Mike Elgan

The Apple iPhone is a breathtaking departure from the stale smart phone market. Everyone loves the iPhone’s huge screen and eye-candy user interface. But many expressed disappointment when Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone applications environment would not follow the PC model of software installed on the phone, but instead a “thin-client” model of Web-based […]

If I told you where to find little piles of money around your house, would you be interested? Good, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The Internet, plus the ingenuity of entrepreneurs, can put you in touch with thousands of people who want to pay you for stuff you’re not using — things […]

Last week, I told you that your personal information is easily searched, and usually full of errors. I suggested taking action to correct false information, because employers and others may be checking up on you without your knowledge or permission. But even if you correct all errors, you’ve still got another problem. The Internet isn’t […]

The Internet has made it cheap and easy to run background checks on anyone. Employers and others are increasingly using online services to find out all kinds of personal information about you. The information is compiled from phone books, property records, court documents, government databases and other sources. Various companies buy and sell this data […]

Did you ever wonder how great people achieved greatness? Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Chuck Norris — how’d they do it? Genius helps. But they also had one thing you probably don’t have — servants. You could probably achieve great things, too — right after you do the dishes, pay some bills […]

There are two kinds of people: talkers and typers. Talkers tend to be social extroverts who don’t like committing their words to the scrutiny of black-and-white. They feel comfortable with oral conversations because they can gauge the response of their interlocutors in real-time, and they feel the need to hear and use non-verbal cues like […]

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? Ha! That is, like, so 1990s! Sure, some still get this painful condition, and people are still afflicted with other 1990s-era troubles like Internet and gaming addiction, not to mention tech support and cell phone rage. But since the turn of the millennium, our obsessive use of new technology has given us […]

Give me one good reason why you’re not currently looking for a better job. (It’s a trick question – there aren’t any good reasons.) The top two reasons people don’t actively seek career advancement are 1) “I’m happy with my current job”; and 2) “I don’t have time.” Both are bogus. No matter how good […]

In general, I like to “keep it real” as much as the next guy. But there are three things you should never keep real: Your e-mail address, your phone number and your search engine. In olden times (the 1990s), people used to show off by placing a long list of contact names, addresses and numbers […]

The slowest part of any PC is always the user — and as Moore’s Law continues to drive faster processors, memory and disks, the performance gap between us and our machines grows ever wider. What we need is a Renaissance in how we use PCs. The real — as in the Italian or European — […]