ScaMS

F-Secure are calling these things SMS phishing (sometimes called smishing, unfortunately), but really they are more like Nigerian email scams delivered via SMS, which isn’t quite the same. The scam is basically this: send an SMS saying the recipient has won the lottery, have them call the scammer, and the scammer tricks them into giving … Read more

Twitter: SMS for Those Who Missed the SMS Revolution

Joi Ito neatly sums up what Twitter really is: The U.S. dudes finally getting what has been going in the rest of the world for several years: the Internet is all around us, whether it’s the web or SMS. clipped from joi.ito.com Twitter was funny for me because it was like the whole “laptop crowd” … Read more

Why The Pedestrian Crosses the Road

James Fallows casts a skeptic’s eye at traditional explanations for why the bigger elbows out the smaller in Chinese traffic. Of course, it’s not just China where this happens, and James is right to be skeptical about such explanations. It happens all across the developing world, from what I can see. Trucks elbow aside buses, … Read more

Podcast on Making Music

Here’s something I recorded for the BBC World Service Business Daily show on recording music digitally. Email me if you’d like the transcript. (This podcast is a big file than normal; it’s longer, and it’s in stereo, because there’s a song in there. If you don’t like long podcasts and big files, I suggest you … Read more

Podcast on Gadgets

Here’s something I recorded for the BBC World Service Business Daily show on gadgets. Email me if you’d like the transcript. If you want to subscribe to an RSS feed of this podcast you can do so here, or it can be found on iTunes. My Loose Wire column for The Wall Street Journal Asia … Read more