When Animoto hit the scene in 2007, its creators thought bands and their teenage fans would want to use the tool to make videos for their MySpace pages. How times have changed. Animoto’s basic features are still the same: the software grabs photos and video clips from your computer or smartphone and renders them into … Continue reading “Animoto Wants to Make You Cry”
Author: Wade Roush
Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco.
Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.)
I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia.
I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats.
My personal site: waderoush.com
My social media coordinates:
Twitter: @wroush
Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush
Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush
YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967
Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/
Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/
“Do or Die” Moment for Foes of Retroactive Tax in California
After a 2012 court ruling invalidated an old tax break for small-business investors, California entrepreneurs laid siege to Sacramento. They persuaded allies in the California Senate to whip up a bill that would rescue them from an estimated $120 million in back tax payments, only to see the bill watered down by amendments. Now, as … Continue reading ““Do or Die” Moment for Foes of Retroactive Tax in California”
Misfit Shine and the Pros and Cons of Wearable Fitness Trackers
I don’t like being encumbered. That’s why I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago, around the time I got my first mobile phone. That’s also why I’ve long looked askance at activity-tracking bracelets like the Fitbit Flex, the Nike FuelBand, and the Jawbone UP. I liked the idea of having more data about my exercise … Continue reading “Misfit Shine and the Pros and Cons of Wearable Fitness Trackers”
Sift Science Uses Machine Learning to Weed Out Credit Card Fraud
Google has team of 120 engineers dedicated solely to fighting fraud and webspam. Its leader, Matt Cutts, is probably the most familiar face at the company, after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and chairman Eric Schmidt. Up in Seattle, Amazon has more than twice as many full-time fraud-fighters. And when you consider that online … Continue reading “Sift Science Uses Machine Learning to Weed Out Credit Card Fraud”
Meet the 45 New Y Combinator Startups: From Bitcoins to Bots
[Headline updated to reflect accurate startup count of 45, not 46. That’ll teach you not to do math in your head at 2 in the morning.] One secret to getting through yesterday’s Y Combinator Demo Day, if you were one of the 800 people enduring three hours of presentations at the Computer History Museum in … Continue reading “Meet the 45 New Y Combinator Startups: From Bitcoins to Bots”
Expect Labs Anticipates a Day when the Computer Is Always Listening
Today’s computers are like distracted middle-school students: you practically have to scream at them to get their attention. To tell a search engine you want a news article, you have to type a few words into the search on your phone or laptop. To tell Siri or Google Now that you need a map or … Continue reading “Expect Labs Anticipates a Day when the Computer Is Always Listening”
High-Speed Rail or Hyperloop? Let’s Try Both, and Reward the Winner
It’s been a bumpy week for high-speed rail advocates in California. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published a story saying that groundbreaking on the first section of the “bullet train” route linking L.A. and San Francisco will likely slip into 2014—more than two years behind schedule. Then on Monday, aerospace and automotive mogul Elon … Continue reading “High-Speed Rail or Hyperloop? Let’s Try Both, and Reward the Winner”
Solazyme Bets on Cosmetics Now, But Still Sees Biofuel Future
For a long time—even as recently as 2011, the year it went public—Solazyme (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SZYM]]) described itself as a renewable biofuels company. The South San Francisco firm said it wanted to use its secret, heavily engineered strain of microalgae to convert feedstocks like sugarcane into oils inside huge industrial fermentation vats. It boasted of producing … Continue reading “Solazyme Bets on Cosmetics Now, But Still Sees Biofuel Future”
Proteins of Tomorrow? Soy, Peas, Crickets, and Mealworms
More than half of the protein in the American diet comes from meat. So where do the animals we dine upon get their protein? Mostly, they make it from corn and grasses—but they’re not very good at it. A cow needs 20,000 kilocalories of corn to make just 2,000 kilocalories of beef. It would short-circuit … Continue reading “Proteins of Tomorrow? Soy, Peas, Crickets, and Mealworms”
The Geek Doesn’t Always Get the Girl: A Novelist on Hacking Romance
