Whether it's resumes or reports, budgets or broadsides, I'm pretty regularly sent working documents from a wide range of people, and over the years I've notice...

You've heard the call to action at the end of nearly every podcast you've ever listened to: "Listen to us on your favorite podcast app", or in the ph...

Anytime a big new market pops up, people rush in to stake their claims and make their fortunes. Our culture loves creation myths, especially in technology. Fab...

On this day in 2007, Prince won Super Bowl XLI with a soaring halftime performance that climaxed with the skies opening up to honor his guitar solo. It is not...

A significant percentage of conservative culture in America defines “freedom” as death. This is causing a lot more problems right now than even its usual horri...

(Warning: this will be upsetting; you will not want to read this if you are already stressed.) [This piece was written in late February 2020, before there wa...

We don’t even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It’s a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web li...

This week marks the 20th anniversary of this blog. I thought the best way to observe the milestone, and to try to pass along some of the benefits I’ve gained...

Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were...

Tech is more important than ever, deeply affecting culture, politics and society. Given all the time we spend with our gadgets and apps, it’s essential to unde...

I’ve been fortunate enough to get to speak at a lot of events over the years, in front of an amazing variety of audiences around the world. But I can honestly...

In one generation, the Internet went from opening up new free markets to creating a series of Fake Markets that exploit society, without most media or politici...

With the recent availability of nearly all of Prince’s catalog on the most popular streaming services, it’s a great time to (re?)discover the breadth of Prince...

Back in November, I got to sit down with the amazing Krista Tippett for a lengthy interview in front of an incredibly warm crowd in Easton, MD. Now, that int...

There are going to be endless think-pieces and armchair analyses about why America elected Donald Trump as its next President. But you already know why. Don’...

In the past, popular movements have forced major industries to confront their need for ethical reform. But today‘s media, policymakers and activists don’t yet...

OMG I can’t believe it! I got to be on my very favorite podcast, BuzzFeed’s “ Another Round “. I can verify that Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu are every bit a...

I’m skeptical about “teach the kids to code!” as a panacea for all of society’s ills. Yet today, I’m at the White House to participate in a summit on Computer...

The label’s become too big to be useful, and tech could suffer for it. Quick: What do an auto leasing provider, a condiment company and the producers of a...

Today, P.M. Dawn exists as a faded memory for most music fans, if they’re remembered at all. But Attrell Cordes made songs like nothing that came before. Beaut...

When Prince’s first greatest hits collection was released, Prince made private comments as a guide for the liner notes. Later briefly posted on his website the...

After talking to a friend about how Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” is so romantic if you just focus on the strings, bass and vocals, I was inspired to mix d...

What it’s like to have the social network of a celebrity, without actually being famous I’ve got more Twitter followers than you. I’ve got more Twitter follo...

We all know tech is excluding most people from participating. But one group is actually over represented. And we’ve been conspicuously silent. The major tech...

This summer marked 15 years since I first started blogging here, and I’m happier than ever that I’ve chosen to live so much of my life in this place, with all...

0:00 — 0:10 In the summer of 1983, Wendy Melvoin was just 19 years old. She’d flown halfway across the country from Los Angeles for her first professional gi...

After at least 15 years of debating whether I should spend money on this, I recently took the plunge and acquired one of my most-desired Prince collectibles....

One of my recurrent ruminations of the last decade or so is a bit of reflection on my relationship with religion. To be clear: I don’t have one. I know there a...

We’ll spend three years of our lives with our thumbs on our phones. What will we have to show for it? I keep bumping up against this statistic about how much...

I spend so much time writing, and thinking, about technology and tech companies. And so much of it’s critical. I point the finger at how the apps and sites we...

I’ve had the good fortune to get to speak in public hundreds of times, about any manner of subjects. But I’ve never, never had the moments following one of my...

In my years working in technology, I have learned a few things. These lessons have become oft-repeated refrains when speaking to people, so I thought I’d colle...

Paul Graham on Unions : I wouldn’t quite call the high-paying union job a myth, but I think people who dwell on it are reading too much into it. The era...

When I wrote about the web we lost a few months ago, I thought the idea that we’d strayed from some of the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the so...

