James Robinson
PandoDaily
San Francisco, CA, United States
Contact James
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Past articles by James:
Pando: TJ Miller's Crunchies disaster shouldn't have surprised TechCrunch, or anyone else
Attendees of this week's Crunchies award ceremony were shocked at host T.J. Miller's tone deafness on the matters of gender and race in Silicon Valley. After days of outrage, TechCrunch COO Ned Desmond's finally sort-of apologized for Miller calling a female audience member a "bitch" and for saying "Asians aren't supposed to be this entitled in the U.S." → Read More
To counter growing vulnerabilities, publicity shy Fitbit launches eight-figure marketing blitz
As I wrote here on Pando at the end of last month, the various splutterings of the wearables market combined with the emergence of the Apple Watch have represented the end of a golden age for Fitbit, one where it only had to show up and take home massive swaths of market share. → Read More
Five technology lessons I learned from my own foray into small business
In July, as I wrote here on Pando, I self-published an actual, real book based on a blog I used to write. It came on the back of a $15,000 Kickstarter haul in November 2013. The book is out now, rewards have been shipped, and I have closed the book on the slog of production and shipping rewards. → Read More
Google is the biggest corporate lobbyist in America now, says new Public Citizen report
I’ve been in Boston all week. I had to tell my mother where I was, but not Google. Its seamlessness in switching up my Google ad results, changing its suggestions to me of places to visit and ads to click on, was instantaneous. Google knew where I was going, as I was making the trip. → Read More
As banner ads turn 20, Sharethrough wants you to accept the inevitability of native advertising
As far as ad tech beefing goes, last Thursday was a doozy. Farhad Manjoo’s “Fall of the Banner Ad: The Monster That Swallowed The Web” hit the front page of the New York Times. Among other crimes, Manjoo accused the ruinous economics of banner ads of perverting content online. → Read More
For Keen Home, the exploding smart home market is an opportunity and a puzzle
Oh, the smart home and the chaos of an exploding space. Everything home-based is smart now, or threatening to be. Thermostats, toothbrushes, teddy bears, security cameras, showers, windows, motion sensors, TVs, appliances, and pot plants. → Read More
Autodesk take aim at the disappointment of 3D printing
Last September, Autodesk opened a large two-story workshop on Pier 9 on San Francisco's Embarcadero, a luxuriant facility with the indulgent goal of bringing its employees closer to the machines th... → Read More
Thanks to the Apple Watch, 2014 is the year that Fitbit moved quickly back into the pack
Fitbit was a rare beast in 2007 when it was founded: an actual hardware startup in a time when such a thing was laughed at, taking the humble pedometer and giving it a huge software upgrade. The co... → Read More
Inventables' new 3D carver wants to give the maker movement new life
The last time I spoke to Inventables CEO Zach Kaplan he’d launched the company’s new Easel software platform at SXS, a program designed to take the prohibitively inaccessible complexities of 3D des... → Read More
Let's stop focusing on why wearables might change the world and deal with market reality
As far as 50-page existential ponderings on the current state and future direction of wearable technology go, The Wearable Future -- a new report released Tuesday as part of PwC’s consumer intellig... → Read More
TellSpec's recent PR offensive only highlights just how great a scam it really was
As Pando has covered, Toronto-based TellSpec panhandled on Indiegogo to the tune of almost $400,000 last October, pretending that its small handheld food scanner, that could tell you the nutritiona... → Read More
What's In A Name? The fading tyranny of dot com
We’ve all been there. We click on a link, but then pause a second. There’s a “.net” or a “.org” at the end of the address. We think against our better nature, “What is this, amateur hour?” Doesn’t ... → Read More
It's time to admit that bad journalism is enabling crowdfunding scampaigns
Yesterday, from Indiegogo's weekly email, I came across the campaign for Pavlok, a wearable wristband that shocks you every time you do something naughty, to help you break bad habits. In three day... → Read More
What's In A Name: Sometimes you've got to call in the name whisperer
Molly Davis has a unique job. As a communications strategist for MetaDesign -- a global design firm with a base in San Francisco which specializes in reshaping corporate identities and creating new... → Read More
I turned my apartment into a smart home... and all I got was bored
After a week of dabbling with making my home smarter, I came to the conclusion that maybe my home was smart enough already... you know, with two living humans in it with full sensory perception, ca... → Read More
What's In A Name: "Semantic satiation" and the art of choosing a perfect company name
It’s a slightly unusual feeling that we’ve all been struck with. We say some common everyday word one too many times and it suddenly loses all meaning. It just feels peculiar, like gibberish almost... → Read More
The Moment of Truth: Glenn Greenwald is the worst at influencing elections
Glenn Greenwald arrived in New Zealand a little over a week before the country's general election, armed with damning claims (courtesy of Edward Snowden) that NZ Prime Minister John Key had -- desp... → Read More
Indiegogo's PR person doesn't want me to tell you that he's telling you nothing about Indiegogo
"We strategically manage reputations based on our proven understanding of how and why some stories have impact, while others fade away." - Goldin Solutions Throughout Pando's reporting on Indiegogo... → Read More
"What has to scale is trust.” Tilt's crowdfunding platform is in it for the long haul
Having watched as Indiegogo failed to take action on crowdfunding sham after crowdfunding sham this year, seeing Tilt in early September take down the campaign for the Scribble Pen, which had raise... → Read More
What's In A Name?: Meet the name doctor of HAXLR8R
As the founder of HAXLR8R, a Shenzhen based accelerator for hardware startups, Cyril Ebersweiler often finds himself in the trenches with young founders working with them to fix a horrible product ... → Read More