Why are we so intrigued by our phones, but not our computers? I now realise why we buy new cellphones. If we didn’t, there would be nothing to do during those times we find ourselves without external distractions, such as taking public transport, sitting in cafes waiting for friends to turn up (or even, if … Read more
The boffins have spoken, and they’ve spoken right: Don’t use anti phishing toolbars, or at least don’t rely on them. (Anti phishing toolbars sit in your browser and supposedly warn you if you’ve been directed to a website that’s about to plunder your bank account, or at least steal your passwords.) I’ve been saying the … Read more
Is it just me, or have these interstitial ads or whatever they call themselves suddenly become ubiquitous, and no less annoying for it? They now seem to be everywhere (even O’Reilly uses them, shockingly, although it does offer a way to disable them). These are ads, courtesy of companies like Vibrant Media IntelliTXT, that add … Read more
There’s a lot of discussion about the ongoing spat between Microsoft and Adobe over whether Microsoft will be able to install PDF/Acrobat support in its next version of Office. This should be as straightforward as PDF support in OpenOffice — where you can choose to save (well, print, technically speaking) a file as an Acrobat … Read more
Jason Fried of 37 Signals, the guys behind web applications like Basecamp and Tada List and Backpack , have published a book on how to build web apps. And they’ve proven a point — that publishing online can be the smart way to go. Jason tells me they’ve sold 4,000 downloadable digital copies of their new … Read more