Variety | San Jose Mercury News | Los Angeles Times | San Francisco Chronicle | Newsweek | Boston Magazine | Release 1.0 | Boston Globe Sunday Magazine | The Hollywood Reporter | Wired News | CIO Magazine | The Industry Standard (Defunct)
Also in that issue: How eBay Fights Fraud
Also in that issue: To help ensure an on-time departure...
Boston Globe
My current weekly column for the Globe's business section.
My weekly column on the New England tech and biotech communities, "@large," ran from February 2000 to November 2005. This is an archive of the first two years.
One of the most pressing questions facing Massachusetts is how to cultivate, and keep, a new generation of billion-dollar companies. Much depends on the venture-capital community. But our new governor has a role to play too.
Boston Globe "Ideas" section - January 7, 2007
Animal kingdom inspires new breed of robots
Boston Globe - June 2003
Massachusetts research labs lay a foundation for the next wave of growth
Boston Globe - September 2002
For some, online registries take the mystery - and the
misery - out of holiday gift-giving
Boston Globe - November 2001
The heady days of a tech revolution have gone bust. Now, the stage is set for a reinvention based less on runaway success than on small, prudent steps.
Boston Globe - September 2001
Fast Company
In American Idol fashion, product managers unveil new concepts in front of a panel of colleagues they hardly know, looking to gain traction for their ideas. This is Adobe's Champion Showcase, a quarterly event in which the company plans to rev up innovation.
Fast Company - May 2007
Bringing a new, improved third dimension to a theater near you.
Fast Company - July/August 2006
HD DVD and Blu-ray are set to battle for your bucks. It won't be pretty.
Fast Company - May 2006
Two services that promise to help integrate your cell phone, landline, and email.
Fast Company - April 2006
DreamWorks Animation couldn't find a videoconferencing system that made CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg happy--so it built its own.
Fast Company - January 2006
Rent A Coder matches projects with software developers from around the world.
Fast Company - January 2006
As he builds his own digital version of the vertically integrated movie studio, Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban is questioning everything about the business--and naturally ticking a lot of people off.
Fast Company - December 2005
Imagine what life would be like if your product were never finished, if your work were never done, if your market shifted 30 times a day. The computer-virus hunters at Symantec don't have to imagine.
Fast Company - October 2005
You're out there. On the Web, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of references to you -- in company newsletters, college alumni notes, and friends' blogs. (As a tech writer, I'm especially promiscuous: Googling my name turns up 10,700 results.) So how can you monitor and manage your online reputation?
Fast Company - August 2005
Evan Williams's Pyra Labs helped kick-start the personal publishing revolution with Blogger, the first user-friendly software for running a Web log. In 2003, Pyra was snapped up by Google, and Williams became the search giant's blogger-in-chief. Now Williams has founded Odeo, aiming to do for podcasting -- think of downloadable radio programming for your iPod -- what Pyra did for blogs. His bet: Your neighbor might be the next Howard Stern.
Fast Company - July 2005
They may not be CNBC regulars, but this fab four represent what's needed today: CEOs with vision who also aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
Fast Company - February 2005
Thanks to soaring fuel prices, lots of creative energy is being applied to alternative energy. The time may finally have come for these three champions of on-the-verge technologies.
Fast Company - December 2004
When CEO Ed Breen took over at Tyco, he fired the very board that had hired him. And that was just the start.
Fast Company - September 2004
It's becoming the essential competitive edge: the ability to hopscotch the globe, switching countries, cultures, and languages as easily as the rest of us change clothes. Meet some folks who are really living the borderless life.
Fast Company - August 2004
Fighting phishing, the online scam that could leave you with a big hole in your pocket
Fast Company - August 2004
Jeffrey Immelt and Jack Welch go toe-to-toe
Fast Company - July 2004
Think technology has transformed filmmaking? Hold onto your Raisinets. The summer movie season will bring some eye-popping, digitized, computerized extravaganzas that take the talkies to a whole new level.
Fast Company - May 2004
Cyberonics' medical implant is the size of a chocolate-chip cookie, and it could--could--be worth $2.8 billion someday. But as this dramatic tale of innovation and entrepreneurship shows, saving lives can be one tough business.
