Since I began working in journalism in 1990, I have written for many publications (about half of them defunct, whatever that says about me). I currently (12/07) contribute with varying degress of regularity to (among others): Scientific American, the British Guardian and Daily Telegraph newspapers. I also have a history with New Scientist, and the Times Higher Education Supplement (not indexed here because you can't really access its articles online). On the Web, I do a triweekly interviews column for The Inquirer, most of ZDNet UK's, book reviews, and wander around to strange places for The Register. You can find my weekly column, net.wars, here every Friday around lunchtime GMT or at Guy Kewney's NewsWirelessNet. For the first few years of its life, net.wars ran on Guy's site and at The Inquirer; the archive has its own page. I have written for Wired, Wired News, Salon, TheFeature.com, Smart Business (formerly PC/Computing), Mobile Business, the UK's Personal Computer World, PC Magazine UK, What PC?, PC Direct, and ComputerActive; for six months in 2000-2001 I did daily financial news covering the dot-com boom for Tornado Insider (however, sadly, when they reinvented TI they removed all the previous content, including mine). If people remember one piece I've written, it is alt.scientology.war, which ran in Wired in 1995. My books also have their own page.
In 1987, I founded the UK's Skeptic magazine, which continues under the sterling leadership of Chris French at Goldsmith College. I write a column for it and also for The Philosopher's Magazine. As a professional skeptic I have appeared on many TV and radio programmes. In 2006-2007 I also: blogged for Blindside; wrote the Mini Rough Guide to Designing Your Future (PDF, 5MB); and appeared occasionally as an expert commentator on Channel Five news. You can read all this again in my professional bio, or you can read the twisted version in my personal bio.What follows are (or, sadly, in many cases were) links to as much of my work as I can find on the Web. All dates are American format, and articles under each publication heading appear in reverse chronological order. If a publication has only a few entries, that doesn't necessarily mean I wrote only those few articles for it; it may simply mean those articles aren't on the Net.
- Why are Google and Microsoft both so interested in health? (2/28/08) - Both companies hope to offer individuals a way to manage their own health records.
- Patients who are frozen in time (2/14/08) - Is cryonics becoming less of a long shot?
- Do you agree not to read our privacy policy? (1/10/08) - Privacy policies need to be easier to access and understand.
- How can one pupil shut down an entire school's IT system? (1/3/08) - Thanks to news aggregators....
- How secure are your online passwords? (12/6/07) - Not very. Google makes a fine password cracker, as the Cambridge University Computer Lab's security group recently discovered.
- Linux community faces new uncertainty (10/18/07) - IP Innovation LLC files a patent claim against Novell and Red Hat.
- Does antivirus have a future? (9/20/07) - Floppy disks, Word, email...now infected Web sites. Be careful out there. Some reader comments: it's Windows, not Mac, Linux, or Unix, that's insecure. My reply: it's people who make computers insecure, no matter what the operating system. I say it's PEBKAC, and I say to hell with it.
- Why small online fraudsters get away with it (9/6/07) - Sad, but true.
- Ruling a further blow to SCO as it faces an increasingly bleak future (8/16/07) - It takes a big company to admit defeat - and SCO is an increasingly small one.
- Newly asked question: How big a threat to privacy is Google really? (7/26/07) - Gmail, Gmaps, Gnews, Gearth, and all under a single helpful user ID.
- Technobile: My memorable data is so unmemorable that I can't remember it (7/19/07) - And neither can American Express. Reader comments
- Technobile: Hey PayPal, forget about the FAQs, just give me some help" (7/5/07) - FAQs are not help, dammit.
- Will Galileo ever achieve orbit? (6/21/07) - So much for the "private" in "public-private partnership". It's hard to compete with free.
- Inside IT: The art of reducing your computer's noise (6/14/07) Build your own PC, listen to how loud your keyboard is.
- Technobile: Remember the simpler days when we all had just one phone? (6/7/07) - And just one phone bill. Convergence, where art thou?
- Technobile: It's time for Amazon to turn over a new leaf... (5/3/07) - Why is it easier to search Amazon using Google?
- Freedom of rights management (4/26/07) - Apple's change of heart re DRM in iTunes could have come quicker for independent musicians.
- Technobile: Wake up and smell the coffee, Flavia, or your company could land itself in hot water (4/5/07) - The coffee machine in the US Airways Gatwick lounge needs network neutrality.