Having had the good fortune to work with a broad range of entrepreneurs and get a front-row seat to the foundations of their success, I thought it’d be good to...

Update: After this post was published, I had a chance to talk about Twitter verification at a live show of the Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, with Hari...

The era of User Generated Discontent began about a decade ago, when a critical mass of people started using social apps on the web often enough that they felt...

Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-sta...

Update: A few months after this piece was published, I was invited by Harvard’s Berkman Center to speak about this topic in more detail. Though the final tal...

Much of the conversation about the shortage of technology talent in the United States focuses on how we can encourage more young people to go to college to bec...

My brilliant friend Caterina Fake wrote about the Fear of Missing Out last year, and the FOMO meme took instant hold amongst those of us who love the digital...

Update: I just got off the phone with Popchips founder Keith Belling, who was sincere and contrite as he offered a thoughtful, apologetic response that indic...

Update: The students did it! The re-vote from the board yielded a unanimous vote in favor of forming the Coexist club. I’m sincerely thankful to the students...

I think we’ve had more debates in the past few weeks for the Republican candidates so far than are typically held in the entirety of an election season, but th...

Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users’ ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence tha...

The World Maker Faire opens in Queens this weekend, in the second annual New York City event for the formidable faire. That was perfect timing for having a c...

We’re twenty years in to this world wide web thing. Today, I myself celebrate twelve years of writing this blog. And yet those of us who love this medium, who’...

“ If you can make it here… “, Jamie Beck, 2011 It’s been 84 years since talkies began their march towards dominance over silent film. But while 1.3 billion...

By request , a bit of explanation of how and why I favorite things on the internet. (Or favor them. Or like them. Whatever.) First, where do I favorite? On...

Please meet Malcolm Browne Dash. He’s my son, born February 9th weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces. The days (and yes, the nights ) over this last week...

One interesting pattern I’ve noticed popping up around my favorite new apps these days is that they follow what I’d call a “cloudtop” design. I thought I’d sha...

There’s a lengthy, excellent profile of Mark Zuckerberg , and by proxy Facebook, in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, written by Jose Antonio Vargas. In it...

Michael Arrington argues, over at TechCrunch, that the startup community should ignore the current administration’s entreaties for feedback on tech policy, a...

As I write this, the Twittersphere is going through its annual love/hate paroxysms about TED . Every year, the conference seems even more an event perfect...

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I’ll have gained another follower or two on Twitter . Within an hour, I’ll have added more followers than 99%...

Last week, I found this picture of a group dinner at Guero’s restaurant in Austin, TX, taken during South by Southwest in 2002. At the time, most of us...

I love seeing people start new companies, especially in the tech world. But I’ve probably gotten a little bit jaded about new startups, especially when the sto...

Google Wave is an impressive set of technologies, the kind of stunningly slick application that literally makes developers stand up and cheer . I’ve played wi...

Apple is justifiably revered in the worlds of technology and culture for creating one of the most powerful brands in the world based on the combination of some...

Pushbutton is a name for what I believe will be an upgrade for the web, where any site or application can deliver realtime messages to a web-scale audience,...

I’m not sure Google’s new Chrome OS announcement is that big a deal, or that the eventual product that gets released will actually have that much impact, but...

FAIL is over. Fail is dead. Because it marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity, it is an unacceptable response to c...

The whole world A small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames , an exciting new feature that will let you...

Here’s the idea: We can fix the false impression that the newest gadgets are the only interesting ones by simply promoting the fact that we’re getting a lot ou...

I was away traveling for the past few weeks, and upon my return, I asked my Twitter followers a simple question : "I’ve been completely offline for a...

This one’s been kicking around in my head for a while, and maybe you can all help me understand it. With any contemporary social networking site, I can control...

A few weeks ago, as a surprise gift for our anniversary, my wife got us a night’s stay at the Revolving Hotel Room , part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition...

Three years and one day ago, I got married. And then shortly after that, I wrote a post about getting married , which has become one of the most popular thing...

One of the most frequent questions I get when I talk to people who are unfamiliar with social media on the web is, “Who writes all these blogs or Wikipedia? Wh...

