Spammers Need To Be Funnier

Spammers should understand that if the best way into our inbox is by entertaining us. Most spam is just awful: offensive, grammatically dreadful (even allowing for efforts to get around filters) and revealing of the piteous lives the spammers and their drones lead. But if they could only smarten up their act we’d probably let… Read More »

The Fish That Was Ahead of Its Time

This is old news but it still comes as something of a shock to me: You have probably never heard of Enfish but you see its legacy in every desktop search program you’ll come across. That’s because the company helped promote the idea that searching your own files was as useful an activity as searching… Read More »

The Fish That Was Ahead of Its Time

Dear Enfish Customers, As of November 1, 2005, Enfish Software will no
longer sell its own products, but rather license its technology and patents
to others. I am pleased to report that Enfish Software has completed its
first licensing agreement with EasyReach Corporation. EasyReach is an
exciting company which launched at DEMOfall 2005 one month ago.
Furthermore, EasyReach has released a new version of the product
which is available for free to all users who have purchased Enfish Find or
Professional. Many of you have received free, or beta versions of the
product over the years, and as such may not be in the purchase
database. If you fall

How To Handle Your Communicator With Style

I wrote a couple of weeks back in the WSJ (subscription only, sorry) about the Nokia Communicator (aka The Brick) and its enduring popularity in Indonesia, where it plays important role as fashion symbol, ostentatious and yet deliverable gift to impressionable officials and, where necessary, hand combat weapon. What I found difficult to capture in… Read More »

Staying Productive in Your Underwear

I’m researching a piece on how to cut back the amount of stuff you have to read, particularly RSS feeds. So I have spent the morning reading blogs related to the tools I’m writing about. In the process, of course, I find more than 20 new blogs that are interesting enough for me to add… Read More »