It’s sometimes hard to get my friends excited about the technology I’m interested in, and that’s often down to the fact that a) the exciting stuff is often a big shift in what that technology can do and b) I’m not good at explaining these things to people, especially in wine bars, for some reason.… Read More »
I like the idea of this: Using ordinary folk to monitor elections, via SMS from their cellphone. And it seems to have worked. Nigeria used a system called FrontlineSMS, developed by UK-based kiwanja.net to keep track of all of the texts. Some 54 trained associates recruited volunteers to invite as many people as possible via… Read More »
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 »
Interesting to see how the mosquito — emitting a tone only younger people can hear — has taken off into new areas. The Welsh company that invented the idea as a way to disperse youths has already launched a product designed to attract the same people: a ringtone their uncool parents can’t hear. (Another website selling the tone, with various… Read More »
The South China Morning Post reports (I’ve got the hard copy here; everything there is behind a subscription wall, so no full link I’m afraid) of a clever scam where the bad guys steal just enough stuff — cards + identity — from a victim to be able to social engineer their way into trust,… Read More »