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...

About once a year, I do a little digital reset to help make my online life a little more pleasant. I’m not advocating that anybody do the same as me, but I h...

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...

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...

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’...

Doing my fair share for my son means I have to start carrying my weight in other areas at home. Growing up as an Indian-American son, in a family-oriented cu...

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...

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...

[This piece was originally written for CNN on the occasion of Twitter’s IPO.] The Internet is buzzing with news of Twitter’s initial public offering on Thu...

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...

[For context: This piece was written two years before the Apple Watch was released, when rumors began to ramp up.] A brief timeline of Apple iWatch’s entranc...

There’s been a delightful debate the last few days about how to accommodate the increasing number of people who want the experience of watching movies in publi...

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...

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...

Last week, we announced the new beta release of ThinkUp (if you’re a geek or developer, try it out!) and one of the reasons I was most excited to talk about...

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...

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...

If there were one lesson I’d want to impress upon people who are interested in succeeding in the technology industry, it would be, as I’ve said before, know y...

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...

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’...

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...

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...

While Linus Torvalds is best known as the creator of Linux, it’s one of his more geeky creations, and the social implications of its design, that may well end...

By unusual coincidence, this week I had a number of different folks ask me to sign NDAs about the new projects they’re working on. It’s great that we’re in suc...

I’m not a Democrat; I don’t much care about the scorekeeping of who has more seats in any given chamber of Congress. But I do think there are things that need...

Last week, I wrote a bit about what it’s like to be on Twitter’s suggested user list . The response to that post has been really gratifying, and I wanted to s...

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%...

Update: We’ve got some results already! Joseph Scott at Automattic mentions in the comments that he’s added RSD support for the Twitter API to WordPress.co...

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...

When I saw Malcolm Gladwell doggedly dissecting Chris Anderson’s upcoming “ Free: The Future of a Radical Price ” (see Chris’ response here ) my first rea...

This was probably the one clip of Michael Jackson I wish everybody had seen....

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...

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...

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...

Sarah Palin has been unsurprising in her criticisms of Barack Obama’s credentials and policies, fulfilling the traditional role of the vice presidential candid...

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility....

Having been blogging for a few years, I’ve developed a few annual traditions. This one’s a favorite: Warning you off of lame April Fool’s jokes on the web. Eve...

Beginning with our exploration of Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”, we wandered into the history of vocoders, talkboxes, and the most nefarious of voice manipu...

One of the things that makes Snoop’s “Sensual Seduction” video so compelling is his outstanding use of vocal effects. Let’s take a closer look, shall we? I...

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,...

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’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...

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

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...

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...

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

One of the interesting things about being a serious Windows user is that very little attention is paid to efficient users of Windows, and that we suffer from a...

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...

Some tenets: Contributing to a community, online or offline has value. As long as that value is recognized and rewarded, a community will thrive. Rewar...

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...

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’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...

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...

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...

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...

A few months ago, two companies in the search optimization space teamed up to start a contest , based on a challenge to see who could be the first result for...

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...

Update: The contest is over, and this entry did pretty well but didn’t win the initial prize. So the best purpose this page can serve is to direct you to Th...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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, 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...

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...

Thank you so much to all of you who have messaged, emailed and called. (Or tried to.) I am physically fine, as are all my family members and immediate friends....