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One weekend in December I watched several people writing Christmas cards while attending a chess match with my son.  Christmas cards provide an interesting glimpse into identity. Some cards are simple, with their imprinted message and a signed name.  Others have a family picture on the front, with people dressed in holiday style. Other cards get a [...]

As we think about the future of banking, we’ve collected a few favorite quotes about predicting the future – Yogi Berra notes “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”.  And we all know of wildly inaccurate predictions.  Which makes Peter Steiner’s New Yorker cartoon (with the dog talking about how “On the Internet no one [...]

From Bangladesh via the Wall Street Journal comes an interesting story on bringing the networked economy to everyone with a cell phone.  CellBazaar provides what we’d call Craigslist or the classifieds via a cell phone. CellBazaar supports various specific methodologies for SMS, voice, and web access.  The system lets users post items for sale, look for [...]

Occasionally there’s good news out there.  The Berkman Center for Internet & Society (part of Harvard Law) yesterday released a report on Child Safety and Online Technologies.  The report runs counter to many people’s perceptions of the Internet and its use by minors.  The Internet is safer than our collective perception, and there remains a need for more research [...]

Google recently released its Chrome web browser…why?  Does the world need another browser war? Did consumers not have enough choices with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera?  There are many, many analyses on the web (here, here and here). Here are two different views: 
First, convergence. The iPhone joined mobile phone capability with a full Safari browser while most [...]