Author: Rebecca Greenfield

Senators Turn Tim Cook's Hearing into a Genius Bar Visit

Reuters

The U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had some tough questions for Tim Cook, CEO of computer giant Apple which stands accused of tax avoidance to the tune of billions of dollars. Questions like: "Why the hell do I have to keep updating my apps on my iPhone all the time and why you don't fix that?"

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 5, 2013

Is the Facebook Phone Good Enough for You?

The conventional wisdom among Silicon Valley's functional equivalent of Morning Joe is that the plebeians will want what Facebook has to offer. But just who are these "millions" of realpeople who should run out and buy the HTC First loaded with Facebook's new Home software?

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 4, 2013

The Facebook Phone Is Smarter Than You Think

There is more than a silver lining to Mark Zuckerberg's most blatant jump into your mobile life: Facebook Home actually offers some key user interface experiences that are way better than their counterparts on other Android phones — and even the iPhone.

Comments | 1,071 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 4, 2013

Can More Tweets Save the Stock Market from Real-Time Twitter Scheming?

Bloomberg (not the man) has added tweets to Bloomberg Terminal, its Wall Street information machine, hoping to fix, in one fell swoop and in a week when the SEC stepped in on social media, all of the headaches that Twitter has been giving the markets.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 4, 2013

Facebook Phones 'Home' with HTC First — and Lots of Chatting Heads

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that Facebook is neither building a phone nor an app — because those aren't good enough. Here's your first look at Home, a full screen's worth of Facebook greeting you as soon as your turn on your device. And then there are "chat heads" and "cover feeds" and more. Oh, and it's for more than just one phone.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 4, 2013

How Netflix Built the New Couch Potato

Netflix has finally announced a Memorial Day release for 15 episodes of Arrested Development, a beloved sitcom with a devoted audience that the streaming service uncancelled for exactly that purpose: a long weekend of obsessive binge-watching that is now a proven money maker. Here's why appointment television just got a lot more addictive.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 4, 2013

Apple's New HQ Has World Trade Center Style Delays and a Tech Campus Curse

Some $2 billion over budget and a year behind schedule, Steve Jobs's extravagant spaceship-shaped Apple headquarters dream, Campus 2, is turning into more of a nightmare than the office of the future — and investors don't like it.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 3, 2013

We Really Hope Mark Zuckerberg's Angel Fire Page Is Real

Hacker News today surfaced this Angel Fire page that looks like it was created by a 15-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, which we hope is the case because it would be a wonderful little look into a hacker's humble beginnings.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 3, 2013

Everyone Is Taking These Facebook Phone Leaks Very Seriously

The tech gadget crowd, generally pretty good at reporting rumors as rumors, is taking the leaks related to the Facebook phone as the real deal.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 3, 2013

Welcome to Silicon Valley, Where All the Start-Ups Are Failures

The man who sold College Humor and Vimeo to IAC for a ton of money thinks selling tech start-ups to a big company for a ton of money is "always a failure," leaving a pretty narrow road to success that includes zero real companies.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 3, 2013

You Never Forget Your First Cell Phone

In honor of today's 40th anniversary of the first official cell-phone call, take a fond — if clunky, and sometimes fuzzy — look back at the tipping point when everyone got a phone for herself, and when phones started to get "cool."

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 3, 2013

Facebook's Mission Impossible to Find the Perfect Ad

Forget making the world more open and connected. Facebook has a more pressing, arguably more difficult task ahead: creating advertisements that its billion users both "like" and actually like. And Mark Zuckerberg is finally speaking out about it.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 2, 2013

How Much You're Paying for Sports You Don't Watch, Per Sport

Baseball and the Final Four are upon us, and the NBA and NHL postseasons are heating up with the Spring, even if football is months away. But no matter how much you're enjoying the singular benefits of your favorite sport, America's sports-padded cable TV packages are still forcing you to subsidize football — even in April.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 2, 2013

Apple Leaks Cheap iPhone & iPhone 5S Rumors Just Enough to Make You Sweat

Apple must really want us to know that something, anything great is on its way, because the leaks keep on coming, perhaps because of competition that is both looming (in the form of Facebook this week) and that's already arrived (hello, Samsung!).

Comments | 7,291 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 2, 2013

Apple's Apology May Have Worked Too Well in China

Apple CEO Tim Cook's public apology and his company's consumer friendly change to its Chinese iPhone warranty policy Monday was met with approval by China's state run media today — along with what sounds like a warning to "other American companies."

Comments | 888 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 1, 2013

This Is Very Probably the Facebook Phone

The tech blogger masses are treating the leak to the Android Police as the real deal version of Facebook's forthcoming phone, and since the social network hasn't been particularly secretive about the launch, it's safe to say this is probably a legitimate look at the gadget in some stage or another.

Comments | 5,270 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 1, 2013

Can Vice Save the Media from the Business Insider?

Advertently or not, The New Yorker this week presents a sort of Goofus-and-Gallant account of the kinds of media organizations to emerge in the digital age: Henry Blodget's news aggregator Business Insider and hipster clothing store-turned-magazine-turned-advertising empire Vice.

