Category Archives: Productivity

The Shift to a Mobile Web

By | November 22, 2011

This more than anything else, probably, will push the shift from desktop browsing to mobile browsing. The more restrictions workers face on their office computers from blinkered employers, the more natural it will be to turn to their mobile: A nationwide study by T-Mobile UK has revealed that over a quarter of the UK’s workforce,… Read More »

Directory of Lifestreaming

By | November 22, 2011

I probably should lump all these into the Directory of Attention, but I’m not going to. Don’t look for a definition of lifestreams on Wikipedia, because it will take you to a Final Fantasy VII page. The term actually goes back to at least 1997, when Eric Freeman and David Gelernter saw it “as a… Read More »

Directory of Attention

By | November 22, 2011

This week’s WSJ column (subscription only, I’m afraid) is about attention: If you feel the Internet has both blessed you with an abundance of information and cursed you by drowning you in it, I have one word which might help make sense of it all: attention. (And, if you give me enough of your attention,… Read More »

Software’s Opportunity Cost

By | November 22, 2011

I’ve never seen this properly studied, and only rarely taken into account by software developers: the opportunity cost of committing to one service or program over another. In a word: Why is it software that’s in charge, not the data itself? An obvious one is Twitter vs Jaiku. Which one to embrace? Jaiku actually has… Read More »

Standing Alone vs, Well, Running

By | November 22, 2011

Why is everyone switching to the likes of Gmail and Google Reader, even when they aren’t sure why, or that they want to? The most compelling reason, I think, is the ease with which you can get up and running if you need to switch. Your computer crashes, or you’re away from it. Or you’ve… Read More »