Author: Rebecca Greenfield

Media Diet

Emma Carmichael: What I Read

Emma Carmichael

The new editor of The Hairpin treats mix-tapes like books and commutes by Instapaper.

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Intel's Streaming TV Box Will Offer Its Own New Cable Bundles to Save Us All

The chip-maker has said its Silicon Valley star-studded Intel Media group will build a potentially game-changing set-top box — one that might just end up slashing your cable bill.

Comments | 1,371 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Why Google Pays Apple $1 Billion a Year

Google is expected to pay an estimated $1 billion to Apple in 2014 to keep its search engine as the default on iOS devices because, well, Google makes a huge portion of its mobile revenue from iPhones and iPads — enough to make rivalries disappear.

Comments | 2,158 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 12, 2013

Fear of a Cord-Never Generation

For years cable and satellite companies have maintained they're not afraid of people canceling their service and watching video over the Internet (i.e. cutting the cord), but the cord nevers — the young people who never sign up for pay-TV service in the first place — are a totally different story.

Comments | 4,656 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 11, 2013

Elon Musk's Crusade Against The New York Times Isn't Helping Tesla

If a New York Times reporter with an entire squadron of Tesla employees at his disposal, can't even use a Model S electric car properly, as Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk strongly asserted in a tweet this afternoon, it doesn't say much about the usability of Tesla's cars for regular people.

Comments | 6,208 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 11, 2013

How Retailers Learned to Beat the Flash-Sale Bubble

The bubble of fashion flash-sale sites that thrived as a result of the 2008 recession may be on the verge of popping, in part because traditional retailers have bitten back on the high-tech hand it fed them.

Comments | 2,586 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 11, 2013

Raytheon's 'Google for Spies' Tracks You from Social-Media Sharing — and Fast

A secret program from the defense contractor looks through Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, and Foursquare to find out where a person lives and hangs out, to discover what he or she looks like, and even to predict what he or she will do in the future.

Comments | 4,483 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 8, 2013

Vine Is Ready for Its Citizen Journalism Close-Up

This weekend's snowpocalypse hasn't reached its full wrath yet and Vine, the latest craze in image sharing, is already full of looping videos depicting today's dreary weather.

Comments | 345 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 8, 2013

Why Your Weatherman Is Protesting the Name 'Nemo'

Threatening as they actually may be, snowstorms aren't hurricanes — and just because The Weather Channel started naming them doesn't mean that's proper meteorology. Here's what AccuWeather and the National Weather Service have to say for themselves.

Comments | 14,340 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 8, 2013

How Can a President's Email Get Hacked?

The morning after Bush family emails burst online, revealing self portraits by George W. Bush and about his father's health, the Secret Service opened an investigation into the apparent infiltration of the private, post-presidency accounts for Bushes 41 and 43, raising questions about personal-tech security all the way up to Obama.

Comments | 20,002 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 7, 2013

Etsy Is Trying to Pop Silicon Valley's Meritocracy Bubble

While we were talking about the barriers outside of Silicon Valley facing certain kinds of people when trying to make it in, Etsy was busy fixing the problem.

Comments | 1,143 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 7, 2013

Build a Better Inbox and the World Will Beat a Path to Your App Store

There's a new iPhone mail-app that has people excited because, like many email clients before it, it has potential to make longform Internet communication less painful.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 7, 2013

Is It OK to Use Kickstarter to Make Money?

Three weeks early and $359,630 short, Bjork's Kickstarter project to make an Android version of the Icelandic superstar's iOS-only educational Biophilia app has been canceled because few people wanted to give charity to a rich person.

Comments | 1,434 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 7, 2013

Blacks and Latinos Aren't Thriving in Silicon Valley's Meritocracy

The data from this Silicon Valley jobs report show that Silicon Valley's so-called meritocracy happens to benefit white and Asian people, while the black and Latino community suffers.

Comments | 3,906 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 6, 2013

How Much More Expensive Can TV Get?

Unlike its movie studio and publishing arm, Time Warner's television business is booming, bringing in $3.7 billion for the media giant, a 5 percent increase from the year before, all because you're paying more for cable.

Comments | 4,310 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 6, 2013

The Sad Reality of BlackBerry 10: Not Even Canada Really Wants It

In a sad scene that may not bode well for the comeback of the cellphone giant formerly known as Research in Motion, the new BlackBerry Z10 debut on its home turf to very unenthusiastic, even lonely reception in what should be the Canadian company's most enthusiastic market.

Comments | 4,814 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 6, 2013

Microsoft Surface Pro: Not a Tablet, Not Yet a Laptop

With Microsoft's Surface Pro going on sale this Saturday, the gadget experts have put out their lengthy takes on the bigger more expensive tablet-laptop hybrid, many of them confused about what the gadget is supposed to be.

