speech recognition
Remember that Scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty tried to use a Mac Plus? Using a mouse or keyboard to control a computer? Don't be silly. In the future, clearly there's only one way computers will be controlled: by speaking to them. There's
programming languages
I apologize for the scarcity of updates lately. There have been two things in the way: 1. Continuing fallout from International Backup Awareness Day, which meant all updates to Coding Horror from that point onward were hand-edited text files. Which, believe me, isn't nearly as sexy as it
laptops
As a long time reader of Joey DeVilla's excellent blog, Global Nerdy, I take exception to his post Fast Food, Apple Pies, and Why Netbooks Suck: The end result, to my mind, is a device that occupies an uncomfortable, middle ground between laptops and smartphones that tries to
programming languages
Links are the fundamental building blocks of the web [https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-click-here-the-art-of-hyperlinking/]. And every time I click on one, I can't help recalling the odd visionary who came up with the original idea of clickable links in text, aka hypertext [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext]
microsoft bob
Do you remember Microsoft Bob? If you do, you probably remember it as an intensely marketed but laughable failure – what some call the "number one flop" at Microsoft. There's no question that Microsoft Bob was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. But that's the
programming languages
I'd like to talk to you about ducts. Wait a minute. Strike that. I meant COBOL. The Common Business Oriented Language is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary as the language that is everywhere and nowhere at once: As a result, today COBOL is everywhere, yet is largely unheard of
perl
When I started this blog, way back in the dark ages of 2004, the best of the options I had was Movable Type. A Perl and MySQL based blogging platform may seem like an odd choice for a Windows-centric developer like me, but I felt it was the best of
windows
While I haven't been unhappy with Windows Vista, it had a lot of rough edges: This is why the screenshot of the Windows 7 Calculator, although seemingly trivial, is so exciting to me. It's evidence that Microsoft is going to pay attention to the visible parts
technology trends
The original iPhone was for suckers hard-core gadget enthusiasts only. But as I predicted, 12 months later, the iPhone 3G rectified all the shortcomings of the first version. And now, with the iPhone 3GS, we've reached the mythical third version: A computer industry adage is that Microsoft does
programming languages
It's pop quiz time! Put away your notes, and let's begin. a) Do you own this book?* b) Do you know who this man is? c) Does this FAQ look familiar to you? 3) OUR LITTLE FRIEND, THE COMPUTER 3.1) Are there any OSes that
search engines
Google's Chrome browser passes anything you type into the address bar that isn't an obvious URI on to the default search engine. While web browsers should have some built-in smarts, they can never match the collective intelligence of a worldwide search engine. For example: weather San
software development
I'll always remember WordPerfect as the quintessential white text on blue screen application. For a period from about 1985 to 1992, WordPerfect was the most popular word processing program in the world on virtually every computing platform. I remember it well; the very concept of word processing was