Ben Werdmuller

Tag: google

  • Devices and desires: why the portable device wars are a red herring

    A little pre-history When I was a kid, I had an Atari 130XE. You’ve probably never heard of it. It was an 8-bit, all-in-one box that booted straight into BASIC; a flexible, well-built, sturdy computer. There was just one problem: it wasn’t a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore Amiga. At the time, Britain was undergoing […]

  • Charging for software in the age of web apps

    Google was an advertising company. Back in 2005, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber described Google’s business as follows: Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads. This isn’t to belittle them — I think Google is a terrific company, and […]

  • Chrome OS and the web as applications

    It’s not a Google strategy, but they’ve chosen to embrace and extend it: the web is turning into an application platform. Google announced Chrome OS today – an operating system for netbooks, designed to boot up in seconds directly to a browser. Applications run using HTML 5 standards, which include support for offline applications and […]

  • Building the user-centered web

    The following post contains my notes for a talk I gave at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University on June 25, 2009. What is a social network? I would like to reclaim some language: Social is an adjective that means relating to human society and its members. A network is an interconnected […]