Comments | 1,009 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 5, 2013

How White Male Tech Writers Feed the Silicon Valley Myth of Meritocracy

As a counter-argument to a much discussed post on why white males dominate the tech blogging world, white male tech blogger Jason Calacanis took to Twitter today in using his own successful experience — and pretty much only that — to prove that such racism doesn't exist.

Comments | 23,308 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 5, 2013

Kim Jong Un's Smartphone of Choice

Based on this new picture, people, including a South Korean intelligence agency, have concluded that North Korea's supreme leader uses an HTC smartphone.

Comments | 1,800 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 5, 2013

Everything You Need to Know About the Dell Buyout

After weeks of rumored talks, Dell has announced its sale to Microsoft, Silver Lake Partners, and founder Michael Dell for $24.4 billion, the biggest leveraged buyout since the 2008 financial crisis.

Comments | 1,207 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 4, 2013

Facebook's New App Isn't a Spy — It's a Find My Friends Killer

A new report claims Facebook is working on what sounds like a creepy mobile location tracker, even though more likely it's an app that will seek to be more successful than Apple's Find My Friends app for the iPhone.

Comments | 2,759 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 4, 2013

This Is What Facebook Memory Lane Looks Like on Its Ninth Birthday

On the occasion of Facebook's ninth anniversary, pretty much the whole Internet has decided to get nostalgic. Here's how.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 4, 2013

Why Malware Warnings Took Over the Internet Today

For Chrome users, a malware warning page popped up on Monday across many major websites — The New York Times, IMDb, and MSN Money, to name a few — due to so-called blacklisting bug inside Google's ad network.

Comments | 9,618 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 4, 2013

Aaron Swartz's Girlfriend Convinced Depression Didn't Drive Him to Suicide

In an emotional letter that may either refocus or amp up the conversation surrounding the tech pioneer's death, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman has released a post on her Tumblr called "Why Aaron Died" — and none of her reasons include his clinical depression.

Comments | 11,292 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 4, 2013

The Future of BlackBerry 10 Sales Looks Hazy

As the U.S. market remains on standby for sales and even ads, reports from both analysts and suppliers suggest sold-out new models in the United Kingdom, the first and only place the BlackBerry Z10 is available yet.

Comments | 4,483 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 1, 2013

How Twitter Earned Its Mega-Valuation

Twitter might not quite deserve its (very) big new $10 billion valuation, but it's spent the last year working (very) hard to grow up — and just in time for the inevitable and (very) good-looking public offering in 2013.

Comments | 957 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 1, 2013

Here's the GIF Search Engine You've Been Waiting Too Long For

Just as the rebirth of the GIF was apparently ending, someone up and started Giphy, a search engine focusing solely on the soon-to-be-passé looping file format of Internet past.

Comments | 2,069 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 1, 2013

The Economics of Netflix's $100 Million New Show

With Netflix's foray into original, high quality programming today, the streaming TV network wants to turn into the HBO of Internet TV, but can Netflix afford it?

Comments | 123,556 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Feb 1, 2013

Apple TV Is Running Late

So, Apple's big plan to talk cable companies into making the iPod of the television industry thus far involves getting Time Warner to let it put HBO Go on its box (if you buy a cable subscription!), something other similar boxes already do. How very unexciting.

Comments | 2,069 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

China Hacked the Wall Street Journal, Too

Less than a day after The New York Times revealed Chinese malware experts had cracked into its employee computer system, The Wall Street Journal said Thursday afternoon that it, too, has been "infiltrated." How bad was it, and is the Chinese government involved?

Comments | 1,408 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

Update: Amazon.com Is Working Again

It may be time to declare today the Day of the Internet Not Working Properly: First Twitter sputtered, and this afternoon Amazon is experiencing technical difficulties.

Comments | 1,035 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

CES Ditches CNET After CBS Scandal

The once beloved and suddenly beleaguered tech-review site CNET will no longer select the official Best in Show awards at the Consumer Electronics Show because of its ethically questionable situation with parent company CBS.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

Kim Dotcom Shut Down the Mega Search Site Because He Wants to Stay Legit Now

It only took a few days for some sneaky pirates to transform Kim Dotcom's totally legal new file-storage hub Mega into a file-sharing site that mimicked the old Megaupload, and it's only taken the last few hours for the former pirate king to fight back.

Comments | 3,571 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

Why Was Twitter Down Today?

Yes, Twitter isn't working right now, and, yes, Twitter is working to fix it. While Twitter hasn't yet offered a specific reason for the disruption, it very well may be a server-capacity issue.

