Is Plaxo A Namecard Spammer?

What gives at Plaxo? I’ve decided to stop recommending what seemed to be a pretty good way to stay up to date with contacts after a series of weird incidents when folk unknown to me were somehow able to add their contacts into my Outlook address book without my say-so (today’s was someone from a … Read more

Are Computers A Waste Of Our Time?

Here’s a story to illustrate a conundrum: If computers are such productivity boosters and time savers, how come we spend huge amounts of time trying to make them work? Marshall Brain, a writer, former teacher and consultant, tried to figure out how much time we spend on fixing computer stuff but timing it: Last month … Read more

A Cheap iPod On The Way?

If you were one of the few who didn’t get an iPod in their stocking this Christmas, don’t despair: Designtechnica Articles is reporting strong rumours that Apple may launch a $100 iPod next month. While current iPod units start at $300 and are based around a 10 to 40 gigabyte hard drive, the budget priced iPods … Read more

Ho, Ho, Ho, Tis The Season Of The Online Scam

Phishing — the art of depriving folk of their sensitive password data and then using it to empty their pockets — has become the scam du jour of the holiday season. The Anti-Phishing.org website says it has seen ‘dramatic’ growth in November and December of email spoofing (emails claiming to be from, for example, your … Read more

Column: search software

Loose Wire — Organize Me: Give us some software that really makes the information age meaningful   By Jeremy Wagstaff from the 3 April 2003 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review, (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Every time I visit a computer shop I get nostalgic for the dotcom boom. In those … Read more