Bye Bye, Laptop?

The day seems to be getting closer when we can do something that would seem to be pretty obvious: access our pocket-sized smartphone via a bigger screen, keyboard and a mouse. Celio Corp says it’s close. Celio Corp have two products: their Mobile Companion (pictured above), a laptop like thing that includes an 8″ display, … Read more

“It Says Take a Left Up This Impassable Mountain Track”

  photo from Reuters Apparently technology is making us so dumb we need signs to jolt us back to common sense. Reuters reports that Britain has started trials of special road signs warning “drivers about the dangers of trusting their satellite navigation devices (satnavs)”: Some have reported that software glitches have sent drivers down one-way … Read more

Revenge of the Bollards

Is it a design fault, or is there some malice afoot in the Bollards War? The UK city of Manchester has introduced something called ‘retractable bollards’ (non UK folk may call them posts) that sink into the ground when an approved vehicle approaches. (Sensors trigger the bollard’s retraction.) Great idea, right, since it means that buses … Read more

How To Fix A Broken Installation File

This is another public service announcement of interest only to a few people, but if you experience a problem under Win2K/WinXP installing a driver, with the folllowing error message: The required section was not found in the INF this might save you hours of fiddling around. In this case it happened with my vodafone/Globe Trotter … Read more

Hotel Complaints, Blackmail and Bribery

Why is it that big chains in the service industry assume that when you write to them complaining about something that you’re just out for a freebie? The thinking seems to go: this person is trying to blackmail us. So bribe them. Case in point: Just got back from a weekend at five-star hotel in … Read more