In today’s Silicon Valley, the hacker wunderkinds are ascendant. Boy-kings are running billion-member social networks, founding massive new venture capital firms, building incubators that churn out hundreds of new startups every year, and even fighting poverty and disease by drilling for water in Ethiopia. Materially, at least, their revenge on whatever high-school cliques once excluded … Continue reading “The Geek Doesn’t Always Get the Girl: A Novelist on Hacking Romance”
At Udemy, Online Education Meets the Marketplace
Imagine that you’re a second-year college student returning to campus in September, only to discover that your school has made some curious changes. Instead of offering just one introductory Spanish course, one calculus course, and one chemistry course, the college now lets you choose from a dozen of each, led by different instructors with different … Continue reading “At Udemy, Online Education Meets the Marketplace”
Prysm Eyes Telepresence as Next Application for Video Walls
One sign that your company has arrived is that you can afford telepresence suites from Cisco or Polycom—you know, those rooms equipped with a trio of 1080p flat-panel displays and special cameras, microphones, and lighting so that chief executives in New York can see tiny droplets of sweat on the faces of vice presidents in … Continue reading “Prysm Eyes Telepresence as Next Application for Video Walls”
What’s In Your Earthquake Kit? Here’s a Look at Mine
If you live in California, where earthquakes measuring 4.0 or above hit once or twice a month, you can’t ignore the fact that the continental plates are shifting. Frequent, minor temblors help to remind us that someday, the Big One could instantly disable our fragile highways, aqueducts, and communications networks. In that scenario, all of … Continue reading “What’s In Your Earthquake Kit? Here’s a Look at Mine”
Building an Entrepreneurial Pipeline in Santa Cruz
This is Part 3 of a three-part series on efforts to create a stand-alone startup culture in Santa Cruz, CA. Part 1 was published on July 30 and Part 2 was published on July 31. UC Santa Cruz, tucked into the folds of a redwood-covered hill about three miles outside the downtown, is the city’s … Continue reading “Building an Entrepreneurial Pipeline in Santa Cruz”
Seeding a New Generation of Startups in Santa Cruz
This is Part 2 of a three-part series on efforts to create a stand-alone startup culture in Santa Cruz, CA. Part 1 was published on July 30. Norm Fogelsong, a general partner at Menlo Park venture capital firm IVP, and an early investor in Santa Cruz-born hard disk pioneer Seagate Technology, says he looks for three … Continue reading “Seeding a New Generation of Startups in Santa Cruz”
Digital Health Meets The Voice: Startup Contest Puts VCs On Stage
When Morgenthaler Ventures partner Rebecca Lynn organized the first “DC to VC” startup and healthcare policy showcase in 2010, there weren’t any competitions, challenges, or hackathons for digital health companies. Heck, there were barely any digital health companies, period. Now almost every big tech hub has a digital health startup accelerator, and “every time you … Continue reading “Digital Health Meets The Voice: Startup Contest Puts VCs On Stage”
Santa Cruz, the City Over the Hill, Builds Its Own Startup Culture
Part 1 in a three-part series. If you’re visiting from the north, part of the delight of arriving in Santa Cruz—quite apart from its numerous attractions, both natural and man-made—is that you have survived the terrifying drive over the Santa Cruz Mountains on California State Route 17. Engineers opened the narrow, sinuous, partial-access expressway in … Continue reading “Santa Cruz, the City Over the Hill, Builds Its Own Startup Culture”
What Will the End of Moore’s Law Mean for Consumers? Not Much
“The party isn’t exactly over, but the police have arrived, and the music has been turned way down.” That’s how Peter Kogge, an ex-IBM computer scientist who teaches at Notre Dame, described the state of supercomputing in a 2011 article in IEEE Spectrum. The giant machines that researchers use to simulate things like climate change, … Continue reading “What Will the End of Moore’s Law Mean for Consumers? Not Much”
Surprise, the Tech News Didn’t Stop While I Was Away
I was away on vacation in a north-woodsy part of Michigan last week. Maybe you were out too, given that half of all Americans go on out-of-state vacations in July. But now I’m back, I’ve powered through the 1,000 e-mails in my inbox, and I’m catching up on a few of the Bay Area technology … Continue reading “Surprise, the Tech News Didn’t Stop While I Was Away”
10 New Productivity Tricks for Your Old iPhone
As you can probably tell from my calendar (pictured in the first photo above), I’m jetting off to Michigan today for a week’s vacation with my family. For me, vacation is a time to put aside my gadgets—or at least, turn off my e-mail—and focus on sun, sailing, and cervezas. But for everyone who has … Continue reading “10 New Productivity Tricks for Your Old iPhone”
Seven Questions for the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association
