“Bob Hughes”:http://www.dustormagic.net/ wrote an opinion piece about the sweatshop labour and environmental harm involved in making computers and in disposing of them. On a similar note, see this “new report from CAFOD”:http://www.cafod.org.uk/news_and_events/news/computer_factory_sweatshops_20040126?PHPSESSID=4b0151f1c256c83acdd6dafeeda118c1 on conditions for workers making high-tech components which has encouraged the BBC to “follow up the findings”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3452373.stm with computer makers.

I note that Bob hasn’t given up using computers yet, and I’m not likely to either. But it’s worth bearing in mind the unseen costs of anything we buy or consume and trying to reduce them as much as possible by buying only when we need to or campaigning for better corporate behaviour.

dodgeit lets you set up one-time-use email addresses for when you have to register for something but don’t want to get spammed – and it lets you read those emails via “RSS”:https://blog.org/archives/000880.html instead of having them delivered to you (if you are really addicted to using RSS for everything).

According to E-government Bulletin (which unfortunately doesn’t have an archived version of this newsletter yet), the “Department for Transport”:http://www.dft.gov.uk/ will be launching an integrated transport guide (at “transport.info”:http://www.transport.info/ – not live yet) that would, “include car routefinders; bus, tram and rail timetables; and a range of maps, updated regularly by external partners such as bus companies”.

Here in London something like this already exists – “JourneyPlanner”:http://www.journeyplanner.org/ and while inevitably it doesn’t always come up with the best possible route it will still be a great advance when it launches this Spring. I hope that at some point either JourneyPlanner or transport.info starts to offer a direct connection between the Internet and the counters that tell you when the next bus is coming at bus stops….

Well, I finally plunked down my plastic and picked up a Tungsten T3. Now what? I have already downloaded:

• “Eudora Internet Suite”:http://www.eudora.com/internetsuite/download/ so I can sync my Palm with my Eudora email and
• “Avantgo”:http://www.avantgo.com/ for content on the move

  I’ve also bookmarked:

• “Palminfocenter”:http://www.palminfocenter.com/
• “Handheldnews”:http://www.handheldnews.com/ and
• “Brighthand”:http://www.brighthand.com/morenews.php?site=Palm

for news about what new stuff is coming up. Where should I be looking to find lists and reviews of the best freeware and shareware apps for my Palm? Are there any must-have applications I should run and get right away? Any I should shy away from? Where should I look for the most up-to-date news about Palm-related stuff? And where should I go for good Palm-related peer tech support?

Later: This article suggesting that there may be “no upgrade path to PalmOS 6”:http://www.brighthand.com/article/palmOne_Refuses_to_Confirm_OS_6_Upgrade for existing models has me nervous. Should I cancel my order (I ordered online and it hasn’t arrived yet)? I don’t want to be stuck with the last incarnation of a dead-end OS. On the other hand, if I waited a few months to get a new PalmOS 6 model it might be buggy… What do you think? Do you think they’ll make the top-end models of Palm upgradeable but just don’t want to guarantee anything?

The concept – man falls in love with virtual woman – is not that original any more – but Flicka – a 12 minute Dutch film from “AtomFilms”:http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/, is genuinely touching. It is one of the films currently showing through their new free “Hi-Def”:http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/spotlight/collections/hidef/ service which downloads films in the background so you can see them at close to full-screen resolution (why don’t more sites offer this instead of streaming?). Most of the films have been frankly pretty poor (you don’t get to choose what you are sent) but Flicka was for me a genuine discovery.

The way HiDef works the films are recycled every two weeks so if you want to see it, download now. (note: the download and movie playing software is PC-only).

My friend Harald shares info on a pair of different ways to visualise your overall disk use. Of course with hard disk sizes being as large as they are you may not need these but if you have been thinking you really should do some housecleaning these should help. And both are free (though “SpaceMonger”:http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html may not be for much longer).

Stupid callers to tech support. Though there are hundreds of sites out there about this subject I thought it was worth highlighting this recent collection of anecdotes from the crowd at “b3ta”:http://www.b3ta.com/ because they are predominantly British (many other sites are more American and more business/corporate in what they focus on).

The first page you get to is a selection of favourites from among the 12 (!) other pages of anecdotes. It’s hard to choose a single favourite from that page but this anecdote certainly tickled me:

We managed to sell some software recently, and the client/user insisted on instaling it himself. Despite my suggestions that his IT guy do the install, or better yet, I could do it for him, he was convinced in his own ability. Fine.
I called up the day after to check on how things went, but he seemed somehow less sure of himself than previously, and mumbled something about how you had to know the little tricks to get things working these days, before he hung up.
3-4 days later their IT bloke calls me asking if they can, “erm, have another copy of the software, please”. It turned out the user had put the pc on the floor so the CD drive was in a vertical position, and glued the CD into the drive tray to stop it falling out before the tray moved back inside the case.

Most of the way down an article in the New York Times – The Coming Search Wars (MS vs Google) comes an interesting revelation:

“an ambitious secret effort known as Project Ocean, according to a person involved with the operation. With the cooperation of Stanford University, Google now plans to digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published before 1923, which is no longer limited by copyright restrictions. The project could add millions of digitized books that would be available exclusively via Google.”

It’s just a pity the number of years we have to wait to get ahold of copyright material keeps lengthening…

Now if you look on the right under “archives by topic” you will find little XML icons by each one. So now if you are only interested in my thoughts about academic subjects (for example), just copy the address of the XML icon by “academia” and paste it into your RSS reader.

… and even more surprisingly they aren’t charging for it! Deloitte Consulting has provided the Internet community Bullfighter – an add-on for Word 2000 & PowerPoint 2000 (or later) which gives you a rough idea of a document’s readability taking into account its Fleisch index and the number of annoying corporate buzzwords embedded in it.