The phrase “jump the shark” has become a popular idiom to describe situations when desperation takes over. The term originated from an episode of the TV sitcom “Happy Days,” where lead character Fonzie (Henry Winkler), demonstrating his water skiing skills, jumps over a shark. That’s when many critics felt the show had lost its creative […]

As I look over the history of this blog, dating back to 1999, I find that I’ve covered some subjects over and over. No, not because my memory isn’t quite as sharp as it used to be. My feeling, instead, is that a lot of tech commentators choose to forget or are so busy regurgitating silly […]

Usually when Apple releases a new OS, there are loads of problems that require a fast maintenance update. This was very much true with iOS 8, where Apple released 8.0.1, with a buggy “wrapper” that was killed in about an hour and replaced with 8.0.2, with a fixed wrapper, the following day. With iOS 8.1 things […]

So there are reports this week that Amazon, stung by the abject failure of the costly Fire Phone, is back to selling cheap. There is now the low-end $39 Fire TV Stick, yet another TV streaming appliance that’s designed to compete with the Google Chromecast. It’s marketed directly against the Chromecast with the claim of having four times the storage […]