You may never have heard of the Consumer Electronics Association, but you’ve definitely heard of its most famous annual event: the huge Consumer Electronics Show, or International CES. The four-day extravaganza draws more than 150,000 attendees to Las Vegas each January to see keynote talks by top industry CEOs and exhibits from 3,000 companies. Interestingly, … Continue reading “Seven Questions for the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association”
After Virtualization: VMware’s Valiant Plan to Co-opt the Cloud
VMware has outgrown its name. The “VM” stands for virtual machines, and the “ware” stands for the software needed to create them. The original idea, based on research in the 1990s by co-founder Mendel Rosenblum, the husband of founding CEO Diane Greene, was to help companies get more performance out of their computers by setting … Continue reading “After Virtualization: VMware’s Valiant Plan to Co-opt the Cloud”
Ridepal Offers Free Google Bus-Style Rides to Relieve BART Strike
A shutdown of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system has been snarling traffic around San Francisco since Tuesday, as local branches of the Almagamated Transit Union and the Service Employees International Union continue to strike for improvements in salary, pensions, healthcare coverage, and worker safety. So, it’s been a good week to telecommute. But for … Continue reading “Ridepal Offers Free Google Bus-Style Rides to Relieve BART Strike”
Venture Investors Continue Love Affair with Digital Health Startups
It’s been a slow year for startup fundraising—the investments doled out by venture firms in the first quarter dropped 6 percent compared with the same period of 2012. But at least a couple of sectors have been defying that trend. One is software, where funding for the first half of 2012 was up 38 percent … Continue reading “Venture Investors Continue Love Affair with Digital Health Startups”
Q2 Review: Top San Francisco Stories from April, May, and June
Taking a cue from my colleagues in Boston and Seattle, I’ve gone through the archives to give you a look back at some of the most important, popular, controversial, or just plain fun Xconomy San Francisco articles and commentaries of the second quarter of 2013. I’ve picked six articles from each month, drawing on our … Continue reading “Q2 Review: Top San Francisco Stories from April, May, and June”
PasswordBox: Strong Passwords That You Don’t Have to Remember
Leave it to tech entrepreneurs to turn bad news into good news. For most of us, our passwords are the keys to our entire digital lives. The bad news is that we’re losing the race to keep these passwords safe from hacker attacks. Making up a secure yet memorable password used to be a matter … Continue reading “PasswordBox: Strong Passwords That You Don’t Have to Remember”
Glam Reinvents Blogging and Brand Advertising for a Fragmented Web
When the logo on your building is visible from 101, the freeway that snakes between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, you know you’ve arrived. And Glam Media has arrived in a big way. A collection of independent lifestyle blogs tied together by a premium-brand advertising operation, Glam is, from a certain point of view, the … Continue reading “Glam Reinvents Blogging and Brand Advertising for a Fragmented Web”
Get Employees Engaged, Then You Can Talk About Wellness, Says Keas
Just five chronic conditions—heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and obesity—account for more than 75 percent of all healthcare costs in the U.S., according to the CDC. All are to some extent preventable. So if employers could just keep their workers a little healthier, they’d stand to save a ton of money on medical coverage. That’s … Continue reading “Get Employees Engaged, Then You Can Talk About Wellness, Says Keas”
Battle of the Bluetooth Speakers: Big Sound in Small Packages
Back in 2009, Lief Storer realized he was putting his own safety in jeopardy every time he donned his big DJ headphones before biking to work. “I had a tough time picking up traffic coming at me from the rear,” he says. But he didn’t want to give up his music. So he jammed an … Continue reading “Battle of the Bluetooth Speakers: Big Sound in Small Packages”
Are Apple, Google, and Facebook Done Innovating? Readers Speak
In the world of tech journalism, the fastest way to start an argument is to say something critical about Apple. When you throw in Google and Facebook, you really know there are going to be fireworks. That’s exactly what happened over the weekend after we published my column “Don’t Panic, But We’ve Passed Peak Apple. … Continue reading “Are Apple, Google, and Facebook Done Innovating? Readers Speak”
Media Camp, Act 2: Meet the Second Class of Storytelling Startups
When Media Camp opened its doors in downtown San Francisco in 2012, it represented an exotic new species of startup accelerator. Unlike most other accelerators, it was owned and run by a big corporation—Turner Broadcasting. It was focused on a single industry: digital media. It was happy to admit companies that had already gone through … Continue reading “Media Camp, Act 2: Meet the Second Class of Storytelling Startups”
Don’t Panic, But We’ve Passed Peak Apple. And Google. And Facebook.