Fast Company - April 2004
Meet "snam," the junk email generated by social networking.
Fast Company - April 2004
Internet telephony is cheap: "The economics finally make sense." But as more and more companies are discovering, it also can let you do some nifty things. Voice over Internet protocol technology is keeping workers--in hospitals, Wall Street brokerages, law firms, even National Basketball Association franchises--connected as never before.
Fast Company - March 2004
They won't end up in every garage, but a new generation of low-cost "personal" jets could really take off. Tiny Adam Aircraft is racing to be first on the runway.
Fast Company - November 2003
It's hard to believe in advances that are poised to change the world when everyone's just trying to survive. But these tireless innovators are developing technologies that are making the future worth looking forward to again.
Fast Company - September 2003
The hunt for an eBay scammer. Jay Nelson ripped off buyers on eBay and Yahoo until the Feds put him behind bars. We catch up with him in prison, where he'll be until 2007.
Fast Company - August 2003
Whirlpool cooks up a new shopping experience.
Fast Company - July 2003
How does an established corporate giant (in this case, Delta Air Lines) respond to disastrous economic circumstances and the rise of a new breed of competitors that operate by different rules? By creating a whole new operation (in this case, Song) that runs by those rules, and then trying to fly beyond the competition.
Fast Company - June 2003
Who says banking has to be dull? Not the executives at ING Direct, who are banking on powerful technology and clever marketing to make a radical change in an industry that needs it.
Fast Company - March 2003
Tim and Diane Mueller are king ( and queen ) of the mountain. They run one of the country's most admired independent ski areas: a resort with a devoted following that maintains close ties to the community and -- surprise! -- makes money in a notoriously unforgiving business.
Fast Company - January 2003
Stelios Haji-Ioannou, known throughout Europe by his first name, provides cheap travel for the masses. His formula for business success? It's easy -- as in easyJet, easyCar, even easyCinema. Just slash costs, maximize publicity, and "sweat the assets."
Fast Company - November 2002
If you think that what you don't know can't hurt you, you haven't been reading the papers.
Fast Company - September 2002
TiVo Inc. has what every young company dreams of: smart executives, a killer product, famous ( and fanatical ) customers, a huge potential market. But is it a business? Will it ever be? And if a company as savvy as TiVo can't break through, who can? A case study in the promise -- and perils -- of innovation.
Fast Company - August 2002
How do you refresh a 243-year-old brand? By brewing a modern experience that combines
the power of history with the allure of contemporary design. Guinness Storehouse, in
Dublin, reimagines how a brand can perform for customers, employees, and the
community
Fast Company - May 2002
Pret A Manger is a London-based company with ambitions to revolutionize that uniquely American institution: the fast-food restaurant. Its sandwiches taste great -- and its growth strategy offers plenty of food for thought.
Fast Company - April 2002
Worrying about the right threats makes you smart. Worrying about the wrong threats leaves you vulnerable. Security expert Robert Oatman wants to keep you scared straight.
Fast Company - January 2002
The best way to prepare for the future is to see it come to life before your eyes.
That's why executives from the world's leading financial-services companies come
play at the Merlin Center.
Fast Company - October 2001
What recession? Last week, at the conference of the American Society for
Industrial Security, companies showed off mission-critical technologies and
wrestled with the challenges of hypergrowth. A dispatch from the front lines of the
anxiety economy.
FastCompany.com - October 2001
A posse of visionaries think that they've cornered the culprit who is responsible for the Internet's
stalled growth and narrowed sense of opportunity: It's the "reload" button on your browser.
Fast Company - October 2001
It's hard to remember a less-inviting time to have a great idea for a new company or to
champion new ideas to change a big company. But leaders who think big aren't willing to
downsize their ambitions -- they just have to work a little harder ( and smarter ).
Fast Company - July 2001
The leaders of the city that Bill Boeing and Bill Gates built are asking what it will
take to thrive in the 21st century.
Fast Company - May 2001
When leaders of the Detroit Medical Center launched a major financial turnaround
two years ago, they saw that they had a big money problem. Here's how the DMC
is using digital remedies to treat its fiscal condition
Fast Company - May 2001
Web sites need customers -- they just can't spend to get them. The result:
marketing schemes in which companies don't pay until customers do. Welcome to
the Kickback Economy.
