Kingsbury Associates

First, thanks to Walt Mossberg for pointing to this first good look at MS Office native app for the iPad . It shouldn't come as too much of surprise that Microsoft only allows cloud access through its OneDrive cloud service - no GDrive, DropBox, Box or other storage allowed plus requires Office 365 subscription for much of the apps functionality. So as Bonnie Cha says, this is a no brainer for Office 365 folks and more of a heavy lift for folks who don't buy into MS subscription model. Second, two MacWord discounts worth exploring. I've written about password managers, and particularly my favorite, 1Password (see this great testimonial by a fellow Pi member). Here's 1Password half off Macworld sale . Last, if in the market for a travel battery for your mobile device, here's a HyperJuice sale on new age travel battery .

So the referendum on Sunday offers Crimeans the choice of joining Russia now or later?  Sounds like the usual type of contested elections in Russia.  I can certainly see the Crimean Russia-oriented majority perceiving greater stability turning to Russia.  This reminds of a barroom talk in one of the former Russian republics back in 2008.  That summer, I talked aboutnot knowing who would win in the U.S. Presidential  Election that fall.  My companion triumphantly observed that she much preferred that in her country,  none of this uncertainty, "I know who will win".   But how Crimeans could think that moving closer to Russia will be good for them economically is quite strange.  Moving to the larger issue, what had been the elephant in the room, the Russian navy base, has now been addressed in Secretary Kerry's points with his counterpart.  But one still has to wonder whether Putin's move to take over Crimea was more from a perceived opport...