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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
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Software Week Taking the Weekend Off

By James Fallows

Sep 3 2010, 7:35 PM ET

The previously announced Software Week will have a full week's run -- but after a several-day hiatus, because of emergent "real" writing chores. Thanks for many suggestions and queries that have come in. See you on Tuesday or Wednesday.
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In the meantime, two "trouble in paradise" notes for the record. (1) A friend who is a tech industry veteran writes to say that SugarSync, star of the first installment, caused him problems in one very specific set of circumstances:

Since you are blogging up Sugarsync, thought I'd mention I had a longstanding MS Office Mac 2007 bug I finally tracked to Sugarsync. Anytime I hit the right mouse button in any Office application, it freezes. Only way out is Force Quit, -OR- quit Sugarsync. Found very few references to this online so it may be an obscure interaction, but thought you [should tell] some readers who get bit and would like to know.

I have been using Mac Office 2008 (which I'm also planning to discuss, vs OpenOffice) and have not had this problem, but: knowledge is power. [UPDATE: After the jump, a reader's fix for anyone still having this problem.]

(2) I have been a one-man shill for the LiveScribe pen system (see here and here), which I still consider absolutely invaluable and a product that has transformed my working life. But, for the record, I've had some recent tech problems with my pen, including anomalies in transferring audio recordings from the pen to my computer. Team LiveScribe attended to them immediately, and I lost time but didn't lose any data. They also say they've haven't seen a similar problem in the half million or so other pens they've sold. Who knows why I had it. I am still a big booster of the system, but having given such copious reports of its virtues I felt obliged to mention this glitch.

Happy Labor Day. I'll be laboring, if sitting at a computer can be considered such.


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From reader AN, in Vienna, this report on the Mac Office 2007 / SugarSync conflict:

I had the same problem with the right mouse click and sugarsync. After several back and forth with their support, here's their advice (from November, 2009):

In finder go to ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items
Right-click on SugarSyncCMPlugin.plugin and select Show Package Contents
Open the Contents folder
Right click on the MacOS folder and select Move to Trash.

This will effectively disable the context menu (and it will not be added back on startup). They don't work on Snow Leopard anyway so there is no functionality loss.
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