Articles by Renay San Miguel

F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. Would he have changed his mind if The Great Gatsby had received the 3-D IMAX treatment -- with Jay Gatsby as an alien bootlegger and Nick Carraway as avenging Ivy League superhero? After burning bright and flaming out fast in the 1950s, "3-D: The Sequel" is now enjoying a surprisi...

Please don't get the wrong idea about this column; I have nothing against crowdsourcing. Some of my best friends belong to crowds. I also have nothing against the concept of a "free, Web-based, collaborative multilingual encyclopedia project," as Wikipedia defines itself. And while journalists, students and others doing research should know by now to consider the wide variety -- and quality -- of sources that go into most Wikipedia listings, I'll admit that there is some value within the information that's presented; it can steer you in the right direction to validation. On the most trivial level, it can mean hours of time-wasting fun to skip around the listings and check out what's been written about a favorite movie/rock band/pro athlete/geometric equation...

In the technology industry, imitation has always been the sincerest form of flattery -- if not a successful business model for certain companies. It's even more so in the nascent smartphone segment, so no one seems to be particularly surprised that Verizon Wireless and Google have plans to make an Android-based tablet computer to take on Apple's iPad...

Turn on an Android OS phone, and that little yellow robot pops up all over the touchscreen like R2D2 on bionic steroids. A mini-chorus line of them shows up first, then just one robot decides to play hide and seek with you; there he is peeking out from the left side of the screen. Now he's upside down, waving at you with a tiny cyber-arm The impres...

The "Like" button that's part of Facebook's new Open Graph platform depicts a miniature "thumbs up" hand gesture, and it provides a quick, easy way for those visiting certain websites to indicate they approve of the content and want to place it on their FB profiles. And like thousands of Roger Ebert wannabes giving a positive review of the new platform, businesses large and small seem to be willing to jump aboard this new sharing paradigm, despite privacy concerns raised by a growing number of critics -- the most recent voice being that of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

After a tumultuous couple of weeks for Facebook that have included the introduction of Open Graph, threats of lawmaker scrutiny, complaints from consumer groups and embarrassing bugs in its software, members of the social networking site may be wondering whether it's time to ask the musical question: Should I stay or should I go? Should members st...

Christine Maddela, the weekend anchor at WKRN-TV in Nashville, joined Twitter on July 1, 2009. It took her all of three days to discover the microblogging service's potential impact on journalism "Three days later, on July 4, (former Tennessee Titans Quarterback) Steve McNair was murdered, and I broke the news of McNair's death on Twitter," Maddela...

A new attempt to offer regulations for Internet privacy may be a so-called discussion draft, but so far the discussion has been anything but promising for Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher, a man who cosponsored the 2005 Consumer Privacy Protection Act The Democrat released the draft legislation on Tuesday along with its cosponsor, Florida Republic...

Where's the fault in making "share" the default setting on Facebook? After all, people who have read 10 years' worth of scary headlines about email viruses, Internet scams featuring Nigerian princes and phishing websites seem eager to give up their likes, dislikes, kids' names, embarrassing photos and vital statistics to an audience of a half-billion on the world's largest social network...

How do you allow consumers to modify the software that's on their desktop computers -- to be able to take parts of Windows, iTunes and Photoshop and put them on the same screen -- without having the entire legal departments of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and other companies knocking on their doors? The answer may lie in Prefab, a simple, elegant soluti...

"Here in Windows-land, we love us some multi-touch," wrote Ben Rudolph on the Windows Team Blog as he reviews the new Toshiba Satellite M505 laptop. Rudolph is giving the machine two thumbs up for how well it shows off the touchscreen capabilities in the Windows 7 operating system. But a laptop isn't a tablet computer, and Microsoft apparently is...

Can you still support the First Amendment, the blogging community and all that is holy in journalism, and still think that what Gizmodo did re: the lost iPhone was kind of sleazy? Is Gizmodo's crime one of an ethical/moral nature, or one that is worthy of a police raid by elite members of SWAT -- Seeking Whatever Apple Targets? And were there any o...

The branding gurus at various tech companies are certainly gamblers at heart; they're always rolling the dice when they choose names for their products. Tech reporters and bloggers clap their hands together in gleeful anticipation when they hear about a forthcoming iPad, ThinkPad, Zune, Vista or Wii -- especially if said products end up sucking royally. They can imagine how much fun they would have with headlines like "ThinkPad? StinkPad!," "Goodnight Zune," "Vista's Lack of Vision," etc...

It's one of the world's most popular manufacturers of phones. It has a globally recognized brand. It's ready to show off the latest enhancements to its smartphone operating system. And as far as anyone can tell, it hasn't lost a prototype phone in a Silicon Valley bar and seen it torn apart on a technology blog Maybe Nokia could use some of the pub...

Why go into a Barnes & Noble, find a comfy chair and flip through the pages of a physical book when you can go into a Barnes & Noble, find a comfy chair and flip through the pages of a virtual book on the Nook e-reader? ...

Yes, here we go, another Apple column. Another chance to vent about a company that's morphed into something else. Another chance to decry its PR strategies, its capricious App Store policies, its famously mercurial founder Yet because this column is coming on the heels of so many others who have taken Apple to task in recent weeks, I feel the need ...

When you work in the cybersecurity business, friends can make you their default -- read "unpaid" -- computer safety expert. Wen Tseng, research director for the Cloud Computing Alliance, really doesn't mind, however; it gives him a chance to confirm that scammers and hackers are increasingly relying on the friendship networks spreading through social media to do their damage to bank accounts and reputations...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it "the most transformative thing we've ever done on the Web," and Ginger McCall, chief counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, didn't disagree "I was stunned and shocked and somewhat awed by their brilliance," McCall told TechNewsWorld. "I watched the keynote and was just floored and excited at th...

Roughly six months before it bought YouTube, did Google actually share the view of the online video site that other copyright owners had -- that it was a repository for illegally uploaded content? Does Viacom have a smoking gun against Google/YouTube, and does it come in the form of statements from their own senior executives? These tantalizing que...

At the risk of giving Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain one more reason to do 360s in his grave, I'm compelled to modify one of his best-known quotes: It seems reports of journalism's demise at the hands of technology have been greatly exaggerated The evidence piled up this week. Awards were announced, new business models launched, constructive criticism h...