(This is the text of my weekly Loose Wire Service column, syndicated to newspapers like The Jakarta Post. If you’re an editor interested in subscribing to the service, drop me a line. Regular readers of the blog, meanwhile, will be familiar with some of the themes here) I found myself reading the words of one… Read More »
Grammar, words and spelling are humiliating. I used to be good at this kind of thing in school, but going back to editing reminds me how shaky are the foundations of one’s knowledge. Where do commas go when you use quotation marks? Is ‘none’ singular or plural? Is ‘willpower’ one word or two? These are… Read More »
It’s amazing how hard it is to let go of a security mindset when you’ve been living in a place where bombs are (of late) a fact of life. In Hong Kong these things don’t seem to matter so much, so when I was standing at the ATM machine in a subway station today it… Read More »
Good piece in this month’s US Banker magazine on phishing. Some tidbits: Phishing is getting more and more sophisticated. I’ve detailed some of those tricks in this blog, but here’s one I hadn’t heard of: Crooks [the unfortunately named Ted Crooks, vp of identity protection solutions at Fair Isaac] says that “the level of cleverness… Read More »
Continuing to add material that I could not include, or could not include much of, in my WSJ.com, piece (which comes out today), here’s the second emailed reply that I thought might interest readers. It’s from Mike Rohde, a graphic and web designer, working for the international engineering and web services firm MakaluMedia, and I… Read More »