- Will the EU ruling against Microsoft have unintended consequences? (3/8/07) - Maybe, says Gary Barnett, if the European Commission undermines the patent system.
- Technobile: Bring back Cello, a pre-Netscape browser, because Firefox 2 is a bloated, slow resource hog (3/1/07) - For a quiet life, never say anything bad about Firefox: reader comments. Note: this is the one piece I ever wrote where I chickened out of looking at the reader email. There was a lot of it. Sorry, folks.
- Newly Asked Question: How can I vote on the Oscars? (2/15/07) - Well, too late now. But OscarTorrents is what the Academy should be doing.
- A Dickens of a copyright case at last approaches its endgame (2/8/07) - SCO is doomed. Reader comments: there is a slight factual error in explaining the historical ownership background regarding AT&T and BSD.
- A picture paints a thousand invoices (2/1/07) - Corbis cracks down on online copyright infringement by small businesses while photographers get squeezed.
- Technobile: When something breaks the Internet, there's no way of telling anybody (1/18/07) - Internet weather.
- What have image spam and Captchas got in common? (1/11/07) - Crack identifying image spam, and you've helped the spammers by cracking captchas.
- Computers transform the cutting edge of sculpture (12/7/06) - Laser scanning and sculpture.
- Preserving a copy of the future (10/19/06) - Copyright and preservation.
- Technobile: For that seamless finish, forget Word and WYSIWYG - try scissors and Sellotape (9/21/06) - The uselessness of word processors for arranging thoughts. Reader comments.
- Do robots dream of copyright? (9/14/06) - Personality and publicity rights.
- Technobile: TV scheduling software (9/6/06) - every time I try to use the Hauppauge scheduling software to record anything, it crashes the entire computer it's running on. I am a fan of Hauppauge generally, and they are trying to help get to the source of the problem. Check back for updates. Reader comments: I should get a Mac, a Nebula, a DigiTV, a VCR, and a life.
- Galileo satellite's secure codes cracked (8/31/06) - it's the intellectual property claim that Americans are worried about in Galileo's prospective free global satellite navigation service. Sidebar: Codebusters: What the research team cracked.
- Spam is on the move from email to phone lines (8/10/06) - be careful of the cheap phone calls you wish for; you may get them.
- Big Brother takes a controlling interest in chips (6/29/06) - Vernor Vinge's vision of the all-surveillance future. He says it's optimistic.
- Technobile: music on hold (6/8/06) - If you must play something, make it talk radio. *Quiet* talk radio. Letters says I missed the worst thing about music on hold, namely not knowing how far up the queue you are.
- Technobile: online surveys (6/1/06) - Get away from me with those questionnaires. You really want to know what I think? Do you?
- Technobile: password overdose (5/18/06) - Passwords, passwords, passwords, and passwords. Spam on the side, sir?
- Technobile: Business Week's electronic edition (5/11/06) - Print definitely has an electronic future, but this sure isn't it. Letters agreed: Business Week's chosen Zinio format is dreadful; try Fortune instead.
- Will licensing kill the radio star? (5/4/06) - UK Internet radio stations' international streams are being switched off under the costs of international performing rights licenses.
- Technobile: intermittent messaging (4/20/06) - Look, folks, it's instant messaging, not instant response...
- Technobile: Die, Telewest set-top box, DIE! (4/6/06) - Says it all, really. What is less comprehensible is that Telewest has never reacted to this story. Like, you know, by groveling. Letters complained about different but equally annoying trouble trying to use a TiVo to record Sky radio channels.
- Is school fingerprinting out of bounds? (3/30/06) - Fingerprinting kids so they can take books out of school libraries. Really.
- Will logging your email combat terrorism in Europe? (1/12/06) - The EU passes the data retention directive. And you thought that was in 2002.
- Honey, I shrunk the movie collection (12/15/05) - My day job: digitizing the videos everyone feels they have to comment on when they enter my living room. Letters raised the issue of the durability of home-burned DVD media. This writer is correct that it's a concern. My assumption is that I will be able to build a large hard-drive array that will hold the entire collection as a networked server within the next couple of years. As of 6/30/06, six months after this article appeared, you can buy a 320Gb hard drive for about £65 plus VAT. I figure I will start buying 500Gb drives in about December, pretty much on the schedule I imagined.