Comments | 886 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 1, 2013

China Has a Way Better iPhone Warranty Than America to Go with Its Apology from Apple

After weeks of anti-Apple rhetoric from China's state run media outlets complaining about iPhone customer service standards, Apple CEO Tim Cook has not only written a formal apology but even gone so far as to change the Chinese iPhone warranty policy.

Comments | 524 Views

By Jen Doll and Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 1, 2013

Cocktail Crossfire

Is April Fools' Day the Worst Holiday?

Is it a day of unrelenting pain, or 24 hours of pure delight? Are the naysayers missing the point, or are the pranksters to be condemned? We discuss, in another round of Cocktail Crossfire.

Comments | 2,480 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 1, 2013

Google's Elaborate April Fools' Day Jokes Are No Laughing Matter

As per usual, Google put out various, elaborate April Fools' Day jokes, which only reminded everyone how much time and money the tech company has to spend on projects that aren't core products like, ahem, Google Reader.

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By Philip Bump and Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 29, 2013

How Much Is Your Startup Acquisition Worth in Peeps? And Other Conversions

Tech companies are always buying up smaller tech companies for what sounds like a lot of money, but it's hard to know how much money is really a lot of money without some everyday context. That's why we built the handy new Atlantic Wire Startup Acquisition Calculator.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 29, 2013

All of Facebook's Phone Secrets, Divulged

If Facebook leaks everything about their big phone event a week before their big phone event, does Facebook's big phone event need to exist?

Comments | 1,585 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 29, 2013

How to Survive the Year of the Hack

After three months of headlines from China to the White House and every geek haven in between, this week introduced the world to the cyber attack that may or may not be slowing down the entire Internet, followed by the digital assault on American Express. Yes, 2013 is already the year there were too many hacking incidents to keep track of, and, no, they're not all the same.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 29, 2013

No, Princeton Is Not the Best Ivy League School for Finding a 'Worthy' Husband

Princeton alumna and parent Susan A. Patton has some advice for the ladies on the letters-to-the-editor page of today's Daily Princetonian, and it's terrible advice, since there are much better elitist institutions in which to go rich husband hunting — and right in the Ivy League!

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 28, 2013

How to Freak Out, Appropriately, About the Internet War Apocalypse

There has been a wave of skepticism about the severity of this month's "biggest ever" denial-of-service attack, and, well, it's OK to be a little scared of the enormity of this thing. Just not that scared.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 28, 2013

Samsung's Employees Listen to K-Pop All Day Every Day

The likes of "Gangnam Style" reverberate across the grounds of Samsung's flagship cellphone factory, the Gumi complex just south of Seoul — and the K-Pop blares all day long, which kind of sounds like a mellow version of torture, at least to Americans.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 28, 2013

BlackBerry's Not Selling Enough New Phones Yet

The first earnings report from BlackBerry since its new phone launched isn't all bad news—the company reported $94 million in profit and $1.2 billion in revenue—but there are some alarming figures like the 3 million customers the company has lost over the last three months.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 27, 2013

The Problem with Silicon Valley CEO Excess, in 15 Sentences

It takes Dave Morin of Path just those short responses in a Vanity Fair interview about his iPhone to encapsulate all the money that young tech execs throw around, with or without a business model. It's enough to make you want to throw your phone at the wall.

Comments | 2,280 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 27, 2013

Woman Fired for Tweeting 'Dongle' Joke Finds 'Good' in Tech-Sexism Dialogue

Adria Richards has publicly commented on her firing for the first time. And, well, she sounds pretty upbeat about where that conversation is headed next, considering she just lost her job after an onslaught of Internet harassment.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 27, 2013

The 10-Year-Old Security Sink Hole Slowing the Entire Internet, Explained

The largest known hack attack of its kind brought the Internet to a crawl for users all over the world, but don't blame the hackers — the outage all stems from an increasingly vulnerable, decade-old problem with the "Internet's basic plumbing" that can be easily fixed.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 27, 2013

These Google Glass Early Adopters Will Warm Your Heart

In a shameless attempt to win skeptics over, Google has included the betterment of penguins, firemen, and veterans among the first uses for Google Glass.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 27, 2013

China's Apple Smear Campaign Has Totally Backfired

After three straight days of anti-Apple articles in the state run newspaper People's Daily, China's propaganda push is having unintended effects, making the government look like the enemy in a fight it keeps on picking.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 26, 2013

Nevermind: Facebook Is Keeping Track of What You Buy at the Drugstore

It took Facebook about six months to start using all that offline shopping data for more than just "research" and start putting all our rewards cards info to good, lucrative advertising use.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 26, 2013

Why T-Mobile's $650 iPhone Isn't a Good Deal

T-Mobile is the first major carrier to drop subsidies for its phones just ahead of the rumored announcement that it will finally start carrying the iPhone starting this afternoon a move that's not likely to attract many new customers.