Fast Company - January 2001
Mary McCormick is finding ingenious ways to apply Internet
connections to urban problems -- from combating domestic violence to
filling potholes. But the most important job of a social entrepreneur,
she believes, is connecting people.
Fast Company - December 2000
Bruce Mau's influential studio works with a roster of
world-renowned clients. But its most enduring contribution
may be to the theory and practice of design itself -- from
what kinds of projects are worth taking on to how to
design for creative growth.
Fast Company - October 2000
It's the new mantra of strategy and marketing: If you want
to keep your customers' attention, you've got to deliver a
compelling experience. Bob Rogers and his colleagues are
designing those experiences.
Fast Company - October 2000
The leaders of IBM's 100,000-person IT staff knew that their
team had many strengths. But the team also had one big
weakness: It was too slow. Thus was born a group of change
agents dedicated to speeding up big blue.
Fast Company - May 2000
"Your biggest competitor is your own view of the future,"
argues one of two new books, both devoted to helping
business leaders build companies and design lives that reflect
the confusing realities of the new economy.
Fast Company - April 2000
What happens when the defining industry of the old economy
meets the defining medium of the new economy? Meet the
in-the-trenches change agents who are working to reinvent
Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
Fast Company - January 2000
"Our customers are moving at Internet speed, so they need us
to respond at Internet speed."
Fast Company - December 1999
Forget faster or cheaper. The Web challenges you to rethink the most
basic relationship in business: the one between you and your customers.
Fast Company - September 1999
Do you love your best customers so much that you'll fire your
lousy customers? Dorothy Lane Markets does. Here's a
cutting-edge lesson in service and loyalty from a gutsy grocer
in Dayton, Ohio.
Fast Company - June 1999
Finding a perfect first job sometimes means starting a first
company.
Fast Company - June 1999
Companies that want to make it big on the Net have to learn
how to make deals fast. Here are hands-on lessons and
real-world stories from some of the Web's best deal makers.
Fast Company - May 1999
FC visits the Miami Ad School
Fast Company - Feb/March 1999
Don't think of your next conference as a
company-sponsored vacation. Think of it as an assault on the
future.
Fast Company - January 1999
Executive Risk is the anti-insurance company
Fast Company - January 1999
PBCC used to be a big, boring division of Pitney Bowes. Now it's
a new-product powerhouse. What's the secret?
Fast Company - November 1998
The real goal is to keep great people
working with you, even after they've stopped working for you.
Fast Company - August 1998
SEI Investments in Oaks, Pennsylvania, is the 'total teamwork' agenda-setter
Fast Company - Apr/May 1998
Weekly sessions with a psychiatrist help fast-growing NECX cope with change.
Fast Company - Dec/Jan 1998
Salon
There's no bling, no limo gridlock and only one famous face -- but one night celebrates the techies who make our movies better.
Salon - February 21, 2006
Fixated on an elusive hydrogen future, Detroit carmakers are letting Japan waltz in and grab a market that could explode.
Salon - December 1, 2004
Why I fell in love with shooting stars, vans a-rockin' and watching a big screen
from the back seat.
Salon - November 1, 2000
Surprise. Stodgy Harvard Business School covers Net companies better than
those screaming Net headline services..
Salon - September 5, 2000
Is it possible to survive
one week marooned with
a $99 Internet appliance?
Salon - July 12, 2000
The market is skittish and IPOs are being postponed: Time to rejigger your B-plan! Our
foolproof guide shows you the way.
Salon - April 14, 2000
Uncertainty surrounds a bug that could
cause computers to confuse the year 2000
with 1900. This FAQ will do nothing to
change that.
Salon - December 27, 1999
"Bootcamp for Startups"
enlists plenty of
entrepreneurs looking to be
whipped into shape.
Salon - October 8, 1999
Weaving the Web holds the promise of a fascinating tell-all book
about how Tim Berners-Lee created the Web -- but it just
doesn't tell all that much.
