This week’s Loose Wire column is about Wikipedia: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place on the Internet where educated folk pooled their knowledge for nothing, conscientiously building up a huge, orderly and free database on subjects as varied as wind gradients and the yellow-wattled lapwing? Actually, it’s already happened. It’s an on-line … Read more
The good news: We don’t have to use those silly touch-tone menus anymore when we call our friendly utility. Now we can speak to a real computer. A report by Chartwell, an industry research service, says that more and more utilities “are implementing or investigating speech recognition for their interactive voice response units, and advocates say … Read more
Quite a big hooha over this latest Microsoft vulnerability, and I readily ‘fess up to the fact that I didn’t really take this seriously. Seems like I wasn’t the only one. But folk like Shawna McAlearney of SearchSecurity.com points out that the delay of 200 days between Microsoft being notified and their coming out with … Read more
Here’s a very interesting piece from Mark Glaser on the Adopt-A-Journalist movement, otherwise called Watchblogs. “The so-called “watchblogs” are generally anonymous bloggers who have taken it upon themselves to read each report from a particular presidential campaign reporter and then critique it for factual errors or bias,” Glaser writes. “If they gain traction, watchblogs represent … Read more
Looks like the phone makers are finally taking a look at the Bluetooth security issue, which I mentioned in a recent posting. ZDNet quotes a Nokia spokesperson as saying the company is aware of “security issues” relating to Bluetooth devices that “makes it possible to download and modify phone book, calendar and other information on … Read more