Technology News

From Humble Beginnings: the NFL vs. eSports

By most accounts, American Football1 started out with humble beginnings: a college sport that branched off association football (rugby) that spawned a bunch of disorganized professional organizations that eventually coalesced into the NFL and the college football behemoths we know about today. The game started in the mid 1800s. The first professional game was in the 1890s, with the first player getting a secret single game contract that paid him $500 (a staggering $13,000 in 2016 dollars).

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Goodbye Google Apps (GMail), Hello Fastmail (and MailRoute)

I recently moved nearly all of my email off of Google’s services over to Fastmail, with MailRoute in front of it to block spam. [footnote]My @gmail.com address can’t be moved, and I’m keeping it. While I'm shifting most of that email to my main address, I'll still use it for some things.[/footnote] So far, I’m really happy. The services are relatively inexpensive, and the features compare well with Google, both in terms of space as well as functionality that I used.

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Some Observations on the Mobile Market in India

Living in India has given me a new perspective on a lot of things. Professionally, I’m constantly learning a lot just by seeing how differently people use their phones, and how different the market and ecosystem around mobile is here. Intex? Karbonn? Spice Mobile? Oppo? The biggest eye opener has been seeing the number of India-focused brands here in the smartphone market. In the US, there are global brands like Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and LG and then a spread of other smaller brands.

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Google I/O: An unadulterated celebration of technological imagination

That mouthful is my one sentence description of Google I/O. The demo floors and tonight's After Hours party are full of whimsy and wonder, literal playgrounds for technology geeks of all stripes. The atmosphere at I/O is all about the possible, the future, and the fanciful. There are companies making robots, others building home mesh networks that can control all your lights, and yet others working on all sorts of crazy gadgetry.

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