Salon - September 15, 1999
Wired Magazine
He's a punk, a provocateur, the bad boy of Web design. They call him the Jackson Pollock of the Internet age. He calls them a few choice four-letter words. But everyone from BMW to the Tate Modern wants a piece of him.
Wired - March 2006
Accentus' software - which costs $12,500 per seat plus $350 a month for each user - relies on an orchestra pit full of instruments to convey complex information.
Wired - January 2005
Never send a human to do a droid's job.
Wired - October 2003
For 50 years, Disney's Imagineers have put the tech magic in the Magic Kingdom. Now economic pressures are bringing the grand ambitions back down to earth, where it's a smaller world after all.
Wired - December 2002
Explaining away the layoffs, tax dodges, and fraud
Wired - October 2002
One of the pioneers of personal computing has a plan to reinvent aviation. Now if he can just
get the future of flying off the ground ...
Wired - July 2002
Must Read: Ambient Devices' new glow lights for data
Wired - February 2002
Must Read: Actuality Systems' high-res, walk-around 3-D display
Wired - October 2001
Dean Kamen, multimillionaire inventrepreneur, is going global with a
robochair that climbs stairs, a miracle motor that fights disease, and his
wildest notion of all - that scientists will be the 21st century's superstars.
Wired - September 2000
From Anheuser-Busch's exclusive tropical paradise to VW's 3-D marketing
brandland, the personalized theme park is here.
Wired - July 2000
Martin Nisenholtz made headlines by taking
The New York Times digital without triggering
an old media/new media war. But now it's time
for the IPO.
Wired - February 2000
The new breed of Silicon Valley philanthropists would make Mother Teresa
crunch the numbers. Call it virtue capital.
Wired - September 1999
Can an old-style bureaucratic giant give birth to a hot Net startup?
Wired - September 1999
The academic rivalry between two prestigious MIT
lab directors will soon be fought with bulldozers.
Wired - September 1999
David Wetherell explains why the Web is a
no-risk investment.
Wired - June 1999
Find customers, take orders, lug deliveries, eke profits -- selling groceries
online is a crazy idea that'll make somebody millions.
Wired - May 1999
Chris Marquis was a 17-year-old Vermont hustler running a small-time scam
online. His virtual business was going great - until somebody killed him.
Wired - December 1998
Father of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, in-demand author, pundit, and
conference host, Bob Metcalfe is overcommitted and then some.
Wired Magazine - November 1998
Law professor Tamar Frankel has got what it takes to untangle the Net's domain
name mess.
Wired Magazine - October 1998
It smiles.
It sneezes.
It sings.
It never shuts up.
It's the toy that will make you forgive Barney.
Wired Magazine - September 1998
The exclusive underground tour of Disney World.
Wired Magazine - March 1998
How Forrester Research and Jupiter Communications vie for ink.
Wired Magazine - September 1997
NY Times
As video sites look for ways to attract higher-quality content, they are dangling cash, usually offering to cut creators in on the advertising revenue their work generates.
NY Times "Circuits" section - February 15, 2007
Widgets offer peripheral information and fun at the side of sites.
NY Times "Circuits" section - January 18, 2007
Every weekend through the summer, big-budget movies compete for dominance at the box office. On movie sets, a quieter sort of contest is taking place as a handful of companies are angling to have their digital movie cameras used to capture the action, supplanting the traditional 35-millimeter film camera.
NY Times business section - July 24, 2006
While sites like YouTube and Veoh have lately become popular for allowing users to share their self-produced videos, Jumpcut is part of a new class of sites that also offer simple tools for stringing together video clips and then adding soundtracks, titles, transitions and unusual visual effects.
NY Times "Circuits" section - June 15, 2006
Several new Web sites allow camcorder Coppolas and cell phone Scorceses to share their work
NY Times "Circuits" section - October 27, 2005
Creatures from lobsters to snakes inspire mechanical mimics, suited to tasks
NY Times "Circuits" section - September 16, 2004
It's a small but flourishing segment of the ski industry: membership-based ski areas.
NY Times "Escapes" section - February 20, 2004
A high-tech update makes windmills more efficient, changing the energy equation.