Spin Magazine’s piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D’Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a f...

Sometimes if you do something very difficult, and you do it really well, the end result is that your achievement becomes completely invisible. I mentione...

Five years ago, I said I work for Six Apart . At the time, that sort of thing was a big deal, not because of me, but because so few of us who loved blogging c...

Continuing from yesterday’s look at the soundtrack to the creation of Lotus Notes, we can look more at the physical space where it was created. For contrast,...

Early in my efforts to document the creative environment where great technology projects happen, I reached out to Ray Ozzie . Ray is of course a softw...

In the world of business, and especially the world of technology, we have some archetypical stories of entrepreneurs in the garage, working to create new produ...

Almost five years ago, I got involved in a project that would eventually become Atom , a pair of matching standards functioning as a syndication format and a...

Now that his single Sensual Seduction (a.k.a. Sexual Eruption) is in the Top 10, it’s official: Snoop Dogg can see the future. First, let’s pause to watch the...

Theory of mind is that thing that a two-year-old lacks, which makes her think that covering her eyes means you can’t see her. It’s the thing a chimpanzee has,...

This week, I’ll be highlighting the sites that I think stood out this year. July marked the 8th anniversary of my blog, and over these past eight and a half ye...

Although I’ve been accused sometimes of reflexive contrariness , the truth is I’m just pretty consistent in my assessments of technology, with little regard f...

I added this thing to my site (the HTML version, which most of you never see) a while back, and it’s gotten some interesting responses. I’ll reproduce it here...

I’ve seen a number of people make reference to Facebook’s application platform without knowing a lot of background about some historical examples that might be...

I get a little self-conscious about the fact that I’m so earnest on my blog sometimes, since I’m kind of a smart-ass in person. But I figure I’ll never regret...

It’s the first year that the anniversary didn’t hang over everything I do. I’m still aware of it, I’ll always be aware of it, but time and distance and some...

The Premise: Anyone who creates technologies that aspire to have significant cultural or social impacts on the developed world has to focus on both our lives...

Daniel Lyons, author of the heretofore-anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog, which comments extensively on companies in the technology industry, was also the author...

An interesting infographic trend: Square blocks of color are now being used to represent percentage-based statistics instead of the traditional pie chart. Some...

In technology, one of the best ideas to emerge from the world of social software is the ability to tag other people’s works and creations for our own reference...

Okay, this is the one that’s going to get me in the most trouble: A list of the famous tourist attractions that you can safely skip when you come to New York C...

I get asked by a lot of people for tips on what to do when visiting New York City, and though I’m hardly an expert on NYC tourism, I thought I’d take the time...

After yesterday’s look at the basics of visting New York City , it’s time to move on to some more ambitious, and more contentious, topics. I’m going to start...

Indian mangoes have arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and for me, my family, and my friends, this is a big freaking deal . I’ve got a lot to say a...

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you’ll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats . This relatively recen...

Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the...

A few months ago, I spent a lot of time trying to show the tech community I belong to that diversity is essential to our survival . Not just to the Web 2.0 wo...

Do you want to learn about the future of web applications? If so, when choosing an event, you might want to make sure it’s one that cares about including speak...

The sign of success in social software is when your community does something you didn’t expect. It’s easy to be cynical about new sites, especially when...

Background: Yahoo’s launched an interesting and innovative new service, Pipes, which lets users with a relatively low degree of technological expertise c...

Most everybody who knows me well knows that I’ve been a fan of Prince for pretty much my entire life. So when casual fans or non-fans hear that Prince is playi...

To those of us who grew up after his artistic heyday, James Brown is some combination of legend, influence, icon, and inevitably, caricature. So on the day we...

Remember a few years ago I mentioned that I was moving to San Francisco ? Well, it’s time for an update: I’m moving back to New York City! There’s a cou...

Summary: In 2002, Google launched one of their few pay services, Google Answers . The service attracted only 800 responders in the past 4 years, and was sh...

When we were unpacking the delightful Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago, I was marvelling at how well-thought-out the process was. Beautiful, pleasant, and of cou...