Comments | 4,828 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 31, 2013

The Apple Rumormongers Demand an iPad Mini with Retina Display

Rumormongering about an iPad Mini with Retina Display is sort of the perfect rumor for gadget blogs because one day between now and forever, when Apple inevitably releases said device, their predictions will come true.

Comments | 3,966 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

You Can't Hate Twitter if You Don't Get Twitter

In one of the most talked-about columns on social media today, The Week columnist Matt Lewis tries to explain how he got trapped in the "prison" of Twitter's apparent decline — even though he's really just trapped himself, by way of a really bad Twitter feed.

Comments | 2,412 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

Facebook's Ads Can't Keep Up with Its Mobile Growth

The social network's latest earnings report shows why a lot of good is never enough for Facebook, especially when it comes to making money off you and your cellphone.

Comments | 690 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

What They're Saying About BlackBerry 10

After a strange unveiling of its new operating system, two phones, and a company rebranding, BlackBerry lifted the embargo on reviews of one of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, the $599 touchscreen Z10. Here's the early word.

Comments | 1,377 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

Look How Desperate the BlackBerry 10 Unveiling Event Actually Was

Not that Research in Motion was ever very cool beyond the corporate crowd, but the company's rebranding, as simply BlackBerry, came with an outward appearance not of confidence so much as outright desperation.

Comments | 3,270 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

Everything You Need to Know About BlackBerry 10

The company formerly known as Research in Motion has unveiled its hail-mary BlackBerry 10 operating system, including two new phones — the Q10 and Z10. 

Comments | 3,889 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 30, 2013

Samsung Just Can't Stop Beating Apple

Samsung has won the latest round of its neverending patent war with Apple — and at just the right moment in its cultural ascendance, giving the Korean gadget giant another notch on its "better-than-Apple" belt.

Comments | 1,664 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

Why Amazon's Stock Is Soaring After a Terrible Earnings Report

Amazon's earnings were filled with all sorts of misses, including a 45 percent decline in profits, and yet the stock is up around 10 percent in after-hours trading because of one good metric.

Comments | 1,291 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

Silicon Valley Wants Its Privacy Back

Silicon Valley blogger Sarah Lacy thinks the reincarnation of the Gawker gossip blog Valleywag shouldn't cover gossip because people in the tech start-up world like to keep their boring lives private, a hilarious statement since Silicon Valley has industrialized the public flaunting of people's boring private lives.

Comments | 637 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

Instagram Is a Terrible Example of Immigrants Creating American Jobs

During his immigration speech on Tuesday afternoon President Barack Obama cited the Brazilian born Instagram co-creator Mike Krieger as an example of the potential jobs and money a non-American can bring to our country, a strange choice considering how teeny-tiny the photo-sharing app industry is.

Comments | 653 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

Facebook Graph Search Still Doesn't Speak Human

Despite hiring a couple of linguists to get its new search engine to move "beyond 'Robospeak" and actually understand how people talk, Facebook hasn't actually taught Graph Search how to do that very well just yet. And that's a problem.

Comments | 1,387 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

How Video Sharing Apps Keep Porn Out

Just like Vine, pretty much any of the other "Instagram for video" platforms that have come out in the last couple of years have experienced an inundation of inappropriate content.

Comments | 2,069 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 29, 2013

$800 Sure Is a Lot of Money for an iPad

Despite the rise of the phablet and its friends, the battle of the very expensive tablets is very much upon us as Apple announced an $800, 128GB version of its iPad on Tuesday morning — less than two weeks before its enemies at Microsoft will launch a $900, 128GB tablet, the Surface Pro.

Comments | 1,555 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 28, 2013

The Government Is Still Trying to Spy on a Lot of Your Twitter and Google Data

On the occasion of Data Privacy Day, Twitter says it's giving away user information requested by the U.S. government... without a warrant. It's the continuation of a frightening trend that's as frightening as it is growing.

Comments | 5,124 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 28, 2013

What Twitter Can Do About the 'Human Error' Behind Its Latest Porn Problem

Twitter was quick to defend itself Monday morning after a pornographic clip briefly made its way in front of all users on the Editor's Picks of its new app, but how much of a porn problem does Vine already have?

Comments | 690 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 28, 2013

Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day Has Been Canceled

The first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day has been canceled because of a number of "valid risks" with using a hashtag to prove a point about the way readers often objectify female tech writers.

Comments | 2,257 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Jan 25, 2013

Square's No. 2 Resigned Over Sexual Harassment Allegations

Keith Rabois, the chief operating officer of Square who resigned from the payment company of the future with little public explanation late Thursday, has now revealed that he left amid allegations of sexual harassment.

Comments | 1,823 Views

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