On the last 2012 episode of the Pocketnow Weekly podcast, recorded immediately  following the Christmas holiday, we spent a little time trading tales of gadgets wished-for and gadgets received from generous gift-givers. More importantly, we also swapped stories of an observational nature. The holidays are more than an opportunity to re-learn how to share a table with distant relatives; if you're lucky, they're also an occasion to observe how normal people interact with technology - often new technology. We talked about that more on today's episode of the Weekly -heavens, we do chat our ...

It happened so long ago, the memories come to me in vague shadows. It was an unremarkable weeknight in 2002. I was watching TV in my college dorm room, probably waiting for the then-new Star Trek: Enterprise to return from a commercial break. A 30-second spot for Nokia flashed onto the screen, the last frame dwelling on the image of a mobile phone amid a field of futuristic blue plasma. The model number escapes me, as does the sub-brand, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that closing product image, which made the phone look, on my 13-inch CRT TV screen, like it had no buttons. As ...