Monthly Archives: September 2005

Flashing Your SIM

It’s a logical move: marry the SIMcard with flash memory. Investor’s Business Daily reports that M-Systems is doing just that: The company’s strike on the mobile phone market has a second front. It’s a new product, due to launch during the first half of 2006, that marries flash memory and a Simcard, which is used… Read More »

This Week’s Column: Bacteria at Your Fingertips

This week’s (paid subscription only; apologies) column in the WSJ.com (which runs in the Personal Journal of The Asian Wall Street Journal) is about the gunk in your keyboard: An exhaustive poll of my friends reveals that all sorts of stuff is being spilled over the average keyboard: biscuit crumbs, mango, fizzy beverage, the odd… Read More »

Are Watches Dangerous?

Bruce Schneier points to a Guardian story about watches being a security threat: At Labour’s Brighton conference in the UK, security screeners are making people take their watches off and run them through the scanner. Why? No one seems to know. Bruce rightly points to the absurdity of the idea of a watch being a… Read More »

The New Cliche: “It’s the Wikipedia of…”

You know something has arrived when it’s used to describe a phenomenon. Or what people hope will be a phenomenon. Here’s a sampling: Laptops This from Nicholas Negroponte, describing his $100 laptop for the developing world (via Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth): “It’s the Wikipedia equivalent (of hardware),” he said, describing the spirit of the… Read More »

The Future of Editing?

The Irish Developer Network reports on an Esquire editor who invited Wikipedia users to edit an article that will presumably appear in the magazine. Of which Wikipedia users reacted strongly to, with over 500 edits to WP:ITAAW before the article was frozen. I love Wikipedia but it sounds like hell. When I’m an editor I… Read More »