Thursday, September 04, 2003

Free PDF eBooks - 1-10:
"Planet PDF is now offering an assortment of some of the most popular classics -- free! Help yourself to them, and feel free to share them with your friends."
Groove armada: 5 MP3 players previewed : "which model exudes enough mass-market mojo to topple Apple's uber toy from the top of the MP3 roost? You be the judge." (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - gadgets)
eBay auction for a song bought from the iTunes music store
Very interesting testing of law: Does the Right of First Sale Still Exist?
[This guy] just posted an eBay auction for a song I bought from the iTunes music store. It should be interesting to see how this works out. I only spent $0.99 on it but I bought the song just as legally as I would a CD, so I should be able to sell it used just as legally right?"
Very Funny and spot on satire: The Onion | Tanzania Loses Name To Tanning-Salon Chain

Monday, September 01, 2003

Dumping the wrinklies causing massive hi tech problem
Interesting article on "Institutional Memory", and the loss of knowledge caused through wholesale outsourcing of key customer services. I came across a (very tiny) example of this at work recently, where turnover of staff in a small department over a couple of years meant a steady incremental decline in skills/knowledge for a specific semi-technical job, resulting in nobody who really knew the capabilities of the technology in use. I also just had a "courtes ycall" from BT, a very polite chap in New Dehli. I chatted to him briefly about the whole outsourcing thing, and wondered if he was aware of Indian outsoucers losing out to "even cheaper" places, like the former Eastern Europeans (like Poland). He said he was aware of competetion from the Philippines, but not Eastern Europe. I think that there's a lot of very stupid short-termism involved in the kind of management thinking which doesn't value customer service staff, and generally agree with the points raised in the article.
Related Links:
Earlier item on "the new paradigm of the support economy" and "Deep Support"
Infrastructure can't match business boom in India's high-tech city
We are all time wasters now [potential audience for distractions blog growing ?]
One in three small business owners and managers are setting a bad example to their workforce by wasting time on the internet and sending humorous emails rather than working. " Link
ZDNet UK - Special Reports - Hot (spot) in the city - a Wi-Fi tour of London
"Wi-Fi hot spots are springing up around London. ZDNet UK's intrepid reporters set out to find out if the services live up to the frothy hype."

Sunday, August 31, 2003

Viruses, Worms & Malware:
Good article here for non-techies wanting to better understand the various PC/Internet worms and viruses etc threatening our world:
PC protection for procrastinators "DON'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT BIG ATTACK TO DEFEND YOURSELF"
RSS, News feed Aggregation
After reading some articles a couple of weeks ago:
I have been experimenting with RSS Applications (read the articles for a good intro to RSS). Curently I've settled on Bloglines, which a simple browser based tool (free subscription required). I also tried a couple of the tools mentioned in the articles (newsmonster & amaphetadesk), however the simplicity of the bloglines service is winning (and no installation needed on your PC).
More comment on pay-for online content. Readers 'can't pay, won't pay' for content
[See earlier item]