I like the muted sounds, the shroud of grey, and the silence that comes with fog.
Om Malik
Fog is my weakness, and every time there is low fog, I am out and about with my camera.
We live in crazy times - that is true - and things have gotten crazier, but it still doesn't feel like the turn of the century.
Augmented reality is the 'boy who cried wolf' of the post-Internet world - it's long been promised but has rarely been delivered in a satisfying way.
For me, stories are like Lego blocks. If I don't put one down, I can't put the next one down.
Finding your soul begins by discovering our ability to listen! Alternatively, by sharing a smile, a laugh and just by being human to everyone - from friends, colleagues, family, and especially strangers, including those who are not from the same station in life as you.
There are days when I look at my news feed, and it seems like a social fabric of fun - a video of the first steps of my friends' baby! My nephew's prom date! On other days, it feels like a NASCAR vehicle, plastered with news stories, promoted posts, lame Live videos, and random content.
When I look at Kickstarter, I see small businesses that have been funded by their customers. I see the acceleration of this shift away from the industrial manufacturing ideology to more of a maker economy. And I also see an idea so powerful that the company name has become a verb.
Most competition in Silicon Valley now heads toward there being one monopolistic winner.
The possibilities that come with thinking about the camera as a portal into the realm of information and services are attractive not only to Snap but also to every other big player in the tech world. Facebook, for instance, has slowly been enhancing the visual capabilities of its Messenger.
We are splintering what was the 'camera' and its functionality - lens, sensors, and processing - into distinct parts, but, instead of lenses and shutters, software and algorithms are becoming the driving force.
Social sharing of photos - landscapes, selfies, latte-foam art - can spark conversations and deeper engagements.
The funny thing is that I used to be a blogger, but it wasn't known as 'blogging' at that time. This was in the '99/2000 time frame.
In a way, digital cameras were like very early personal computers such as the Commodore 64 - clunky and able to do only a few things.
I think the emotional appeal of a platform is what works. I think the old-media entities still have not figured out that part of the game plan.
My definition of media? 'Anything which owns attention.' This could be a game or, perhaps, a platform. Ironically, the media tends to associate media with publishing - digital or otherwise - which, in turn, is too narrow a way to consider not only the media but also the reality of the competitive landscape and media-focused innovation.
On my end, I am still surprised that many media organizations are unable to adapt to new media formats and, more importantly, new network behaviors.
Some media companies that rely on advertising revenue are tying journalist compensation to the traffic their story generates. It doesn't work because it de-prioritizes writing.
There is better than a good chance that while relaxing on a beach somewhere or sipping a martini in your favorite lounge, you have heard music that makes raise your eyebrow and ask, 'What kind of music is that?'
When it comes to the mobile web, the technology industry seems to be split between two camps - native apps and HTML5 web-based apps.
In the digital realm, companies are free from the friction of producing physical goods, and as a result, we see companies like Google go from zero dollars in revenues to billions at a much faster rate.
Our economy, for a long while, has been transitioning from one reliant on industrial strength to one based on digital information. The next step in this transition is a digital economy shaped by connectivity.
The early entrants into the world of A.R., as with its cousin virtual reality, were disappointing: the phones were too weak, the networks were too slow, and the applications were too nerdy. But now the technological pieces are in place, and a whole generation - much of which is on Snapchat - has come to consider the camera almost a third arm.
The battle between Google and Apple has shifted from devices, operating systems, and apps to a new, amorphous idea called 'contextual computing.' We have become data-spewing factories, and the only way to make sense of it all is through context.
Facebook has gone from a nice-and-boring social network to becoming an identity layer of the web. It is where nearly a billion people are depositing the artifacts of civilization in the 21st century - photos, videos, and birthday wishes.
Its definition can be a bit murky, but to me, native advertising is a sales pitch that fits right into the flow of the information being shown. It doesn't interrupt - native ads don't pop up or dance across the screen - and its content is actually valuable to the person viewing it.
Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter's core experience isn't about photos. It's a world of text, with occasional embedded photos, animated gifs, and short video clips.
I worry about Google's data ethics and about the idea of handing over the corpus of my life, but I can't deny that it is exceptional at making sense of my ever-growing photo library.
Apple continues to make ever-thinner devices with a superlative build and a luxurious feel. What the company has achieved beneath the surface is worth even more praise.
Looking back, Google's success came from the fortuitous timing of being born at the cusp of the broadband age. But it also came about because of the new reality of the Internet: a lot of services were going to be algorithmic, and owning your own infrastructure would be a key advantage.
While in the early days of networks, growth was limited by slowness and cost at numerous points - expensive telephone connections, computers that crashed, browsers that didn't work - the rise of the smartphone has essentially changed all that.
A platform is essentially a business model that thrives because of the participation and value added from third parties with only incremental effort from the owner of the platform.
Sure, Google's and Apple's ecosystems look a little different, but they are meant to do pretty much the same thing. For the two companies, innovation on mobile essentially means catching up to the other's growing list of features.
Whether it is through stock-market trading or the sale of hotel rooms, the Internet has a way of bringing deflationary forces to all businesses that were hitherto inefficient and involved many middlemen.
Apple has always been, and always will be, a hardware-first company. It produces beautiful devices with elegant designs and humane operating-system software.
Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news.
From analog film cameras to digital cameras to iPhone cameras, it has become progressively easier to take and store photographs. Today, we don't even think twice about snapping a shot.
As an online journalist, newswire journalist, newspaper writer, I wrote every day. My whole thing was, 'I have to write and report and write every day.' That was my thing.
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are building their own versions of the future. And they get bigger and bigger.
Twitter is short-form, real-time, and text-based. It's built for instant alerts and rapid consumption. It is an ideal system for delivering sips of information from an abundant stream.
The marriage of computing and connectivity without the shackles of being tethered to a location is one of the biggest disruptive forces of modern times.
Snapchat works because using a selfie is way easier than texting or tweeting. Stories should adapt to the medium and do so without cheapening the story.
Having followed the wireless industry long enough, I can tell you that building and supporting an application for different platforms is as tough as climbing a straight wall of rock.
People pay little attention to banner ads - in fact, everyone dislikes them - and that leads to infinitesimally small click-through rates that make marketers unhappy.
Ideally, Facebook would take all our clicks and information and would magically give us everything we want, without us even knowing we want it.
Pokemon Go, which involves trying to 'catch' Pikachu or Squirtle or other creatures with your smartphone, is an inherently social experience. You need to be walking around - on the streets, in public places - to catch the Pokemon.
A lot of what people are calling 'artificial intelligence' is really data analytics - in other words, business as usual. If the hype leaves you asking 'What is A.I., really?,' don't worry, you're not alone.
The digitization of our society is a challenge that is both legislative and philosophical.
By now, we all know that our every move online can be tracked and traced, and that, ideally, services learn from and adapt to customers based on an artful deployment of that data.
Most of the stress we feel here in Silicon Valley is self-inflicted.
