Gavin’s Digital Diner

Her name was Jane. We met, quite unexpectedly, at Zaventem Airport in Brussels. At the Avis counter. It was such a random thing, but when I saw her I knew — no hesitation — whatever the cost, I just knew. Some things are just meant to be. With Jane, it was meant to be. Jane. I [...]

I think it was Alan Kay who once said (and I’m paraphrasing here): the personal computer won’t really be personal until you can wear it on your T-shirt. I think of that quote every time I see an IPod commercial.
I find it phenomenal how much of what defines this connected age actually is actually pretty [...]

I was recently asked to dream up all the ways these new fangled information and communications technologies can save us from the carbon-based perils of flying. Flying dumps tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Not good, that. Technology, of course, that’s the answer, or so they say (who ever they are).
The litany goes something like [...]

For all you folks that have been ever so gently bugging me about sharing my damn DAM system… Between minor brain freezes and other lovely things like work and spending two weeks tasting wine in Burgundy, Beaujolais, Cote du Rhone, and Provence; well, time just slipped away. I apologize. [and.. Yes, I have stories to [...]

At the risk of being Pollyannaish, I find it pleasing when “good” things are born from “bad.” One of these “good” things caught my eye recently. It something called reCAPTCHA. Not only is it neat, it also turns a sad state of affairs on its head. It helps create a public good, a silk purse [...]

In previous versions of SharePoint, I was often frustrated with how difficult it was to do things I thought should be simple. It was probably my ignorance, or it could have been SharePoint’s obscurity and overall lack of good documentation, but it seemed a herculean task to simply filter information by a dynamic variable like [...]

You may remember my April adventures with a beta of Microsoft’s “Windows Home Server” (AKA: WHS). WHS is a neat little consumer product. I think it also has some applicability in the NGO-SOHO space. It’s perfect, for example, for a nonprofit with fewer than ten or so people in need of automated backup and some [...]

There was a recent posting on the Information Systems Manager’s forum that has me dredging up the past. There, the question was posed as to the value of blogs – more specifically do they lead or follow, or are they relevant at all. Should one read ‘em or ignore ‘em?

The author of the note postulated [...]

I didn’t set out to spend my pre-Fourth of July weekend playing with Microsoft’s “Server 2008 Beta 3,” but that’s how it ended up anyway. I’d been travelling too much recently, so it was nice to spend some time at home, curled up with a warm keyboard and a cold LCD screen. My goal was [...]

The grass is always greener. We all wish we were something we’re not. I wish I were younger, perhaps better looking and less of a romantic, too. Mail room clerks dream of being CEO’s and CEO’s dream of working in the mail room. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”*
I often hear that [...]