Four years ago, I didn’t know anything about diamonds. Then I posted one ill-tempered rant about how annoying and even offensive I found the advertising for th...

There weren’t a whole lot of really new things announced at the Web 2.0 conference, mostly large companies saying what you’d expect. But one of the launches...

Microsoft has just launched the Zune , which will be one of the most popular digital music players ever made, and could have been considered a wild s...

One of the great, definitive abbreviations for the social web is TL;DR. It stands for too long; didn’t read , and epitomizes the short-attention-span crowd, t...

A month ago, I began a series of posts outlining some common themes: Any system faces danger when it becomes a monoculture Diversity offers many broad-ra...

In 2001, I checked in with everyone on the morning of the attacks , and then again that night before I finally went to bed . In 2002, I reflected on what...

The Sunday New York Times ran a fantastic article by Alex Mindlin, Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars that details a battle that has brewed, off and...

There are lots of different corners of the web, most of which have the good graces to be supportive and interesting and to act like, well, a community . Peopl...

The first version of Google Apps for Your Domain has been released, offering hosted applications that provide free, ad-supported services including email, c...

This is the third post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is from t...

This is the second post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the...

This is the first post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the N...

I’m flattered, somewhat amazed, and more than a little amused to point out that I’m part of Time Shares , a series of online exhibitions presented by R...

Wikipedia ‘s an amazing achievement, the kind of thing a lot of us use as a case study of what can go right on the web. But it’s an effort that involves a lar...

A little over a year ago, I wore a funny t-shirt while posing for a photo that was published in an article in the New York Times. The shirt ‘s a reference...

Four years is a long time in pop music, but that’s how long it’s been since Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” heralded his launch as a solo singer and...

Zinedine Zidane’s savage headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final has touched on many things : Race, family, country, terrorism, sportsmanship. But...

I’d started reading The Long Tail (You’ve read the blog , now buy the book !) by surprising myself with how excited I was to read the book; After a...

I’ve been told that sometimes I seem frustrated or cynical lately about new web things or Web 2.0 hype, and that’s probably because I have been. I grew up wi...

Short and sweet, the Ribbon and new UI in Microsoft Office 2007 is** the ballsiest new feature in the history of computer software**. I’ve been using O...

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to be a good advocate or evangelist for an idea, movement, or cause. The short version is, you gotta have a Malcolm...

Mr. Henninger, I had the good fortune to review your column , in which you express, at length and in some detail, your extreme distaste for people publish...

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about reinventing desktop office applications on the web. The first (and sometimes second) versions of all the stalwa...

I was startled by this phenomenally wrong-headed editorial in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim Redmond exposes his insecurities by arguing that Craig Newm...

Lots of people in both the music/media and technology businesses are obsessed with beating Apple’s work on the iPod and iTunes. With the CES show being this we...

I’ve written about a lot of things on my blog that I felt were important to me over the years, so it’s something of an uncanny feeling to know that I’m writing...

Like many great social software applications, Flickr began its life as something else. Flickr was built on a platform for a game called Game Neverending, which...

Or, “Yahoo bought everyone on my buddy list, and all I got was this t-shirt”. Following up on the discussion about Web 2.0 from last week, the only thing a...

I can’t see the date anywhere today without just stopping, freezing in my tracks. It surprises me it’s still that close to the surface, even after four years....

Curious about what technologies and techniques are going to be popular in the coming months and into the next year? Well, our crack team of editors here at das...

I guess I should have caught this back on the 20th of last month, but I’ve been blogging here for six years . And living in San Francisco for a year now. I do...

Just to be a little bit contrary, I’m gonna share some thoughts on products and services and companies I actually like but that I have some skeptical (cynica...

So, I’m in the New York Times today, as part of the story called Loosing Google’s Lock on the Past . I’m not a huge fan of how the story turned out, mostly be...

I talk to a lot of consultants, freelancers, and small businesses who do web work, and I used to be a freelancer myself, so sometimes I get asked for advice on...

On Tuesday, Jason Kottke announced that he was devoting himself full-time to working on maintaining his weblog, and asking for his readers to support him fin...

