Mike Elgan

Meetings usually involve a lot of wasted time and effort. But Google Glass will make them faster, more efficient and just better. Even though Google Glass itself doesn’t exist as a consumer device available to the public, Glassware (apps for Google Glass) is already emerging that make meetings better. If this is just a hint […]

In all the noise and hype around Motorola’s announcement last week of the Moto X phone, one very interesting new capability was generally overlooked: You can use random Bluetooth devices instead of passwords to unlock the phone. Wait, what? The feature is called “Trusted Devices.” Here’s how it works. Inside the phone’s “Security” settings, you […]

Since Google’s Glass project was first announced, and since people have been openly wearing Glass in the wild, the whole subject has been bloated with hype, exaggerated claims, fear, contempt, ignorance and confusion. I’ve been wearing Google Glass nearly full time for a week now and I’d like to give you the truth about what […]

In the past two years, mobile hardware makers have dazzled users with stunning new displays and powerful new features. And by powerful, I mean they use a lot of power and drain batteries. As users have discovered, even the greatest of features isn’t so great when the battery is dead. The good news is that […]

Suddenly, several powerful Silicon Valley tech giants are aggressively pursuing deals with media companies to replace how TV is discovered, shared, recorded and, most of all, delivered — over the Internet, rather than through the cable providers. Apple, for example, is rumored to be working on a deal with media cable companies that would pay […]

In the future, people are supposed to communicate through video, according to The Jetsons, 2001: A Space Odyssey and these AT&T commercials from 1992. In fact, video-phone future is here, and it’s way better than yesterday’s TV and movies ever imagined. Instead of just talking on boring, landline video phones, we’ve got hundreds of different […]

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” according to an old American idiom. What that means is that when something is called “free,” it’s really paid for in other ways or by other people. The saying may have originated with the advertisement of “free lunch” to 19th Century saloon customers. That lunch was usually […]

In a recent Google infomercial (also known as the movie The Internship), the main characters, played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, lose their jobs as wristwatch salesmen because “everything is computerized now.” In desperation, they do the only logical thing, which is to try out for Google internships. That idea was as unlikely to […]

People talk about robots like they’re coming in the future, when in fact robots are here now in a big way. The military uses thousands of robots every day. Manufacturing is increasingly robot heavy. Medicine is taking advantage of robots for both remote doctor-patient visits and surgery, but also medical lab processing. Depending on who […]

Why did Google, the company that already has the best maps product and the most users, spend a billion dollars to buy a tiny maps startup called Waze that has a fraction of the users ? Why would mighty Google need Waze’s puny map, app or user base? The short answer is that Google didn’t buy […]