This is a piece I wrote for the BBC World Service.. So, the iPhone 5 is here, and while it will sell well, probably better than any phone before it, there’s a sense of anticlimax: this, we are told, is evolution, not revolution. None of the mind-bending sense of newness and change that the iPhone … Read more
I know I’ve drawn attention to this before, but the timeline of McAfee’s Operation Shady RAT by Dmitri Alperovitch raises questions again about WikiLeaks’ original data. Alperovitch points out that their data goes back to mid-2006: We have collected logs that reveal the full extent of the victim population since mid-2006 when the log collection began. Note … Read more
For those listening to my slot on Radio Australia’s Breakfast Show, here’s what I was talking about: Palm (remember them?) come up with an iPhone killer: the Pre. Cameras finally get connected: The Sony Cybershot G3 can surf the web. Sacrifice one unhealthy habit for another: Burger King rewards Facebookers who delete friends with a … Read more
I’m amazed by how word processing is still in the dark ages, considering it’s what we spend most of our day doing. Case in point is Microsoft Word 2007, which throws all sorts of weirdness—artefacts, I guess we’d call them—in text. Try scrolling through a longish document—anything over 5,000 words—and you get this kind of … Read more
More stuff from the observant and thought-provoking Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase: drivers protecting their cars in Beijing from urinating canines: As Jan points out, lots of issues arise with this: how confused must dogs get that their choice of territory markers move around? (Or maybe that’s exactly what they want—expanding territory without them having to … Read more