This is the week of hobbyhorses. I love sparklines though I’ve been very lazy in actually trying to make more use of them. Sparklines are simple little graphs that can pepper text to illustrate data. I went through a phase of using them a year ago on media coverage of technical stuff, the excessive online … Read more
Spare a thought for the car salesperson. Nowadays they’ve got to know as much about technology as they do about cars. A recent course held by Ford in the UK called True Blue Live to train salespeople in technology has produced mixed reports. A South African motoring website called motoring.co.za reports that “by the end of … Read more
Writer Margaret Atwood launched her LongPen invention over the weekend, allowing authors to sign books over the Internet. As CTV.ca, Canada’s CTV news reports, a technical glitch marred the LongPen’s first test: Atwood and fans had to wait while the invention got some final adjustments. When it came back to life, she used the LongPen … Read more
As you know, I’m a huge fan of newsmaps — efforts to convey news information using more visual approaches — and here’s another excellent idea, from a guy called Jeroen Wijering, who, according to Cool Hunting is a recent graduate of the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. One of his most recent projects is … Read more
Just had lunch with my old friend William, an upright member of the financial community and a scholar. Half an hour of his computer woes and you wonder three things: how the PC ever made it out of the nerd’s den how overwhelmingly inadequate software, interfaces and help files are whether we shouldn’t just ditch … Read more