Poisoning the Digital Well

I’m following events in Burma as closely as most, partly because I covered the last uprising 19 years ago. Back then plain clothes officers would spread rumors about poisoned water pots placed around the city for demonstrators to drink from. Now they’re apparently trying to poison the well of pooled information, if this excellent BBC… Read More »

Turn It Off, Turn It On Again

Having spent the best part of a day trying to do something very basic, and yet failing, here’s another public service announcement for anyone having problems connecting their router, wireless or otherwise, to a cable modem: If you have a cable Internet connection, but only through one computer, and nothing seems to correct the problem,… Read More »

Thaksin Needs Your Help

For those of you who thought the former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was living it up in Europe buying soccer teams, you’re wrong. He’s having serious financial problems and needs your help, according to this email I just received in his name: Good day. This may appear a bit surprising to you but very… Read More »

Xdrive’s New Clothes

AOL is unveiling a new media sharing and storage service, BlueString, which gets a positive write-up from Rafe Needleman at Webware. I remain more skeptical (I give it a ten minut.es write-up here.) Rafe is reliable on this kind of thing, so I take his word for it, but I’m nervous about AOL after a… Read More »

Design: It’s All About Alarm Clocks

Business writer and entrepreneur Seth Godin throws out product ideas like other people throw out orange juice cartons: For twenty cents or so, alarm clock manufacturers can add a chip that not only knows the time (via a radio signal) but knows what day it is too. Which means that they can add a switch… Read More »