After the dot-com crash in 2001, the tech world needed a few years to regroup. But starting around 2004, the year Facebook was founded and Google went public, the winds of innovation in consumer- and business-facing technology began to pick up again. In 2007 or so, they reached hurricane speed, and minus a short lull … Continue reading “Don’t Panic, But We’ve Passed Peak Apple. And Google. And Facebook.”
Public Media Collides with Silicon Valley; Six Startups Emerge
What happens when you bring Silicon Valley business and product-design thinking to bear on problems faced by content creators, publishers, and average citizens looking for more powerful ways to communicate? That’s the question under investigation at Matter, a San Francisco-based venture accelerator born from the public media sector. It’s not the Bay Area’s first media-focused … Continue reading “Public Media Collides with Silicon Valley; Six Startups Emerge”
Chamath Palihapitiya Wants to Rewire the Crap Out of Healthcare
What does an ex-Facebook tycoon with a degree in electrical engineering know about fixing the U.S. healthcare system? Well, Chamath Palihapitiya knows that healthcare is in need of some drastic reinvention, and that to some extent, this will involve training people to think and behave in new ways—in much the same way Facebook has trained … Continue reading “Chamath Palihapitiya Wants to Rewire the Crap Out of Healthcare”
Coffee Goes from Folger’s, to Starbucks, to Tech-Driven ‘Third Wave’
There’s change brewing in the world of coffee. Over the last 10 years or so, an assortment of independent “third wave” coffee roasters has appeared in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Austin, and Boulder—in other words, the same high-tech hubs we cover here at Xconomy. Each Xconomy editor has his or her … Continue reading “Coffee Goes from Folger’s, to Starbucks, to Tech-Driven ‘Third Wave’”
New Rock Health Startups Focus on Data, Sensors, Patients
San Francisco’s Rock Health startup accelerator unveiled its latest class of startups this week. It’s the fifth group admitted to the digital health program, which provides each of its companies with a $100,000 investment and four months of intensive entrepreneurship training, networking, and product design and development help. The 11 companies are working on problems … Continue reading “New Rock Health Startups Focus on Data, Sensors, Patients”
11 Reasons Why Flickr, Not Facebook, Is the Place to Put Your Photos
What’s the best way to put your pictures on the Internet these days? There are at least two answers to that question. If you’re just asking which photo sharing service is the most popular, then Facebook is the hands-down winner. People upload roughly 350 million photos to the social network every day. Snapchat isn’t far … Continue reading “11 Reasons Why Flickr, Not Facebook, Is the Place to Put Your Photos”
Microsoft’s GeoFlow Lets Spreadsheet Jockeys Tell Stories with Maps
When Curtis Wong was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, he knew that the Milky Way existed. But like most urban-dwellers, he’d never seen it. “It was just this mythical thing in books,” says Wong, who is now a principal researcher at Microsoft. “It wasn’t until after high school that some friends and I … Continue reading “Microsoft’s GeoFlow Lets Spreadsheet Jockeys Tell Stories with Maps”
Do You Have A Story to Tell? Here Are the Digital Tools You’ll Need
Back in January I got an invitation out of the blue to give a 1-hour talk at the Palo Alto Research Center—the Xerox-owned lab better known as PARC. The invitation was completely open-ended. The full extent of PARC’s guidance was “we think you would have a lot of interesting things to share.” If you’re a … Continue reading “Do You Have A Story to Tell? Here Are the Digital Tools You’ll Need”
Nine Lessons for Innovators from a Nobel Prize-Winning Psychologist
I was pretty slow about getting around to reading Thinking, Fast and Slow. The career-capping book by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of behavioral economics, spent months on all the bestseller lists back in 2011. I finally picked up a paperback copy a couple of weeks ago. The book is mainly about … Continue reading “Nine Lessons for Innovators from a Nobel Prize-Winning Psychologist”
Matterport Isn’t Playing Games with Kinect-Style 3D Camera
