Mike Elgan

The U.S. military says it’s using a nuclear doctrine from the Cold War to prevent the next Sony Pictures Entertainment-style hack. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter trotted out the Pentagon’s new Cyber Strategy in Silicon Valley last month. It replaces the previous strategy rolled out four years ago. The new strategy contains three very new […]

Europe last week officially filed formal charges against Google for violating European antitrust laws. Specifically, regulators say that when European users search for products, Google favors its own Google Shopping service over competing sites and services. America’s own Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made similar accusations before concluding nebulously that Google did favor its own services, […]

European regulators and other government bodies have become obsessed in recent months with using every legal tool at their disposal to harm American technology companies like Facebook, Apple and, above all, Google. It goes beyond protectionism and beyond anti-Americanism. Ultimately it’s a war against the Internet itself. And it’s hurting Europe. One strange element of […]

April 24 is as good a date as any to peg as the day wearable computing goes mainstream. The Apple Watch ships that day. Within a few days of its release—possibly within a few hours (thanks to preorders), Apple could ship more smartwatches than all the smartwatches that had previously shipped from all other companies. […]

My prediction is that the Apple Watch will sell better than all previous smartwatches combined within a few days of its release. Critics will say that Apple Watch market success is due to Apple’s marketing mojo or because Apple fans are sheep who buy anything Apple sells. Some will say that it shouldn’t succeed because […]

An innovative Norwegian company you probably never heard of will demonstrate at next week’s Mobile World Congress the smartest bottle of whiskey ever. The company is Thinfilm. And the whiskey is a $200 bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky. Thinfilm will demonstrate a label it created using its new OpenSense near-field communication (NFC) technology, […]

Japan has long been a global leader in mobile phone trends. That’s why the most recent mobile sales numbers coming out of Japan are a shock. For the past two years, smartphone sales have declined. Some 5.3 percent fewer smartphones sold in 2014 than in 2013. Meanwhile, shipments of dumb “flip-phones” rose by 5.7 percent […]

Don’t look now, but there’s an acute attention shortage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to carve out time to focus and get real work done. It’s happening to you. And it’s happening to the people you work for and those work for you. Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s not your fault. If you want […]

“In five years, most of [Facebook] will be video.” That’s what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in November. What he said this week during the company’s earnings report supports his prediction. Facebook users now watch 3 billion videos a day—more than three videos per each active user per day. That’s more than triple the number […]

I know podcasting is experiencing a resurgence because the Internet says so. The number of blog posts and online articles proclaiming an explosion in the popularity or quality or financial success of podcasts since the fall of 2014 has been really astonishing. Here’s what you need to know about the podcasting resurgence. 1. There really […]

A product announced (but not shipped) during the Consumer Electronics Show 2015 year gives us a preview of a transformative category of products that will dominate the next few CES sessions starting next year—the giant touch screen tablet/TV. The company, called Fuhu, exhibited a big Android tablet for children and families. How big? It’s not […]

Isolated cyber-attacks between governments have been taking place for decades. The 2010 Stuxnet attack on Iran to disrupt that country’s nuclear program is one stellar example. The multi-year Red October hack discovered in 2012 is another. But we seem to be entering a new era of bona fide cyber-war, where two nations engage in frequent […]