I was sad—but none too surprised—to learn that PC Magazine, once a heavyweight in technology publishing, would stop printing next year, another casualty in a rapidly changing industry. Back in the day when processor speed was measured in megahertz and a megabyte of memory was more than most people had, PC Magazine was required reading for anyone tracking the rise of personal computers. In the early 1980s, the magazine practically invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews and quickly developed a reputation as a leading source of information about PC and PC-related products.
DECISIONS, decisions. The latest version of Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions, was released late last month, leaving me with the usual poser: to upgrade or not to upgrade? For Ubuntu users, it’s a decision that that must be made fairly often—a new version of the free operating system is released every six months.
IT’S been four years now since Web 2.0 was first used to describe more interactive and collaborative Web sites that behaved like desktop applications. In those days, there were only a handful of sites that qualified. Nowadays, there are hundreds of such sites, offering users everything from online storage to social networking to browser-based video and image editing. Here are sites that I’ve tried and found useful—or simply amusing.
HISTORIC is how most people will describe the US elections this year. Coming after eight disastrous years that weakened the United States and damaged its reputation abroad, it’s no surprise that change was the big theme for both presidential candidates. And what a dramatic change these elections portend. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, is poised to be the first African-American to become President, but much has already changed even before the last ballot is tallied. From the start, the contrast between Obama, 47, and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, 72, was stark. It wasn’t just black on white, but the new kid versus old school, digital versus analog, the iPod user versus the Luddite who never learned how to send an e-mail.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
I was sad—but none too surprised—to learn that PC Magazine, once a heavyweight in technology publishing, would stop printing next year, another casualty in a rapidly changing industry. Back in the day when processor speed was measured in megahertz and a megabyte of memory was more than most people had, PC Magazine was required reading for anyone tracking the rise of personal computers. In the early 1980s, the magazine practically invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews and quickly developed a reputation as a leading source of information about PC and PC-related products.
