Man vs Woman vs Technology

I came across this piece which argues against the traditional belief that young men set the buying trend on new technology.

The Atlantic article suggests it's women who are the demographic tech companies should be focussed on as they are the ones who take up new technology faster than men.

It's an interesting article, but more enlightening (or depressing - depending on your perspective) are the comments that spew forth below the online piece. 

I was fascinated with how gendered the responses were and how upset some seemed to be by the article, viciously arguing against the idea that women might actually be making the decisions on new technology. 

Who knew men took the crown of technology take-up so seriously.

I'm just going to skip off now and help with the beta testing of my graphics card update while playing the latest video game and using the voice recognition on my iphone 4. Enjoy!

Aw Man, Turns Out My Draw Something Addiction is Slightly Sinful

So I've been playing the iphone/Android game Draw Something. Totally addicted. I've collective enough points to buy two colour schemes and have shared 79 games with one player all within about two weeks.

It's a really cool game and I get a kick out of watching how my drawing and that of other players improves over time. It also helps massage my right brain's creative skills.

It's basically a game that gives you three choices of what to draw - then you draw what you've chosen and hope the other person playing guesses correctly. I had no idea how much fun I could have.

But imagine my surprise upon learning about Draw Something's dark history.

Draw Something was created by OMGPOP, which a large and well known company called Zynga acquired.

When Zynga acquired OMGPOP it offered jobs to all the developers that worked there. One guy said 'No' because he thought Zynga was evil. He argued as a company it didn't respect its customers or developers and was just out to make money. He also couldn't get a guarantee that Zynga wouldn't force him to take a game he had made and owned (which was making hardly any money at all) off the market so it didn't compete.

But is Zynga evil? This article says maybe not, as so many people play their popular games, like FarmVille.

Check it out and decide for yourself. But for me, playing Draw Something is going to be that little bit less enjoyable.. though I don't think I'll stop my sinful indulgence.

25-year-old Kickstarter Whiz

I posted sad Kickstarter stories a little while ago, but here is an interview with the 25-year-old who ran one of the most successful kickstarter campaigns... Eric Migicovsky and his team founded Pebble, an e-paper smartwatch that's compatible with iphones and Android phones.

He raised nearly 9 million dollars in his Kickstarter campaign as people bought up orders for the watch. The campaign is actually still going and has 8 days left on it, but the watches are sold out. He's still making money though with over 10 million pledged.

I can't remember what I was doing at 25.