Last night I spent a delightful two-and-a-half hours on the phone. And this despite the fact that: (a) it was Saturday night; and (b) the call started at 10pm which meant I was sitting at my desk instead of down...

A few weeks ago, while away on business, I got a call from the pushiest marketing guy in the world. This person was, I hope, not a member of BT staff, but merely someone from a marketing company running a...

I had a mysterious problem a year or so ago, when a server started mysteriously to go hideously slowly. Having investigated everything to do with the network, the database and anything else we could see that had more than a...

It was announced recently that "Web 2.0" had become the millionth word in the English dictionary. My immediate reaction was: "What a load of old b****cks". Let's get this straight. Web 2.0 is a vague term, not a proper word....

What is it with Orange? I've used their cellular service since I joined Network Week, back in 1995. And for years they've served me well. Why is it, then, that my mobile is becoming increasingly irritating to use? The other...

Right, all you user interface designers out there: I've found probably the cleverest yet simplest user interface feature ever. And you know what? It's in the user interface of the car park at Johannesburg airport.I was standing waiting for my...

What do four techies do when faced with a long flight and then a long transfer from the airport to the office? They start playing silly games, giggling and acting like schoolchildren, that's what. In the most recent example, the...

There's a very useful government Web site, http://www.bluelight.gov.uk. It's a portal on which the UK's emergency services post invitations to tender for work, from catering to IT projects. And it's got a fascinating section in the bit where you sign...

A client I worked for recently delivered a lot of its applications via Citrix. We tested it before deploying, and then once we'd deployed it we tried it out on various desktops; given that the vast majority of desktop PCs...

There's an old joke about the quality assurance department of a pipe manufacturing company. They take a sample of pipe from a batch the've made; they X-ray it, do metallurgical tests, run pressure tests on it and have the welds...