- A new blow to our privacy (6/6/02) - European Parliament votes for data retention.
- Two British teams led the list of winners of the 1995 Ig Nobel prizes (10/12/95)
- Raid on Arnaldo Lerma (8/17/95)
Starting Out pieces have their own page.
- IT steps up a gear to cope with the shift to services (2/15/08)
- IT's still cool to be a computer expert (9/19/07) - Enrollment for advanced computer science degrees continues to drop while everywhere we are more and more reliant on highly skilled professionals. What's wrong with this picture?
- Networking for a brighter future (2/8/07) - Peter Gradwell talks about being the BCS's youngest-ever Fellow and BCS President Nigel Shadbolt talks about the future.
- How to get fit without leaving the boardroom (6/16/05) - Personal trainer Josh Selzmann works in offices, hotel rooms...
- Burst of spending that sits well in your office (5/9/05) - Getting good use out of important equipment.
- Inspector Gadget: Intervivo VOIP (12/13/04) - Product review.
- Ten years - but Susanna's book is worth the wait (10/7/04) - Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
- Office technology: Act big to get the best returns (9/20/04).
- Ultimate challenge for personality profilers (5/6/04) - Am I really unemployable? Wendy gets tested by Career Psychology.
- It's party time with Warren Buffett (5/5/04) - Woodstock for Capitalists, live (not on the Telegraph's site). But there is a jpg.
- Investors dine out on Buffett's home-spun advice (4/24/04) - Preview of Warren Buffett's annual shareholders meeting.
- Inspector Gadget: Margi Presenter-to-Go (4/5/04) - Product review.
- Office technology: Careful planning the key to local area network (3/15/04) - Wireless and wired networks: what you need to know.
- Office technology: Lined up for the revolution (2/16/04) - Admin systems.
- Word has reached us of a revolution (1/21/04) - Voice over IP.
- Shielding yourself from hackers (1/7/04) - Advice to businesses.
- Inspector Gadget: Spam spam spam (7/21/03) - Review of anti-spam options.
- Inspector Gadget: SMC Barricade Router 7404BRA (6/23/03) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: Hewlett-Packard SB21 portable projector (11/11/02) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: Internet Relay Chat (10/21/02) - Review.
- Starting out: DVDsonTap (9/30/02) - Profile.
- Inspector Gadget: Pendrive (9/23/02) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: Twin-screen displays (9/9/02) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: HP Bluetooth printer 995c (8/29/02) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: Sony Clie NR-70V (7/1/02) - Product review.
- efile: Software is the key to a computer upgrade (5/26/02) - Whether to buy new kit or upgrade existing.
- Inspector Gadget: TDK Prodigital (5/20/02) - Product review.
- Inspector Gadget: Radio laptops for those on the move (4/8/02) - Product review; 802.11b wireless standard.
- Inspector Gadget: TiVo - it thinks outside the box (2/5/02) - Product review; TiVo.
- Welcome, readers of the Daily Telegraph Internet A-Z! (9/20/01) - A links page for readers of the book, also written by me.
- Coming soon to a monitor near you (9/6/01) - Major studios announce plans to distribute films over the Net.
- efile: It's money down for the web's Holy Grail (5/24/01) - Micropayments.
- efile: When your emails need to be anonymous (5/17/01) - How to anonymize email.
- efile: Protect your private lives, by appointing a more public face (4/12/01) - the rise of the CPO.
- Everybody can be Big Brother now (4/12/01) - gadgets that spy, heavily cribbed from the talk that Privacy Foundation's Richard Smith gave at CFP2001.
- Can Napster Change Its Tune? (3/8/01) - why filtering Napster won't work. (Update (5/6/01): it's clear that it's working better than I thought it would - but only if your goal was to get Napster traffic to move elsewhere. Webnoize reports that Napster traffic was down 22 percent in April. But traffic is ramping up elsewhere: Bearshare has made Gnutella a lot easier to use, and Aimster (now Madster, thanks to legal action from AOL) and Napigatorlet you use your familiar Napster software with an array of other servers. File-sharing is still growing, just in a different set of places.) (Update2 (8/.6/04): well, we all know what happened after that. Between the filtering requirement and the courts, Napster got shut down, and more decentralized P2P networks like KaZaA and Morpheus took over;. The legal Napster 2.0 that exists now is nothing like the system that made file-sharing famous.)
