Tag Archives: ModemWorld

This is the Modem World: Four ways to fix e-commerce and shipping companies

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World Four ways to fix Ecommerce and shipping companies

I'm going out of my head right now. I came home hoping to find my cool new Santa Cruz mountain biking jersey all wrapped in plastic thanks to UPS via Chainlove.com, my crazy-discounted gear site of choice. We're not talking anything expensive -- I think the thing cost me $20, but I was psyched to have a team jersey from my favorite bike company. I'm a bike dork, what can I say?

I should have been skeptical when I tracked my package from the office to learn that it had been left at my "front door" at exactly 2:00 PM. While it's possible the driver hit the 2 PM mark on the head, it's unlikely that he or she left anything at my "front door" given that it's three stories or 76 stairs -- my mom counts and complains every time she visits -- above the street. In fact, every single delivery I've ever received here was tossed over my little wooden fence. But in my head, everything was fine. The jersey was waiting for me, my future as a Santa Cruz team member assured. Victory was mine.

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This is the Modem World: Internet radio is inhuman

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World Internet radio is inhuman

I gripped the handset, twirling the coiled wire around my wrist, listening for a ring tone. Instead, a busy signal triggered an autonomous twitch reaction in my teenage hand: hang up, wait for dial tone, hit redial, listen for ring tone. Again. Again.

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This is the Modem World: Seven levels of nerd hierarchy

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World

I have a confession to make. I love /r/cringe, the sub-Reddit dedicated to those moments usually caught on video that make us feel better about our lots in life when we can watch a 30-second chunk of happenstance and walk away thinking, "I am at least one level of dork above that person."

Back in the day you were either a nerd... or not. There were no levels of dorkiness like we have today. You were into computers and Dungeons & Dragons or you weren't: that was pretty much it. You were grouped into a subculture that enjoyed all things electronic, idolized Brian Tochi, knew who Steve Wozniak was and could explain why Weird Science was not a nerd revenge film, but actually a celebration of giving up the machine for love and conformity shrouded in a Hughesian attempt to finally give the dweebs a chance to get some. Still a cool movie, though, and a righteous theme song.

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This is the Modem World: Digital junk food

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World TKTKTK

I'm hanging out in Atlanta right now, getting ready to speak at Digital Summit 2013 about things you're probably not terribly interested in. Most importantly, I'm sitting at a bar and just ordered what looks to be a monster of a burger called the "Hot Mess" at a place called Park Bar near my hotel. Despite my disdain for online review sites, it was either this via Yelp or the hotel bar and, well, I find hotel bars depressing.

It's also pretty clear that the only reason I ordered the Hot Mess is because my wife isn't here to give me a hard time about it. No, I'm not a kept man, but I respect her knowledge of health and try to let her guide me most of the time. But when I'm on the road, I sometimes let all bets fall to the floor so that daddy can dig into a burger uninterrupted.

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This is the Modem World: The Great Computer Cold War of 1982

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World The great computer cold war of 1982

I've known my friend Jeff since I was 2 years old. He was one year ahead of me in school, but in everything else -- little league, school, girls -- we were extremely competitive. We both had two sisters and looked to one another as brothers and yardsticks for prepubescent success. He was better at baseball and I usually had better luck with the ladies. Being better at baseball helped him with the ladies and having a way with the girls made the baseball thing kind of irrelevant. In short, I was better.

I saw Jeff last week, and as we reminisced about the good old days of baseball and babes, he reminded me of what he called The Great Computer Cold War of 1982.

"The great what?" I asked him.

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This is the Modem World: Why don’t I crash?

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World TKTKTK

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. It raged with 3.5K of RAM, a high-speed cassette deck, and built-in BASIC. I used to copy game programs string-by-string from the back of COMPUTE! magazine -- tens of thousands of lines of code -- and small errors were not an option. One syntax error and the program wouldn't work. When I did make those errors, I'd go back, line by line, and check for differences. There was nothing -- at the time -- more annoying than seeing hours of code crash because of one bad POKE statement.

That digital fastidiousness has stuck with me since. I keep all my computers' files in order, keep operating systems updated, backup constantly to a remote storage device and quickly go after a machine that's behaving strangely. The net result, and I may be tempting fate, is that I have never had a computer completely fail in the thirty years I've been using them.

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This is the Modem World: Why are we still texting?

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

DNP This is the Modem World Why are we still texting

"Just text me..."

How many times have you told someone that? Say you're meeting a friend somewhere: What's the first thing you do when you get there? You text him or her to announce your arrival. Why? Because that's how you're trained. You don't email, call or use some other protocol.

And you know what? You're paying for that text even though you already have a data plan, unless you're grandfathered into one of the better unlimited plans of the 20th century. Truth is, SMS texts are perhaps the most lucrative service that providers offer -- more so than data or voice plans, and they want us to keep using the outdated technology whether we need to or not.

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This is the Modem World: Bring It On, Sony. Please.

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

This is the Modem World Bring It On, Sony Please

The Wii U launch sort of came and went, didn't it? I mean, it's a nice console, but it certainly didn't cause any major waves. In fact, Nintendo only sold 57,000 units in January. For those who don't track game console sales numbers -- and why would you -- that's bad. Very bad.

The Wii U, at least so far, has underwhelmed consumers. There isn't a killer application just yet, and despite some interesting innovation with the touchscreen controller, no one is sitting in his living room, staring at an empty space in his entertainment rack, thinking, "You know what I need? A Wii U."

And now we're all waiting so see what Sony does with the PlayStation 4. Rumors are that they'll do what Sony always does: Pack a ton of technology into a package that will be expensive -- but cost less than it should -- in order to get early adopters on board. It's actually possible that by the time this column is posted, Sony will have already released details about its upcoming hardware and you're too busy oohing and ahhing about frame rates and visual controllers.

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This is the Modem World: Japan is not weird

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

This is the Modem World Japan is not weird

There's a dotted line between geekdom and Japan -- some of us call ourselves "otaku;" we follow Japanese technology companies; we look to Japanese culture as a beacon of our tech-obsessed future; we dream of visiting Tokyo. And yet we love to criticize Japanese culture, as if to say, "Well, sure, they make cool stuff, but they sure are messed up."

I'm no expert on Japanese culture. While my visits to the island nation number in the double digits and I'm married to a citizen, I'm not about to claim any sort of authority on matters of Japan.

However, I'm pretty sure they're not as weird as we like to say they are. And if they are, we're just as off-kilter.

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This is the Modem World: Please fix two things

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Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

This is the Modem World Please fix two things

We can all agree that technology is pretty cool. It allows us to communicate with one another, entertain ourselves, meet new people, learn new things and even find love and health. We love to discover new technologies, see it do amazing things and get a glimpse of the future. We, the early adopters, are pioneers, beta testers and happy to be first in line. This is all good.

But despite our hammering, our pleas and our shouts from the tops of the greatest blogs we know, some bad things just don't change. When I say "bad things," I'm talking about two annoying little facts of technology that, in my opinion, don't need to be so painful. These are things we can and should fix.

Perhaps we're not heard loudly enough, or perhaps the technology isn't there to fix what we want, or maybe the manufacturers have better things to do. Whatever it is, let's list those things out here, perhaps so that some engineer or product designer will read this and think, "Why, yes... Yes. I should fix this."

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