When Tel Aviv, Israel-based PrimeSense came out with its first depth-sensitive, near-infrared camera-on-a-chip in 2010, nobody could have predicted how many uses hardware makers would dream up for the technology within a few short years. The first and most famous was Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, which lets gamers move their bodies to interact with video games. … Continue reading “Matterport Isn’t Playing Games with Kinect-Style 3D Camera”
VC Meets AC/DC: Video from the NVCA Live Concert
For a minute I thought I was back in 2008, when Xconomy organized Boston’s first Battle of the Tech Bands. But no, this was 2013, and I was in San Francisco, at the Great American Music Hall (where the Grateful Dead recorded One From the Vault). And I was at “NVCA Live!”—a private concert organized … Continue reading “VC Meets AC/DC: Video from the NVCA Live Concert”
Life After PowerPoint: Prezi Zooms Ahead in Digital Storytelling
Not every speech is improved by visual aids. Abraham Lincoln made do without PowerPoint at Gettysburg (though wags have tried to reimagine that), and Franklin Roosevelt’s voice on the radio in 1933 calmed a nation rattled by the Great Depression and cemented the New Deal. But there’s high oratory, and then there’s the old-fashioned presentation, … Continue reading “Life After PowerPoint: Prezi Zooms Ahead in Digital Storytelling”
Cloud Seeding: Rackspace’s Soft Spot for Startups
There are at least three good reasons for a startup to apply to an accelerator or incubator program: the mentorship, the networking connections, and the money (around $100,000 if your company gets into a top-tier accelerator like Y Combinator). But at most accelerators, there’s another, lesser-known benefit: the swag—as in the free, or virtually free, … Continue reading “Cloud Seeding: Rackspace’s Soft Spot for Startups”
The VC Will See You Now at the “World’s Largest Office Hours”
The three laws of getting a meeting with a VC: 1) If you don’t know somebody who can provide a referral, don’t even try. 2) Start about four months in advance. 3) Once the meeting is on the books, assume that it will be rescheduled at least twice, and probably again on the day of … Continue reading “The VC Will See You Now at the “World’s Largest Office Hours””
Do You Need an Extended Warranty? Do the Math, Says SquareTrade
Consumer Reports, the nation’s most respected source of product reviews and buying advice, does not mince words about extended warranties. It calls them a bad idea and money down the drain. The website Consumerist agrees, calling extended warranties useless and usually a bad deal. So why on earth would you consider shelling out an extra … Continue reading “Do You Need an Extended Warranty? Do the Math, Says SquareTrade”
DabKick Spices Up Mobile Chat with Video, Photos, and Now Music
Do mobile-device owners really want to share photos, videos, and other media with their friends in real time? Would you have more fun browsing your photo album or watching the latest viral video on YouTube if you knew your friends were looking at the same stuff on their phones at the same time? Every so … Continue reading “DabKick Spices Up Mobile Chat with Video, Photos, and Now Music”
Tech Meets the T-Shirt at Pistol Lake and Pickwick & Weller
It’s hard to think of a fashion item that’s been more commoditized than the T-shirt. Over the last century it’s evolved from a versatile work garment for miners, sailors, and farmers into a nearly universal piece of topwear for students, athletes, and startup employees. It’s also become a form of wearable advertising—a way to display … Continue reading “Tech Meets the T-Shirt at Pistol Lake and Pickwick & Weller”
Siri Co-Creator Questions Texas A&M Texting-and-Driving Study
The co-inventor of Siri has a bone to pick with the media. A rash of stories last week—reporting on a study released by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) in College Station, TX—implied that using voice-to-text mobile applications such as Siri and Vlingo while you drive is no safer than texting while driving. But Adam … Continue reading “Siri Co-Creator Questions Texas A&M Texting-and-Driving Study”
Automatic’s App Puts Your Smartphone in Charge of Your Car
My car is probably the dumbest machine I own. It’s a 2000 Honda Accord, meaning it’s got none of the cool in-dash electronics found in today’s latest models, like the MyFord Touch entertainment system from Ford, the OnStar safety and navigation system from GM, or the iDrive computer system from BMW. But what I do … Continue reading “Automatic’s App Puts Your Smartphone in Charge of Your Car”