- Bizarre world of online shopping (2/8/01) Snakes and two-headed teddy bears. Too late for inclusion, I found out you can even get a Klein bottle.
- On the lookout (10/19/00) - Report from the Privacy International "Scrambling for Safety" conference at the LSE.
- Drinking in the last chance saloon (10/5/00) - Napster's back in court, but Gnutella and Open Napster are waiting in the wings - if you can get them to work.
- Web browsing - for your eyes only (9/21/00) - metabrowsers.
- Olympics misses the Net (9/21/00)
- Why we want the snooping law to RIP (8/24/00)
- Why Napster isn't music to recording firms' ears (8/3/00)
- Taking the bite from downloading bytes (7/27/00) - OK, OK, so I'm not the first person to get ADSL...
- Net call to protect top names (6/1/00) - Should celebrities own their own names online?
- Music business records a victory (5/11/00) - RIAA wins ruling against Napster.
- Fool Britannia (5/4/00) - Britain: Not the best place to ecommerce.
- What's the big idea? (4/27/00) - dumb ideas for online business. Or are they?
- Interest free (4/20/00) - review of Making the Cisco Connection by David Bunnell with Adam Brate.
- Applauding lost millions (4/6/00) - review of Amazon.com: Get Big Fast by Robert Spector.
- Weather you like it or not (3/30/00) - the Met Office turns itself into the eighth most powerful supercomputing centre in Europe.
- Law of the jumble (3/16/00) - review of e-topia, by William J. Mitchell.
- Our privacy endangered (3/9/00) - review of Database Nation, by Simson Garfinkel.
- How hackers can use your PC (3/2/00) - security risks online and the development of Trin00 for Windows.
- Bill revives attack on privacy (2/24/00) - UK government introduces the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, with provisions affecting the use of strong cryptography.
- Predators on the prowl 2/10/00 - the use and abuse of software patents.
- Credit when credit's due (2/10/00) - review of Paying With Plastic, by David Evans & Richard Schmalensee.
- Finish of a start-up (1/27/00) - review of Charles H. Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners.
- Mammon, he's making eyes at me (1/20/00) - fantasy match-making for the online world after AOL announces its merger with Time-Warner. Letters
- Comfort in the obsolete (1/6/00) - computing by candlelight.
- Ecommerce changes welcomed (11/25/99) - they've finally dropped cryptography regulation from the ecommerce bill (but see the RIP bill)..
- Hacker fears over fast net links (11/25/99) - if you can see them on the Net, they can see you.
- Words and title deeds (11/25/99) - review of Owning the Future, by Seth Shulman.
- How to get Windows out of your system (10/28/99) - who uses Linux? Letters.
- Thank your lucky sums (10/28/99) - review of Taking Chances, by John Haigh.
- Bubbles will always pop (10/21/99) - review of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, by Edward Chancellor.
- US to relax code barriers (9/23/99) - US plans to relax crypto regulations.
- Valley in the raw (9/23/99) - review of The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson.
- Technology Information (9/2/99) Review of Who Gives a Gigabyte?, by Gary Stix and Miriam Lacob.
- Death of a language (8/19/99) - the last ASCII forum on CompuServe closes forever. Letters (8/26/99)
- Data bill draws a blank (8/19/99) - critique of the proposed electronic commerce bill.
- Useful additions (8/12/99) - Review of The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, by Freeman Dyson.
- Home Office revises spy's charter (7/1/99) - planned revisions give British security services greater scope for wiretapping.
- It's just not tennis (7/1/99) - rant about the poor quality of tennis Web sites.
- Memes on the brain (7/1/99) - review of Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine.
- Wimbledon ticket boost (6/17/99) - wireless connections speed ticket resales at Wimbledon.
- How to shake off unwanted company (6/10/99) - guarding privacy online.
- New ways to play it safe (5/13/99) - safemakers go high-tech to keep ahead of safecrackers.
- Surf the Internet at escape velocity (5/13/99) - trying out Eutelsat's Convergence 1 high-speed service.
- Someone to watch over us all (4/15/99) - privacy issues raised at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, held April 6-8, 1999 in Washington DC.
- Obituary too soon (4/8/99) Review of Infinite Loop: How Apple, the World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company, Went Insane, by Michael Malone.
- What's all the fuss about the king of the crackers? (4/1/99) - Kevin Mitnick pleads guilty.