NY Times "Circuits" section - August 28, 2003
They're known as spy photographers, the auto industry's version of paparazzi, and they get paid anywhere from $100 to several thousand dollars for a picture, depending on the amount of interest in a particular car and the quality of the image.
NY Times "Escapes" section - April 4, 2003
IRobot is perhaps the only company in the world that develops and sells robots to the military, researchers, large corporations, and consumers.
NY Times "Circuits" section - December 26th, 2002
A wave of new technologies are making their way into the cockpits of private airplanes
NY Times "Circuits" section - July 25th, 2002
High Schools Vie to Build a
Robotic Champ
NY Times "Circuits" section - April 18th, 2002
Making changes to three-dimensional objects and beaming them to colleagues around the world is becoming as easy as altering a sentence in a shared word-processing document.
NY Times "E-Business" section - November 5, 2001
Variety
San Jose Mercury News
In the Web 2.0 era, we're all publishers and broadcasters - from the 14-year old with a MySpace page, to the 34-year-old who's started a blog on state and local politics, to the octogenarian jazz buff who records a weekly podcast from his retirement home. As a result, many of us have become obsessed with audience metrics of our own, seeking a tally of how many people we're reaching as something of a touchstone - an indicator of our influence, popularity, or coolness.
Perspective section - May 27, 2007
Bloggers need to consider adapting some of the ethics and disclosure practices that guide traditional print and broadcast outlets.
Perspective section - February 4, 2007
On the eve of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which begins Monday in Las Vegas, I've been thinking about the first television remote control I ever used.
Perspective section - January 7, 2007
Whenever a new technology makes personal expression easier -- from desktop publishing in the 1980s to video sharing in 2006 -- denizens of Silicon Valley leap to the same conclusion: Finally, amateurs will triumph over those self-satisfied professionals, kicking aside the titans of the publishing industry/music industry/movie industry/TV industry.
Perspective section - December 3, 2006
Will the next few years be dominated by a law-and-order strategy that seeks to protect today's revenue sources from digital threats, or instead by a creative exploration of new business opportunities?
Perspective section - July 3, 2005
While movie moguls in southern California are popping Pepcids and worrying that their connection to their audience is dissolving, companies in northern California are devising new technologies and services - from TiVo to Netflix to Open Media Network to Apple's iTunes Music Store - that deliver content in a new way.
Perspective section - December 18, 2005
Los Angeles Times
Hollywood will have to adjust to the fact that it's no longer the only gatekeeper for entertainment.
Sunday Current section - November 5, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Apple is aligning itself with Big Media, rather than the ingenious individual.
Open Forum page - November 16, 2005
Newsweek
Metrics: Technologists used to look for innovation. Now they want return on
investment
Newsweek "Enterprise" section - June 10, 2002
Case Study: How New Hampshire teens learned to reinvent their game
company
Newsweek "Enterprise" section - May 13, 2002
A new technology reinvents the bar code to track goods and change the
basics of retail
Newsweek "Enterprise" section - March 18, 2002
Boston Magazine
Highland Capital's Dan Nova transformed a cluster of start-ups -- from Lycos to MapQuest to Ask Jeeves -- into a galaxy of stars. In the process, he has carved out a reputation as Boston's can't-lose Internet venture capitalist.
Boston - April 2000
From the media and entertainment world to Wall Street, David
Wetherell is building the companies that will rule the Internet. A rare, in-depth look at the
billionaire who is changing the way the world does business.
Boston - September 1999
Strategic Interactive Group's Kathy Biro is the most powerful woman in Boston's technology community.
Boston - June 1999
Four your Turks out of MIT hope to ride their Internet launch, Frictionless Commerce, to a hot
and heavy IPO finish. All they need now is Version 2.0, a little buzz, and a big angel.
Boston - April 1999
Boston's cyberworld is alive and kicking again -- less than a decade after the fall of giants like
Digital, Data General, and Wang.
Boston - March 1999
Release 1.0
The hermetically sealed world of television is about to be cracked open and rewired, transformed into an open publishing platform as a variety of new devices and services emerge to make independent video content easier - and perhaps even profitable - to produce and distribute to smaller subsets of the population.
