I read with some interest about the debacle of Amazon’s “total recall” of 1984 (and other books) yesterday. Kindle owners found some e-books they had downloaded and paid for had mysteriously disappeared from their readers (and that they had been reimbursed). Amazon apparently tried to explain away this digital goods heist by insisting that the [...]
One of the most interesting discussions I had in San Francisco two weeks ago (where I was co-presenting Mobile 2.0 and the Mobie Tech 4 Social Change camp) was with Brian Fling on the unlikely subject of email. We both agreed that we hate email (a common sentiment these days) and that something needed to [...]
The hard drive on my Powerbook was giving up the ghost. First, it started making a high-pitched squeal. Then it started “sticking” intermittently – the machine would just hang there until I gave it a bit of a shake – very unsettling. Finally it just refused to boot. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. Three weeks [...]
One of the most exciting projects I’ve been involved with this year has been the launch of Vodafone Betavine. Betavine is a collaborative portal for the developer community focusing on mobile and communications apps. Although mobile operators have launched developer sites in the past, Betavine is different because it’s aimed at individual, small company and [...]
This morning I’m on my way to the Future Technologies event in Oxford. I’ve never actually been to Oxford, which evidenced this morning when I got on the wrong train at Paddington. So now I’m going to be late, which is a shame because I am genuinely interested in what the other speakers have to [...]
I was amazed to find today that I can detect 9 WiFi networks from my home office location. That’s crazy! Most of them have SSIDs like “BTHomeHub…” and “BTVOYAGER…” so these are clearly set up by BT engineers. There is even a “BT Fusion…” hotspot so at least one person within a stone’s throw of [...]
Just a quick note: I’m now listening to Timo Veikkola of Nokia who’s title is “Sr. Future Specialist”. Timo’s talking about the values that will drive service and hardware design in the future. Great stuff, especially after the somewhat fluffy presentations from Target and MTV which basically amounted to “here’s how we’re selling you more [...]
A group here in Austin called the “bootstrap network” (with a rough mission to enable small companies and entrepeneurs to partner with eachother) is launching something they’re calling a “complimentary currency” system to facilitate and formalize this kind of business barter and “in kind” payment for services. And they’re using OpenID in some way to [...]
I'm an American Ex-Pat living in London. I'm
a father of two and husband of one. I founded 