- Furby hackers go for heart and soul (3/19/99) - Hardware hacking: warped Furbies and the dark side of Microsoft Barney.
- The limits of history (2/11/99) - Review of Wired Life by Charles Jonscher.
- France to lift cryptography restrictions (1/28/99)
- Encryption proves a slithery beast to control (1/21/99) - RSA Data Security sets up an Australian subsidiary to get around the US export laws.
- Has CompuServe finally sold its soul? (1/14/99) - changes at CompuServe (including the closure of the Fleet Street Forum, which I run) mean the service's appeal to business and professional users is dying.
- Comfortable in Cambridge (1/7/99) - Microsoft's research lab settling in.
- Corporate con? (1/7/99) - what happens if/when big companies start masquerading as disinterested fans online?
- Internet pioneer sets sights on new worlds to conquer (12/24/98) - Interview with Vinton Cerf re developing deep-space protocols to extend the Internet into outer space.
- Losing cash and all for a good cause (12/17/98) - the prospects for public online gambling.
- Baring the essentials (11/5/98) - review of Donald Norman's The Invisible Computer.
- The new providers (10/22/98) - the impact of new services like Dixons 'Freeserve' on UK ISPs.
- Now, you didn't want to do that (10/15/98) - the hell-made marriage of technical support people and confused users.
- Trade-in bait for PC buyers (10/1/98) - Gateway launches YourWare.
- Gates ready for round two of monopoly powers suit (9/10/98) - Microsoft vs. the DoJ, part IV.
- On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple (7/30/98) - Review of the book by Gil Amelio.
- Cryptography legislation is on its way (7/2/98)
- Old dials tell any number of tales (6/25/98) - where do phone numbers come from?
- The mutter with machines (6/25/98) - current progress in speech recognition at IBM.
- Universities in chains (5/28/98) - the drive to put courses online.
- What did you do in the Internet wars, Daddy? (5/21/98) - excerpt from net.wars.
- What should we do with all this cash? (4/23/98) - what to do with money intended to improve the intellectual infrastructure of the Net.
- Be old-fashioned - get it fixed (4/23/98) - when equipment breaks down.
- The End is Nigh (2/12/98) - predictions of doom and gloom at the Regent Conference, held in London January 29, 1998.
- Microsoft avoids one court battle, but the war is still to be won (1/30/98) Microsoft vs. the DoJ III.
- Future work stations (1/8/98) - a somewhat Anglicized version of top ten new jobs for 2002 (original version appeared in Salon, see below)
- Millennium Meltdown (12/30/97) - so you think the Y2k bug won't affect you because you don't have a computer...
- Make or break-up for Microsoft...one day (with Tom Standage, 12/23/97) - Microsoft vs. the Department of Justice part II.
- Pretty Good Phil Bounces Back (12/16/97)
- Why the Internet won't deliver world peace (12/9/97) - arguing with Nicholas Negroponte's speech to the EC.
- Leading the spam to the slaughter (12/2/97) - more on junk email and the planned "Spamford" Wallace backbone.
- Not content with no good content (11/25/97) - computer animation at the London Entertainment and Animation Festival.
- The Net on trial (11/18/97) - why the Net is not TV.
- Lords of their domain set for identity crisis (11/11/97) - more on plans to change the domain name structure of the Internet.
- March of the telephone monoliths (11/4/97) - Worldcom's bid to become the world's largest ISP.
- Hauled up in the name of justice (10/28/97) - Department of Justice action against Microsoft.
- Ready to wear (10/21/97) - wearable computers at MIT's Media lab.
- Talk is cheap, but not on the phone (10/8/97) - if Americans can have free local phone calls, why can't British people?
- Groceries Slipping Through the Net (9/30/97) - Tesco's home shopping service reassessed
- Thin system could prove a heavyweight contender (9/23/97) - Data General introduces network appliances.
- Giving the Web back to the user (9/9/97) - reinventing the Web with metadata and XML.
- Into the swing of perfect timing (8/26/97) - Professor Emeritus Edward Hall's attempt to build the perfect pendulum clock.
- Raking muck from dirt in cyberspace (8/26/97) - Matt Drudge and online gossip
- The Truth is...redundant (8/12/97) - reality ends here (it was the science fiction issue)
- How to keep Net porn in check (8/5/97) - ratings on the Net. Readers sent some letters about this one.