Release 1.0 newsletter - May 2005
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
Inventor and author Ray Kurzweil is 56 and, as he talks about in his new book, planning to live a long time. Forever, actually.
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine - October 31, 2004
'New(er) England' Special Section - November 7, 1999
So much venture capital, so little time.
'The Buzztonians' Special Section - June 20, 1999
'New Frontiers' Special Section - May 23, 1999
The Hollywood Reporter
From financing to marketing and distribution, savvy filmmakers are using the internet to take control of how their films are made and seen.
Hollywood Reporter - Leadership special issue - November 13, 2006
Researchers at USC are plotting to revive Cinerama using high-definition digital projectors. Walt Disney Imagineers are melding computer animation with live performances to create interactive movies. Seattle entrepreneurs Mark and Katie Stern are bringing to the general public the sort of screening-room experience that studio chieftains enjoy, with pristine digital projection, Tempur-Pedic seats and refreshments delivered by hand at specific times during the show.
Hollywood Reporter - `Future of Entertainment' special issue - September 26, 2006
"Interoperability,"unlike "revenue," "points" or "nomination," is not a particularly sexy word, but achieving it could be crucial to convincing consumers to adopt the next generation of digital media technology.
Hollywood Reporter - `Future of Entertainment' special issue - September 26, 2006
Two entrepreneurs see the convergence of visual effects and animation.
Hollywood Reporter - `Future of Entertainment' special issue - September 26, 2006
The field of computer animation is having a "Sorcerer's Apprentice" moment. Like bucket-toting brooms from the 1940 Walt Disney Co. classic "Fantasia," animation firms are replicating at a frenzied rate nationwide, each angling to challenge the dominance of the Big Three producers of child-friendly digital features: Disney's Pixar division, DreamWorks Animation and Fox's Blue Sky Studios.
Hollywood Reporter - July 28, 2006
Digital cinematography, during its formative years, had much in common with kryptonite: It was mysterious and dangerous, as far as most mainstream directors and cinematographers were concerned.
Hollywood Reporter - June 13, 2006
If the annual ShoWest gathering in Las Vegas has acquired a reputation as a showcase for summer releases and a schmoozefest for the exhibitors who depend on them, this year, it might resemble a political rally, complete with a party platform: Save the Windows.
Hollywood Reporter - March 13, 2006
Henry Winterstern and Ruth Vitale met in a fairly standard Los Angeles way: This past August, Vitale, a co-founder of Paramount Classics, stopped by a table at Ago restaurant in West Hollywood, where friends of hers happened to be having dinner with Winterstern, a relatively new arrival to Hollywood who was in the process of merging Capital Entertainment and First Look Media.
Hollywood Reporter - January 18, 2006
It doesn't take Michael Phillips long to tally the movies he has seen during the decade he has attended the Sundance Film Festival: one, sort of.
Hollywood Reporter - January 18, 2006
'New' is a word that takes some getting used to in Hollywood, but it's the risk-takers who are ensuring the future of the business.
Hollywood Reporter - Leadership special issue - November 14, 2005
Innovative marketing and new technology help the satellite service provider stay competitive.
Hollywood Reporter - September 15, 2005
Where will new digital tools take the art of cinema?
Hollywood Reporter - 75th Anniversary issue - September 13, 2005
Wired News
Wired News - March 2006
Wired News - October 1997
CIO Magazine
CIO - December 1, 2006
CIO - October 15, 2006
CIO - September 1, 2006
CIO - August 1, 2006
CIO - July 15, 2006
CIO - June 15, 2006
The Industry Standard
Reebok was one of the first brands to talk about the Net. But Roger Wood is one of the few at the company talking about e-commerce.
Industry Standard - October 11, 1999
At the risk of alienating distributors and dealers, Herman Miller is starting an ambitious campaign to sell furniture on the Web.
Industry Standard - February 15, 1999
The founders of online bargain-vacation finder Travelzoo are pioneering a new technique in Web site promotion: giving away three free shares of company stock to anyone who stops by and signs up.
Industry Standard - July 15, 1998
How many members do sites like Tripod and GeoCities have? Depends on how you slice the numbers.
Industry Standard - April 30, 1998