The product has been well reviewed. I just wanted to point out what a great idea it is: Package WiFi and cellular modem in a little device you can carry in your pocket or purse. The product lets you take a WiFi hotspot with you and it works everywhere where's a cellular signal. My MiFi is on Verizon so it happens to work almost everywhere in the US (except in the lobby of Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, CA where I am right now). It worked when I landed this morning and took a taxi to the hotel. It works in my hotel room in Boulder or in Santa Monica (and I don't have to pay the ...

I flew on Virgin America recently and noted that, including myself, five of the six people in my row opened Macintosh computers after the flight took off. That got me to thinking about what the real market share of the Macintosh computer is. Most analysts cite that Apple, as a company, sells a few percent of the personal computers sold in the world each year. Apple is selling Macintoshes at a rate of about 10M per year; PC sales worldwide were around 270M in 2008. That would make Apple's market share around 4%. So this is the truth. But is it truth that actually matters to anyone? The reason to care about Apple's market share is to get a clear idea ...

Earlier this week, Smith & Tinker took the wraps off its first product, the Nanovor game and its associated Nanoscope portable player. Smith & Tinker is one of our most interesting and aggressive portfolio companies, because it is trying to establish a new approach to building digital toys, one that fully embraces the idea that the current generation of kids want toys that are digital, interactive and internet enabled and are impatient with the half-steps that have been taken so far along that road. This is a company that was originally hatched in the experience of The Geek, Gilman Louie. Ever since he sold his company, Spectrum Holobyte, to Hasbro, it's been bugging him that toys didn't ...