Information Manager Journal

Cranky Geeks: Who coined the term 'chiclet keyboard'?

I was on this week's Cranky Geeks show, and host/longtime colleague John C. Dvorak introduced me as the guy who coined the term "chiclet keyboard." I smiled but I was thinking, "Oh yeah?" And after some digging around, I have to conclude it wasn't me. True, I was one of the earliest writers to use the phrase, but I suspect that Creative Computing, Newsweek and others used it first. I seem to recall it being a commonly bandied-about phrase well before the IBM PCjr came out, which is when I first used it at InfoWorld. The book Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms 1941-1991, edited by John Algeo, is my source for earlier usages than mine.

Still, it was flattering to be thought of as someone with that kind of early impact on tech terms. Would that it were so!

MS Office remains the fault line between open and closed

The true state of open source / open standards, 2010: open source "champion" Matt Asay apparently still uses Microsoft Office, not OpenOffice; open standards champ Tim Berners-Lee won't open MS Office files. (Disclosure: I use both MS Office and OpenOffice, though my version of MS Office goes back to 2000.)

Google always gets your consent

A commenter to this New York Times blog post states that "Google sucks out every byte of call, contact, text, location data without your consent" but that hasn't been my experience. Google asks for your consent, and then (usually) sucks out every byte, etc.

Do you really own your contact list?

Better read those social network terms of service carefully. Open-Xchange lets people share their contact lists with the world -- but what if your contacts don't want that information shared outside of the social network where you connected? I smell a lawsuit, or at least a cease-and-desist order.

10 reasons I'm buying my first iPhone

1. There's a critical mass of cool new apps that can't be ignored for sheer productivity.
2. I would stick with open standards if phones based on them offered all these cool new apps, but they don't.
3. People who insist on dissing the iPhone now remind me of people who rejected the IBM PC in favor of S-100 bus systems running CP/M. They said standards were better, but they lost that argument.
4. My wife River has let me see all the good and bad of the iPhone as one of the earliest adopters, and I like what I see, mostly.
5. Apple fixed some things that needed fixing, such as: now you can invite people to meetings from within the iPhone's calendar, instead of having to do it from Apple iCal or (shudder) Microsoft Outlook.
6. AT&T offers cheaper service for two under the Family Plan.
7. Google's Android promises more freedom but less privacy.
8. I can now lobby hard for a more open iPhone; before, I was just an outside heckler.
9. I don't have time to roll my own solutions to the extent I would have had to without the iPhone.
10. My existing phone is a piece of worn-out junk that barely makes calls anymore!

Link rot in the blogsphere

Link rot used to be associated with Web 1.0 and the dot com bubble. But as I resume daily blogging based on the research I conducted from 2002-2008 for a book project I abandoned, it's clear that the blogosphere has its own link rot, and it may be a more pronounced case. Vast amounts of useful stuff has disappeared already, and the trend may be accelerating during the latest economic downturn.

Hack of Sarah Palin's account shows security questions can be a joke

Those questions so many Web sites ask us to answer -- the ones that let us recover a lost password -- can be a joke. Especially if the person answering them is a public figure. In recent years, at River's suggestion, I've taken to using nonintuitive and/or false answers to as many of those questions as I can.

London Stock Exchange outage blamed on Microsoft

This September 9 story hasn't been fully explored by the press, and with the collapse of Lehman Brothers yesterday, is now in danger of being forgotten. But in the midst of rocky financial times, to have your institution relying on Microsoft technology for high-volume trading has to be seen as risky behavior.

Literacy Bridge: Building a really cheap digital audio device

Cliff Schmidt is leading an effort by Literacy Bridge to build a very inexpensive MP3 player for the developing world. I spoke with him for my latest Opening Move podcast.

Google Chrome: Yep, there's a catch

Maybe Matt Asay makes more of Google's evil intent than he ought to, but for now it'll keep me on Firefox.