Long before Farmville and its innumerable clones, there was SimCity. Many formative years -- mine included -- were devoted to micromanaging a sprawling metropolis in order to placate a population of fickle digitized denizens. It was, without exaggeration, the pinnacle of single-player gaming for an entire generation.

A cruelly...

January 18th is #InternetFreedomDay: the one-year anniversary of the collective uproar that derailed the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills from being signed into law. What should have been a euphoric celebration of a hard-earned victory, however, has instead become a memorial for the loss of one of the...

As far as D.C. weekend destinations go, Anacostia usually doesn't rank very high on anyone's list. That, however, may soon be changing.

Last Saturday, I ventured across the river to Lumin8 Anacostia, an event funded by ArtPlace and organized by D.C.'s Office of Planning, in conjunction...

I'm what you might call a tech pseudo-geek, a rather common archetype of the Internet generation.

MS-DOS, dial-up modems and "The Oregon Trail" were staples of my childhood. AOL Instant Messenger was my social stenographer throughout middle school. When I arrived to college in 2004, everyone was raving...

As we bid adieu to a tumultuous 2011 and welcome a hopefully apocalypse-free 2012, I've put together a short list of trends to keep an eye on in the social media universe:

1) The slowing growth of Facebook in the U.S. and its skyrocketing growth in the developing world.

At...

For ages, Washington, D.C. has been known as the quintessential political town -- and little else. In recent years, thanks primarily to the concerted efforts of District natives and transplants alike, our city has earned recognition for reasons independent of its betrothal to the federal government.

We've seen the...

Nine months have now passed since the tumultuous beginnings of the Arab Spring burst forth in the streets of Tunisia. A rising spirit of protest has since spread like wildfire across the Middle East, communicated primarily through the channels of social media.

For the legions of critics who had previously...

I awoke Sunday morning to the sort of ethereal calm that can only follow a storm. Apart from scattered pockets of leaves and tiny branches, it was hard to tell if anything -- nevermind the outer bands of an enormous hurricane -- had passed through overnight. Washington D.C., for the...

Apple (at least in its 21st century incarnation) is not known for its stumbles. Even the handful of lackluster releases of the last decade -- Apple TV and MobileMe are oft-cited standouts -- can only be considered failures relative to the astronomical success of product lines such as iPod, iPhone,...

As a card-carrying member of the millennial generation, I came of age alongside video games. The soundtrack of my childhood could be compiled entirely from 8 and 16-bit Nintendo theme music.

Games -- from hide-and-seek on the kindergarten playground to canasta at the senior center -- are an integral, lifelong...

Last week, I eviscerated Newt Gingrich's pitiful attempt at utilizing web video as a launchpad for his presidential campaign. His debut video was lifeless, vapid and hopelessly dated.

This week, I turn to Tim Pawlenty, who has taken center stage amid the thinning ranks of Republicans with open...

Last time around, I dissected Mitt Romney's less-than-spectacular and slightly creepy campaign announcement video.

Newt Gingrich, however, has managed to knock the bar of quality down to a new low for the 2012 campaign season.

For my audio commentary on the Gingrich campaign debut video, check out the...

Just before 10 p.m. on Sunday night, while browsing my typically calm late night Twitter feed just before bed, I noticed that a friend of mine had retweeted an announcement about an impromptu address by the president, scheduled for 10:30 p.m.:

For...

With the nascent '12 presidential campaign officially underway, we've already seen some relatively innovative early uses of social media to draw attention to the early contenders. Pawlenty and Trump are on Twitter. Zuck & Barack met at Facebook HQ last week for a livestreamed town hall.

With all of this...

Last Saturday, as a chilly April rainstorm drenched the nation's capital, I ventured to the chic, eco-friendly Microsoft headquarters situated on D.C.'s northern border.

I braved the rainstorm to join a diverse group of technologists, strategists, and other local professionals for the one-day MobileCitizen Summit, an event devoted...

Somehow, of all the habits one could pick up while in college -- living on pizza and ramen noodles, sleeping few and odd hours, drowning one's sorrows in the free flow of a keg -- I got hooked on something entirely different: meditation.

During my sophomore year, I serendipitously became...

Last week, I returned to Southwest Florida for the screening of my documentary film, Dreams for Sale: Lehigh Acres & the Florida Foreclosure Crisis, as part of the lineup at the inaugural 2011 Fort Myers Film Festival.

The trip was one of mixed emotions. While I was elated...

In August of last year, a IT-centric research blog called Wikibon released a stunning infographic representing the total amount of data stored online in 2010. The astronomical figure cited -- 1.2 zettabytes, or 1 billion terabytes -- could have filled a stack of 16GB iPads (75 billion, to...

For far too long, the West Coast -- primarily Silicon Valley -- has held a monopoly on headline-grabbing tech entrepreneurship. The singular reign of the Valley, however, may soon be eroding, thanks to the efforts of a vibrant, young, and visionary coalition of technologists and investors in and around the...

Last Friday, while the first true revolution of the Web 2.0 era was reaching its climax in Tahrir Square, I was watching events unfold from within the U.S. State Department in downtown Washington D.C. I had the privilege to attend the two-day Tech@State: Open Source conference, an event organized by...