My old colleague Nick Cumming-Bruce writes in today’s IHT on Thailand’s demand that prepaid cellphone users register before they get a SIM card as police continue on the trail of cellphone terrorists. Interesting piece: the basic idea is that you must hand over your name and address before getting a phone number as a measure … Read more
I recently noticed an interesting phenomenon: Not everyone agrees on how to pronounce Skype, the Internet telephony service. An American friend calls it ‘Skypy’, a Belgian acquaintance calls it ‘Skypé’, and someone else calls it ‘Skypee’. I even noticed the excellent Skype Journal, when it talks about the video plug in for Skype, Vidpe, says … Read more
Here’s another effort to use sparklines to try to illustrate some of the trends I wrote about in today’s Asian Wall Street Journal/WSJ.com column (subscription only; apologies). I’ve used another excellent tool called SparkMaker, a Word plugin by Bissantz to try to show how the mainstream print media has covered some technology issues since the … Read more
No question that the U.S. is ahead on lots of cool stuff, but it has yet to be subjected to the world of SMS-TV. SMS-TV is when TV programmes let viewers vote, or submit competition entries, by text message, usually via a premium number. I have to admit I’ve never done this, but a lot … Read more
Here’s a novel way to get advertising into email without calling it spam: RelevantMail. RelevantMail, from a company called RelevantAds, inserts contextual ads into emails very much as Gmail does. Only the folk doing the inserting are your ISP: RelevantMail provides a new high quality way to distribute advertisements to consumers while providing a much … Read more