Secret revealed: inside the most scandalous social network →

After seeing people using it at every party over the past couple of weeks, I tracked down the creators of Secret, the 'anonymish' social network that's now the talk of Silicon Valley.

Late on a Saturday evening in San Francisco, at a party filled with tech workers, people keep retreating to odd corners to stare at their phones. This happens at every party these days, of course, but what’s different here is that the partygoers are all staring at, and talking about, an app called Secret. Lately it’s been topic number one among Silicon Valley tech workers, venture capitalists, and the media who cover them. All around San Francisco, people are devouring their Secret feeds, with their unpredictable mix of sex, drugs, and industry gossip. Valentine’s Day threesomes, photos of your best weed, blow jobs in the restaurant kitchen — it’s all here, maybe true and maybe not, but guaranteed to get you guessing about who posted it.

Best New Apps: Storehouse →

I wrote about Storehouse, one of my favorite new apps for iPad:

If Medium had an iPad app, it might look a lot like this. Storehouse, an app built by former employees of Apple, Facebook, and The Daily, is great for telling stories and for reading them. Early adopters are using it to create beautiful visual narratives that layer crisp typography, full-bleed photos, looping video clips, and background music into something that’s unusually immersive.

Can Beats succeed where MOG failed? →

I wrote about what lessons Beats Music needs to learn from MOG, which is the backbone of the latest entrant in the streaming-music wars: 

But if MOG's experience proved anything — and as Rdio's struggles have highlighted as well — slick design and cool features alone are no guarantee of success. With most Americans still unsold on the idea of renting their music rather than purchasing it outright or downloading it illegally, streaming-music companies face an uphill battle. The most effective way to persuade them to date has been to give them music for free for as long as possible. Beats isn't taking that approach. And if it's marketing efforts don’t prove as effective as executives promise, its history may wind up looking a lot like MOG's.

Sundance 2014 with The Verge

I went to the Sundance Film Festival this year in search of great movies and found plenty of them, the best of which was the sublime Dear White People. I also wrote a few stories:

•  Blurred lines: how an app ruined the Sundance waiting game. This year the festival released a new 'eWaitlist' for managing the angry hordes trying to crash the theater gates at the last minute. It worked so well that it is now impossible to crash the gates. :(
• Life Itself: a stirring tribute to Roger Ebert from the director of Hoop Dreams. I spoke with director Steve James, director of the uncommonly moving portrait Life Itself, on the challenges of bringing a film critic's life to the big screen.
• The Internet's Own Boy fights for reform after Aaron Swartz's death. I spoke with Swartz's father and brothers, grim but resolute, in the wake of the activist's death and their efforts to continue his work.

My CES 2014 with The Verge

I spent the past week in Las Vegas with The Verge, and wound up covering all sorts of things: Yahoo, pro wrestling, and a full-body virtual reality suit for controlling your video games. Here are some of my favorite things that I did:

• PrioVR, a full-body video game control suit that you can see in this handsome video report.
• Yahoo's sleek News Digest app swims against the stream. An interview with Nick D'Aloisio, the precocious 18-year-old founder of Summly, about his excellent new newsreading app. 
• The Yahoo Keynote liveblog. It really picked up once David Pogue started talking trash about The Verge.
• The WWE Network and what it means. The most underplayed story of CES, in my opinion — we are watching the beginning of the cable disruption. 
• A video interview with Adam Cahan, Yahoo's head of mobile and one of Marissa Mayer's top lieutenants. 
• A video interview with Tom Conrad, Pandora's CTO and one of the most amiable people in tech.
• 90 Seconds on The Verge. One of my favorite things I've done on video, written by the great Nathan Cykiert.