I had a council rubbish collection day last month. I threw out two PCs, a pile of SCSI storage devices and a scanner (leftovers from my mi$$pent Apple days).

I almost threw out my 100Mb ZIP drive. But at the last minute decided to see if it will work with my current Thinkpad (via an Adaptec SCSI PCMCIA card). It did, and I spent the next …

I am sitting in a cafe in the middle of Singapore, catching up on emails and writing. SingTel provides free wifi city-wide. And people do use it. About 25% of the patrons of this cafe are currently on their laptops. And they seemto hang around and buy drinks, as I am doing.

But Sydney can’t get its act together. Too hard, too expensive, says the state government. …

This interactive LED coffee table looks fun! And it got me thinking about computer hardware.

There seems to be a recent increase in interesting computing-related hardware: tablet PCs, multitouch screens on phones, and Microsoft’s concept tabletop “Surface” PC.

We human creatures like to interact with our surroundings. We want to affect change, to make our …

(My friend Stilgherrian and I had a discussion about this during the week. This post contains my synthesised thoughts.)

Clients in perpetual crisis

If you work in IT-related services, you will be familiar with this type of client:

They are always chaotic and in a rush. They only have time to listen to the bare minimum. They run out of time to respond to questions or think. They are …

This post on 437signals will come as a surprise to some. The MacBook Air, despite all its lacks, is selling well.

The soft stuff, the emotive stuff, is what matters. A huge part of any purchase decision is emotive and irrational.

From a completely rational viewpoint, the MacBook Air should not be selling so well. After all, many have complained loudly about the lack of various “essential” technical …

I went McDonald’s website recently to look up the nutritional information for their Deluxe Brekkie Roll – which I have developed a soft spot for.

The site has certainly come a long way since I last visited years ago. The current incarnation is without a doubt a beaut piece of Flash “experience” work. The transitions and animations are fluid and smooth – fun …

I put some extra RAM into a friend’s laptop over the weekend. A lame dog with 256Mb, it now runs like a dream with 1.2Gb.

I am flabbergasted that Dell would sell a Windows XP laptop with only 256Mb of RAM. Sure, that is Microsoft’s published minimum requirement for XP; which of course, is the barest minimum it will take for the operating system to …

I came across this website which really how not to do a first contact experience on the web.

Here’s the engagement process:

1

When I first arrived, there was a blank area in the middle of the page. So I started reading the text on the right.

2

Suddenly this Flash element appeared, and pushed the text off to the right. How rude!

Now I couldn’t read …

I am still totally amazed by photos like this. This is a totally alien world, one I will never be able to set foot on in this lifetime. Wow.

If we as a species can do this, nothing truly is beyond us; except what we choose to not give a damn about.

(Incidentally this is the original photo which caused the recent “Martian Big Foot” …

The concept of a “computer” for your business has been kicking around since the late 1970s. And yet, most businesses have yet to really grasp the fact that it is a tool and not an end in itself.

Stilgherrian’s excellent post Social Media: It’s about the people, not the tools sparked this post.

I suggest that the continuing focus by businesses on the technological “bits” instead of …