starting the new year with a tremor

The year everything went mobile. I used to like Andrew Leonard's column but this essay is shameless keep-up-with-the-Joneses hard sell: "If you are in business, the ability to exploit the world’s rush to mobile makes or breaks careers and decisively shapes the fortunes of even the mightiest corporations." Most workplaces are still using Windows XP or 7 -- Leonard needs to spend some time poking around the slow lane where you don't get press junkets.

I don't want to download your app. The wisdom after the dot com crash was that websites became too complicated with exotic bells and whistles that allowed designers to show off but buried the information you were looking for. Hence, Blogging, where the newest content is right on the front page. Over the last ten years we've had feature creep, and the transition to mobile and "apps" is taking us back to that balkanized state of many possible designs where it takes longer to get what you need.

Is not joining Facebook a sign you're a psychopath? This writer seems not to consider that Facebook is a private-sector company looking to turn a buck (and off to a somewhat rocky start) -- it's not a state issuing something like a driver's license. These fear tactics are beyond the pale as a way to nudge consumer choice.