The Excellent Archives

Just got back from a day at London’s Public Record Office which now seems to call itself the National Archives. It’s an amazing place, and I have to say very well organised and run. And it’s all free. I was digging around for stuff for my alleged book on Indonesian politics, but from a technology point … Read more

‘Tis The Season Of The Large Christmas Email Attachment

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas greetings via email, but then again I’m useless at sending cards too, so I’m not a good person to talk about this. But while I’m guessing the online Christmas card industry is not doing very well this year because of phishing (there have been more than a few … Read more

Urine, Corrosion, And The Decay Of Bridges

You have to feel sorry for designers, particularly bridge designers. How can you factor in all the variables that will determine whether your bridge survives? Take for example, a bridge in Palembang, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Built between 1962 and 1965, the 1,177-meter long and 22-meter wide bridge was named after the then … Read more

Adobe Opens The Door A Crack?

Wired reports that the upcoming version of Adobe Acrobat Reader — the free version of its authoring software that lets folk read the resulting Portable Document Format, or PDF files — will let “users make comments or editing changes for the first time, if the original creator of the document uses Acrobat 7.0 and authorizes … Read more

Kryptonite’s Task And The Real Cluetrain Lesson

For those of you following the Kryptonite – Bic Pen story (where customers found their supposedly impregnable bike lock could be opened with a cheap plastic pen, and quickly told the world about it via their blogs, while the company pretended it wasn’t happening) — it seems the company’s return program is getting into swing. … Read more