Chronicles of Mario

Yelp is the juggernaut of food and entertainment reviews but there’s always room for a little guy to move in and do things better. A service called Loku finds news and recommends places in neighborhoods based on its algorithms that apply natural language processing and sentiment analysis to the reviews, posts, and social media updates  [ Read More ]

I’m in favor of the new energy efficient light bulbs mandated by U.S. law. Incandescents are inefficient with a short life-span and burn hot to the touch. Compact Florescents (CFs) solve some of this by being more efficient and having a longer lifespan but are a touch more expensive. Same goes with LED bulbs, they’re  [ Read More ]

Here’s an interesting thought — will Amazon release a smartphone the way it has released a tablet? In the grand scheme of things, Amazon’s Kindle and subsequent Kindle Fire will likely pay off well for the company. It makes sense to sell them with only a small profit margin, at-cost, or even at a loss  [ Read More ]

I’m not particularly sure what all the hype surrounding Siri is all about — the newest feature of the iPhone 4S. In a sense, I do understand how people want to feel like the rich guy (or gal) who owns a mansion, has a butler, and his own concierge. You ask a question, Siri answers  [ Read More ]

Do you like Herman Cain’s tax plan? Maybe you should figure out what income bracket you’re in first. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities made a chart showing how Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan would affect taxpayers. There are essentially two important takeaways: Taxes for the bottom 80% of people would increase Taxes for the  [ Read More ]

We’ve all heard of Web 2.0 and some of us even know about HTML5 and CSS3. None of these are quite as revolutionary to the internet as Lytro‘s light field camera is to photography. This camera allows you to take a picture without focusing. You never have to worry about missing that perfect moment because  [ Read More ]

So I was talking to Alice, a good friend of mine who recently moved to Singapore with her husband, about the lack of online consumer services available in the country compared to what she had in Manhattan. One thing led to another and I found this little gem of an article through Google Trends. Apparently  [ Read More ]

People are constantly annoyed at me for not being able to receive text messages. Those who are not technology savvy assume it’s some limitation of a “cheap android” phone and ask if they got an iPhone would that solve my problem. (Ahem, the iPhone 3GS couldn’t even send MMS for three months after its release  [ Read More ]

#include <stdio.h> int main () { printf(“goodbye, world\n”); return 0; }

After a series of uncharacteristically bad mistakes, I thought maybe, just maybe, Netflix had a secret plan. Netflix has been very good at understanding the market historically and offering people what they want for a good price and a decent selection. And, most of all, the make it simple for their customers. Secret Plan A:  [ Read More ]