Today, as an exercise, we will contrast Peter Merholz’s ruminations on Konfabulator with the lyrics to Ghostface Killah’s feelings about the Sun , as expres...

As I hope anybody who knows me can attest, I’m sick to death of the pointlessly partisan bickering preceding tomorrow’s U.S. Presidential election. I’m annoyed...

Dear New York, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today. I feel guilty that I couldn’t be present to observe. I had to look up the weather there to find out it wa...

I’ve been putting off writing about it because it seems like too much to cover, but then that’s probably the whole point. We make obstacles of things by buildi...

I’m moving to San Francisco. That probably bears some explanation. As I’m sure all of you know, I work for Six Apart, which is based in the Bay Area, and the...

Most of the people I know are geeks, and some large number of geeks are obsessive to one degree or another. (This can be verified by anyone who’s ever mumbled...

[ Ed. Note: Today I’m lucky enough to have Danyel Smith as my guest blogger. Danyel’s a former editor at large for Time Inc. and the former editor-in-chief of...

The current bane of my existence? Spoiler queens. "Don’t tell meeeeee!" they shriek. You know you’ve got one, too, someone who insists that the wor...

It probably comes as little surprise to most of my readers that I’m known for being something of a Scrooge. A healthy skepticism over the sincerity of holiday...

For those of you who live in the United States or are familiar with its culture, imagine a place that starts with a political and social system that’s identica...

I keep returning to the concept that software provides an environment for creativity, and that these tools create a context for the content we create within th...

I’ve never been mugged. I grew up in a town where the impression of New York City was basically either "That place you go to get mugged." or "Th...

Now that Netscape’s more or less officially dead, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile for Google to bankroll the Mozilla Foundation , either by donati...

I have, I must concede, a bit of a sympathy for barley. I’ve probably always known it, but it wasn’t something I was conscious of until last year some time w...

A few weeks ago, I had started an entry with the phrase, "Though I work in the weblog industry…" and I had done so mainly as a tongue-in-cheek joke...

One of the recurrent ideas that surfaces in science fiction and in the predictions of futurists is an always-on record of a person’s life. Typically, it’s pres...

So, yeah, everybody’s gonna be buzzing about Google buying Pyra , but my take is that it’s not really that great a fit. Of course, Google bought Deja, which...

So I got a copy of another extremist " manifesto " today, this one by a bunch of anti-American idiotarians who just don’t seem to understand the ba...

So, we all know that diamonds are intrinsically worthless stones whose popularity and value are a recent creation, the result of a concerted marketing efffort...

Every time there’s a resurgence in general-audience (non-techie) interest in Google, as after Newsweek’s recent Google fawning , the issue of privacy in a pre...

Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical limita...

Yesterday was the 33rd NYC Marathon . Every year since I moved to New York, I’ve tried to get out there to support the runners, but watching the race this yea...

I wasn’t going to write about it, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it, so maybe writing it out will get it out of my head… I’m surprised just how affect...

The drums, of course, are beating. The Anniversary is coming up, and everyone is insisting not just that we remember, not just that we mourn, but that we do it...

Discussions about flexible straws, huh? Trivial? Absolutely. But what if there were, say, some larger point? What if I were pleased that my audience could acce...

It’s not that we must have bendy straws, it’s that we can have them. There are simpler ways. There is the "good enough" of a utiltitarian assis...

This is the thing: bendy straws are like little plastic tubes of unfulfilled promise. The articulation, the flexibility, that’s the appeal, right? But is it su...

Interesting. About a year ago, I wrote Pardon Me For Being Forward , which got a pretty decent amount of traffic. I’ve still never gotten it forwarded to me b...

The current world wide web consists almost entirely of pages that are either stories or tools. A few ambitious sites combine these two types of web pages in va...

Success! If you’ll kindly look back to 11 September , you’ll see that we had sent a message to Shaun Reilly, proprietor of ReillyBurger.com to congratulat...

Prepare to be impressed. There exists among us a man like no other. Sure, we are all exceptional in some way. But truly few are as blessed with a gift as th...

Little bit of not-quite-wisdom which I have realized is very, very true: We hate most in others that which he have failed to see in ourselves . Or, as I like...