Category: Uncategorized

Brits to form new deep black counter-terrorism unit (The Times). A dedicated special forces unit is being assembled alongside the SAS and SBS to infiltrate and destroy Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. The unit, nicknamed the “X-men”, has already begun recruiting and is expected eventually to comprise some 600 men and women from all three… Continue reading The Times

DNC Wi-Fi Update. Reports from the field indicate that the Democratic National Convention Wi-Fi coverage is abysmal, other connectivity hard to find: Contrary to pre-event reports, there is Wi-Fi at the DNC. However, they haven't done much to make it robust, and the ENG (electronic news gathering) spectrum overlap is probably killing the signal, too.… Continue reading DNC Wi-Fi Update

The Way of the Cache. There is a post at the Mambo forums about benchmarking different PHP content management systems. The winners were Drupal and e107 because they support HTML caching. This is clear evidence that so long as it is practical to cache the rendered HTML, the speed of your PHP code is irrelevant.… Continue reading The Way of the Cache

When hotel information technology system goes bad. What happens when a company buys into the “Information Technologies don't matter” strategy? A customer-relations disaster like what my family experienced this weekend. The Sandman Suites (sandmanhotels.com) in downtown Vancouver had an IT system meltdown. Here's what happened. We took my parents up to Vancouver. Crossing the border… Continue reading When hotel information technology system goes bad

SJ Mercury: Humanitarian effort yields brilliant technology, teamwork. Dan Gillmor. Led by Cmdr. Eric Rasmussen, a Navy doctor who has been working on humanitarian projects for years, the team demonstrated some of what's possible. The technology ranged from advanced wireless networking to powerful collaboration tools. Some came from companies selling proprietary products. Others were based… Continue reading Humanitarian effort yields brilliant technology, teamwork

Redesigning the Personal Video Recorder. Personal Video Recorders, like Tivo, have changed their owners’ viewing habits to the point of shifting advertising strategies. However, current PVRs have some significant interface drawbacks. Teehan+Lax, a Toronto UX consultancy, recently launched a free 40 page report about the user experience of two current PVRs, and show UI comps… Continue reading Redesigning the Personal Video Recorder

Seagate Ups Drive Warranties To 5 Years. swordboy writes “Seagate have just announced that they are going to standardize on a five year warranty for all of their hard drives, including desktop and notebook units. While this seems like amazing news, I'm certainly hoping that the company will be around to honor these warranties.” The… Continue reading Seagate Ups Drive Warranties To 5 Years

My experience in porting an extension to PHP5. One of the mysteries of PHP is how people actually figure out how to write C extensions. Most books get quickly out-of-date, and key API's are only documented in the brains of the elite hackers. The C source is incomprehensible, thanks to the extensive use of weird… Continue reading My experience in porting an extension to PHP5

MyDoom Hits Google Hard: Librarians At A Loss. A variant of the MyDoom worm has brought Google to its knees. Searches on Google are returning 503 errors on all queries submitted from certain locations (including my location here in San Rafael, California). The attack has also affected Lycos & Altavista. A CNet story gives more… Continue reading MyDoom Hits Google Hard: Librarians At A Loss

KM & competitive advantage. There are some well-recognized KM strategies which can be applied to gain or leverage competitive advantage. Which one you choose, depends on your firm's competencies, the market niche, competitors and finding an internal champion. Here are some examples: 1) Information transfer: The capture and distribution of explicit information via groupware, file… Continue reading KM & competitive advantage