- Wrestling with shadows (7/15/97) - 10 years of the Shadow Project's attempt to build a general-purpose robot.
- Pointing to a more direct response (7/8/97) - planning the future of electronic government.
- Net should show us those other matches (6/24/97) - a tennis fan writes as Wimbledon 1997 gets underway. Letter with correction by the BBC (7/1/97)
- What's the key to electronic commerce? (5/27/97) - report on the one-day conference Scrambling for Safety, organized by Privacy International and EPIC to debate British cryptography policy.
- If music be the food of love, play on - and pay up (5/20/97) - hi-fi nuts, people with more money than ears. (NB: in the original version of this article, the musician sitting on the coffee table was Yo-Yo Ma.)
- Pulling power of push is widening the net (5/6/97)
- Digital diplomacy a two-edged sword (4/22/97) - report on the Virtual Diplomacy conference, held April 1-2, 1997 in Washington, DC.
- DTI threatens privacy (4/1/97) - announcement of the DTI's proposals for a network of trusted third parties. Letters (4/15/97)
- Smartest dummy of them all (3/11/97) - interview with John Kilcullen, the man behind the Dummies books.
- Controlling interests (2/25/97) - regulating the Net.
- How the PC becomes a supermarket trolley (12/24/96) - grocery shopping online (personal note: the service has not improved since then)
- Treaty may restrict access to statistics (12/3/96) - the database treaty under consideration by WIPO.
- Trust no one (12/3/96) - conspiracy theories around the Net.
- Lining up against junk emailers (11/26/96) - more on junk email.
- Anger at junk sale (10/29/96) - the child pornography spam.
- A grip on the net (10/1/96) - the setting up of the Internet Watch Foundation.
- Part of the picture (9/24/96) - review of Cybernation, by Neil Barrett.
- Is there a doctor anywhere in the online house? (9/17/96) - real medicine and quack cures on the Net. With Quacks and cures.
- A girl's best friend (9/17/96) - review of Wired Women, edited by Elizabeth Reba Weise & Lynn Cherny.
- The numbers game (8/27/96) - Internet demographics.
- New site rekindles privacy debate (8/13/96) - publication on the Net of Oregon DMV database.
- Admen test the water (8/6/96) - advertising on the Web.
- The last spin of the reel (4/11/05) - digital projection and its potential to change film culture. Sure miss those sprockets.
- Are we e-fficient? (11/23/04) - the state of egovernment.
- System alert: web meltdown (9/8/04) - the Internet is falling, the Internet is falling! Pictures at 11.
- Remote control (7/7/04) - WIPO considers "broadcasting rights".
- Friends like these (4/14/04) - Social networking sites. My friends are your friends. Aren't they? Define friend..
- Simple pleasures (9/3/03) - Making webpages accessible.
- Ever feel you're being watched? (5/14/03) - Biometric surveillance.
- You looking at me? (5/14/03) - Contextual advertising.
- Roger Needham: A very forward man (3/10/03) - Feature about the recently deceased dean of Cambridge computer science.
- Warning: system overload (2/10/03) - The Dalnet DDoS attacks. (Update, 8/6/04: the network has never really recovered.)
- The limits of freedom (11/11/02) - John Perry Barlow on the erosion of civil liberties.
- Online payment systems: Easy money? (9/9/02) - Should PayPal and other e-paymentschemes be regulated?
- The name game (6/10/02) - The fall of RealNames and the demand for non-Latin Web browsing.
- Electrical register (5/13/02) - Can technology fix voter apathy?
- All their own work (4/15/02) - Plagiarism in the schools: blame the Internet?
- What are you looking at? (3/25/02) - policy change at the Internet Watch Foundation.
- I'd like people to experience the thrill of hacking (7/17/95) - profile of Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of 2600: the Hacker Quarterly.
- Remember this... (9/6/03) - Interview with Elizabeth Loftus, critic of recovered memory therapy.
- How do I know who you are? (7/21/03) - Interview with James L. Wayman, biometrics expert.
- Fear and grokking on the war crimes trail (3/29/03) - Interview with Patrick Ball, deputy director of the Science and Human Rights Program at the AAAS.
- * Bots: The Origin of a New Species (11/1/97) - review of the book by Andrew Leonard.
