StratVantage Stratlets

Twitter is for Old Fogies, Teen Says

2009-07-15T14:43:00.001-05:00

A 15-year-old London teenager is shaking up the staid business world with a report he wrote as an intern, called How Teenagers Consume Media. In the report, Matthew Robson describes a bizarro teenage world that, according to the London Times, is "a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are

IE7 and the Infinite Page (Sadness)

2009-01-28T17:24:00.003-06:00

Why does www.hannoverconsulting.com generate infinite pages when print previewed in IE7? Good question. A buddy of mine made some changes in his site, hosted at GoDaddy, using their WebSite Tonight (r) wizard. All of a sudden, none of his pages print in IE7. They print fine in Firefox. I've examined the HTML and found it's predictably too verbose, lots of divs, some don't appear to be closed (I

Operating Systems That Make You Go Hmmmmm . . .

2009-01-18T17:58:00.006-06:00

Recently I was reminded of an unforgivable quirk in Microsoft's directory system. I had run into this some time ago, but a friend's adventures in trying to transfer files from his daughter's W2000 PC to his XP PC called it to mind again. My friend, we'll call him "Roger", reported: "So I am backing up [her] computer and it keeps failing. It takes me some time, but I find out that the folder

Top 10 hot jobs of 2012

2008-12-23T10:14:00.005-06:00

What a motley list! CNBC selects 10 hot jobs in 2012 and somehow "space tour guide" gets on the list! this is apparently based on the following statement: "With about 200 reservations already, SpaceAdventures plans on hiring about 10 space tour guides to start, said spokeswoman Stacey Tearne."Sure, it may be a desirable job, but hot jobs are generally those with more than a few dozen workers.

The Wisdom of Crowds vs. The Masses Are Asses

2007-11-04T00:32:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking this one over for months and have yet to make the time to post it. So, coming soon, and actual essay on the above title! I may add snarky comments such as, "If you (the masses) are so smart, how come [Survivor's still on, Britney gets more ink than Iraq, nobody cares we lost habeus corpus, {add your own carp here}, and so on]. Or maybe not. Anyway, the gist is, it's

Net Switzerland in Danger

2006-06-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

Net Switzerland in Danger Switzerland is famous for cheese, chocolate, numbered bank accounts, and for being a neutral country, which probably enabled those numbered accounts in the first place. High worth individuals felt comfortable stashing their well- or ill-gotten gains because they knew Switzerland wasn’t likely to kowtow to law enforcers or snooping governments from other countries – they

You're Hit! What Next? . . . A Slight Return

2006-04-27T15:00:00.000-05:00

Four years ago, SNS ran an issue about what to do after a hacker attack called You’re Hit! What Next? It focused on what to do immediately after you’ve been attacked. A recent unfortunate attack by a disgruntled former employee of one of my clients brought this article back to mind and encouraged me to revisit the topic for two reasons: to update Alert SNS Readers on the state of computer

AOL Taxing Email?

2006-02-15T16:58:00.000-06:00

AOL Taxing Email? One of the persistent urban myths that continues to circulate around the Internet concerns various forms of taxes: a tax on modems, a tax on email, and so on. Despite being thoroughly debunked, such legends have a life of their own and periodically show up in my email box. But as we all know, things do change, not always for the better, and so, like my long-ago exhortation

High Tech Food, Low Tech Science

2006-02-15T16:55:00.000-06:00

High Tech Food, Low Tech Science As the boomers enter their silver years, they're going to be watching what they eat much more carefully, according to research from my old employer, ACNielsen. ACNielsen compiles data on consumer purchases in grocery, drug, and mass merchandiser stores and also runs consumer panels. Alert SNS Reader Roger Hamm sends along a fascinating ACNielsen newsletter

REAL Pen Computing

2006-02-15T16:51:00.000-06:00

REAL Pen Computing You may have heard about pen-based computing, but I guarantee you haven’t heard about pens-based computing. Yes, pens, plural. Your old pocket protector will never be the same again. I’m not talking about toys like the Fly Pentop Computer, which is actually pretty cool, but about a prototype of a real, full-featured computer comprised entirely of transmogrified pens.

Replace Your Boat Anchor

2006-02-15T16:46:00.000-06:00

A couple of issues ago, I asked the question, “Why Do We Have Personal Computers?” The article dealt with the frustrations of dealing with Windows-based computers (yes, now all you superior Mac users can stand and jeer and claim you never have any problems with your transcendently fabulous computers; at least one guy begs to differ.) Yes, at least once a day I threaten to drop-kick my laptop into

Seriously, What’s Google Up To?

2005-12-01T21:39:00.000-06:00

With the release of the oddly titled Google Base, Google promises to dominate yet another market: online classifieds. Not content with trying to index the world’s Websites, the new beta service allows people to create even more content, including “all types of online and offline information and images.” While the company insists Base is not a classified ad service, since this content will be

Why Do We Have Personal Computers?

2005-10-16T15:52:00.000-05:00