My weekly column for the Loose Wire Servce. A few things I had to do this week brought me to the same conclusion: Companies that don’t get simplicity are struggling. First off, I have been writing a paper on social media. What we used to call Web 2.0, basically. Now that everything we do is … Read more
Systems — especially warning systems — need to work perfectly, or not at all. Take Thailand’s new tsunami early warning system, which recently failed a trial because busy phone networks took hours to deliver vital SMS messages, while some some warnings sent by fax didn’t turn up at all, according to AFP. (More on the … Read more
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
I’ve been giving a Treo 600 a run for its money in the past couple of months and I’m impressed. Yes, I know that there’s a new one out and I’m way behind the curve, but my theory is that these products need to be not just good, but super reliable if they are going … Read more
Companies, governments, institutions: beware of the dude carrying an iPod. Bernhard Warner, Reuters’ excellent European Internet Correspondent, points out that the high-capacity iPod is getting banned from a lot of places as high-tech security risk. The UK’s Ministry of Defence “has become the latest organisation to add the iPod to its list of high-tech security … Read more