Comments | 5,399 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 25, 2013

The 'Rock Stars' of Reddit Won't Stop Being Sexist Just Because Reddit Says So

The people of Reddit aren't taking kindly to a straightforward new plea from the site's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, questioning whether acts of sexism on the site have served to "belittle and ostracize" its female audience.

Comments | 23,266 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 25, 2013

Harvard's Ultimate Streaming TV Deal Is Too Free to Last Forever

Because Harvard is paying for a service called Tivli, the Ivy Leaguers can burn through HBO's Girls, Game of Thrones, and a bunch of other cable TV content for free. Unfortunately, the ultimate student streaming model doesn't sound like it's built for the rest of us.

Comments | 1,914 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 25, 2013

Spotify Wants to Be the HBO of the Internet, Too

As if the streaming video business couldn't get any more crowded, streaming music giant Spotify is trying to disrupt its way into on-demand Internet TV content. Which sounds like a profoundly bad idea, until you think about House of Cards and how to work a content deal these days.

Comments | 1,551 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 25, 2013

The Bidding War for Dell Has Officially Begun

Never mind that Dell buyout deal proposed by founder and CEO Michael Dell in early February, activist investor and professional company shaker upper Carl Icahn with the help of Blackstone has put a better offer on the table, he confirmed in a letter today

Comments | 1,913 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 22, 2013

The Guy Who Wrote the Hottest Women in Tech Slideshow Is 'Bummed'

Don't worry, the writer behind today's offensive-to-women-in-technology-Internet-thing, "The 40 Hottest Women in Tech" slideshow over at Complex, thinks the slideshow is crap, too.

Comments | 3,121 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 22, 2013

How to Spot a Fake Tweet

Just for some Friday terrorizing, the Internet has resurrected this terrifying website Let Me Tweet That for You that lets you fake a tweet from someone else, which is about as potentially scary as it sounds—unless you know how to spot a forgery.

Comments | 2,254 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 22, 2013

The Smartwatch Is Not a Watch

Now that rumors suggest Google and LG are both planning on jumping into the smart watch war to compete with Samsung and Apple it's time to stop thinking of this thing as a time-telling piece.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 22, 2013

How the Tech World Bends Free Speech into an Excuse for Sexism

The cloud-based email startup SendGrid confirmed in a blog post Friday that it fired developer relations "evangelist" Adria Richards because of a tweet she sent about what she thought was sexist behavior at the PyCon developers conference, setting an unfortunate precedent for a tech industry with diversity problems but no shortage of "dongle" jokes.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 21, 2013

HBO Is Preparing for Life Beyond Cable

In what would be the most exciting single development for cord-cutters and their quality television since Hulu launched six years ago, the head of HBO hinted Thursday at the development of viable, legitimate standalone streaming service for people who don't pay for cable TV — any cable TV, not just premium. It might even be pretty cheap.

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By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 21, 2013

Hackers Got a Woman Fired by a Startup After She Called Out Sexual Harassment

Today in the tech world's warped view of gender "norms": The cloud-based e-mail service SendGrid just fired developer Adria Richards, apparently for reporting sexual harassment after hackers made it clear they didn't approve of her complaining. 

Comments | 23,607 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 21, 2013

Lululemon Says Owners of See-Through Yoga Pants Should 'Bend Over'

As if a story about women's butts couldn't get any more tantalizing, Lululemon CEO Christine Day more or less just asked the owners of the struggling workout-wear company's defective yoga pants to bend over in skin-tight, possibly see-through leggings and have someone inspect their butts.

Comments | 42,949 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 21, 2013

Why Hasn't Guccifer Been Caught Yet?

The mystery hacker has released more Bush paintings, "confidential memos" sent to Hillary Clinton about Benghazi, and access to a high-profile tech figure's address book. The hacking world loves it, but no one can find him. How come?

Comments | 1,038 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 20, 2013

What's the Price of Free in Google Keep?

Google has finally announced its note-taking "Evernote" killer Google Keep, which looks great and useful from this little video preview, but there is a lingering worry that like other beloved products (ahem: Reader) Google might go ahead and kill this one off someday, too.

Comments | 864 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 20, 2013

How Cheap Can the Kindle Fire Get?

In light of todays $99 Kindle Fire HD tablet rumor, would it even make financial sense for Amazon to put out a $99 tablet—how low can Amazon go? Let's investigate.

Comments | 173 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 20, 2013

Why Digg Disappeared from Google

Some people who spend their time checking up on these things, noticed that Google removed Digg from its search results, which led them to conclude some shady things about the link aggregator. But really, the whole thing wasn't that big of a deal.

Comments | 691 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 20, 2013

Microsoft Is Coming After Samsung Now

Instead of going after its usual foe, Microsoft's attack-hungry marketing department has transformed Samsung and the uber-popular Galaxy S III into its latest tech enemy — just another indication that Apple's no longer king of the smartphone makers.

Comments | 1,209 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 20, 2013

Google Has Already Started Killing Reader

Google's official execution date for the beloved RSS feed isn't until July 1, but the search company has already started erasing Reader's presence, removing it from the drop-down bar and its list of services it offers.

Comments | 691 Views

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