Update: A Close Shave

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 Further to my column about RFID, and the privacy issues of having tags attached to products that may contain more info about you than you’d like to know, a group called CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) is calling for a worldwide boycott of Gillette products since the company failed to renounce what they call “a Gillette Mach3 “smart shelf” spy system”.
 
 
My two cents? I’m not sure a boycott is a good way to explore this issue, but if it helps get people talking, then so be it.

News: HP Means HapPy

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 HP have gone crazy, announcing “a strategy to radically simplify technology to help people “enjoy more” – a move that extends HP’s leadership in imaging, printing and home computing into the fast-growing digital photography and entertainment markets.”
 
 
As part of this, they unveiled more than 100 consumer products including a see-through vertical scanner, whatever that is. Actually it looks quite cool. More here.
 
 

News: RFID Tags Could Save Us From Terror

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 Further to my column a few weeks back about RFID, the little tags on merchandise that can tell retailers and others an awful lot of information about you, here’s a story from WIRED about how food companies are trying to get the technology declared ‘antiterrorist’.
 
 
“Facing increasing resistance and concerns about privacy,” WIRED’s Mark Baard writes, “the United States’ largest food companies and retailers will try to win consumer approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation’s food supply safe from terrorists.” The basic idea is that the technology can help keep precise track of all goods and help in recall efforts should their products be contaminated or laced with poison during a terrorist attack.
 
For sure that could be useful. But it sounds to me like a back door to get the technology on every shelf, which smacks of dishonesty to me. Are terrorists going to start contaminating razor blades and wooly jumpers too?

News: A Laptop Tale

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 A cautionary tale with happy ending from South Africa, courtesy of The Daily News. An American professor gets robbed of his laptop at gunpoint, having inexplicably failed to back up years of work on AIDS from his hard drive. He then tearfully relates his story to a journalist in the tiny hope that publicity may awake compassion in his muggers’ hearts.
 
 
Bottom line: back up, back up, back up, especially before a trip (and don’t carry the backup with you). Oh, and some muggers have a good side.

Update: PaperPort vs PaperMaster

By | November 24, 2011
0 Comment
 There’s been quite a bit of discussion here about PaperMaster and Paperport, two scanning and filing programs that in the past have been very useful tools. But now I’m not so sure. Both have glitches that I find worrying.
 
 
I’ve reviewed PaperPort, which I think is a good program, but I was alarmed to suddenly find some files disappearing, in the transition from editing to saving. Has anyone else had this experience? The problem with Papermaster, which I haven’t reviewed yet, has a way of saving files into the Acrobat format, but not to view them in the program. Neither is there any way that I can figure out to convert the PDF file to the eFax file that Papermaster now uses to view and save documents. What’s the point of that, I wonder? Thoughts anyone?