- * Collected works (5/31/97) - reviews of John McLaren's Press Send, Melanie McGrath's Hard, Soft, and Wet, Brian Loader's The Governance of Cyberspace, and Dave Carter's Web Works.
- * Computer (11/30/96) - review of Martin Campbell-Kelly's and William Aspray's book on the history of the information machine.
- * Safe in the digital playpen (2/24/96) - review of Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen.
- * A fistful of fascinating facts (2/5/94) - review of James Trefil's 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science.
- Dial "I" for Internet (2/07) - BT to replace its entire network with one based on IP.
- Who pays? (6/06) - The battle over network neutrality.
- Wait a second (11/05) - Time is precious. That's why we're spending years discussing seconds.
- Flagging Copy Rights (9/05) - DVB works on copy protection/content management.
- Connection Blues (11/04). Bluesnarfing. You know you want to.
- Anonymous Trust (8/04). Making trusted computing work with privacy, at least partly.
- Missing movement (4/04). Finding better ways to track animals from farm to dinner plate.
- Ballot Breakdown (2/04) - The flaws in e-voting. For updates on this topic, see Rebecca Mercuri's site on the subject.
- Handicaps in CAPPS (9/03) - Problems with computerised passenger screening.
- A Man, A Plan, Spam (5/03) - Everyone's got a plan for dealing with spam. Including Lawrence Lessig.
- Connect the Pings (3/03) - You know all those mobile phone masts? They could be a radar system.
- Radio Space (9/02) - Easing radio spectrum scarcity with new technology.
- URLs in Urdu? (6/02) - Multilingual web addresses have homographic hacking possibilities.
- I Seek You (3/02) - new security technologies can't keep us as safe as we'd like, but they sure can invade privacy.
- Surveillance by Design (9/01) - European cybercrime treaty could end privacy on the Net.
- Wireless Wonder (8/01) - how 802.11b could become the wireless standard of choice.
- To Protect and Self-Serve (3/01) - will IBM and Intel embed copy protection into hard disks (it's sure a bad idea if they do)? On February 23, IBM announced it was abandoning the idea. The Industry Standard writeup cites the original source of the stories, The Register, and also my article.
- No E(asy) Cure (2/01) - why e-voting couldn't have fixed what happened in Florida.
- * Bits of Radio (12/00) - in the field of digital audio broadcast, the US is out of step with the rest of the world AGAIN.
- Octothorpe Standard (10/00) - what possessed Microsoft to pick C# as a name for its new language when you can't search on such a term effectively?
- Circles of Trust (8/00) - "Have you ever seen me before?" Nasrudin asked the shopkeeper. "No." "Then how can you be sure it is me?"
- Cease and DeCSS (5/00) - DVD cracking for fun and necessity.
- Mobilizing the Internet (3/00) - with Internet uptake flattening out, is mobile/wireless the next big wave?
- Making Money the New-Fashioned Way (1/00) - online trading.
- No Way to Run a Network (11/99) - more on the efforts to revamp the domain name system.
- When Publishing Could Mean Perishing (9/99)
- On-line U (7/99) - two reports cast doubt on the efficacy of online learning.
- Putting the squeeze on music (5/99) - the recoring industry declares war on the Net over MP3.
- Private Parts (2/99) - the US and Europe fight over privacy legislation.
- Beating the Tempest (12/98) Work by Ross Anderson on anti-Tempest software.
- The End of the World As We Know It (10/98) - Y2K survivalism.
- Opaque Transparency (9/98) - computers are getting harder, not easier to use.
- Access Denied (8/98) - the falling numbers of women in computing.
- Bringing down the Internet (5/98) - ways to kill the Net. Taken from a panel presented by Matt Blaze and Steve Bellovin at CFP98.
- Downloading As a Crime (3/98) - the passage of the NET Act.
- Wearing Your Computer (Cyberview, 1/98)
- Master of Your Domain (Cyberview, 10/97) - plans to change the domain name structure of the Internet. Letters (2/98)
- DNA sequencing for the masses (3/7/08). How far are we from Gattaca?
- Stamen punts new approach to data aggregation (3/6/08). Let the data choose the questions.
- A private view of Phoenix and Mars (10/14/07) - Countdown to May 25, 2008, when the Phoenix Mars lander, made in Tucson, hits the dirt. Plus, a visit to Kitt Peak.
- US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly (10/12/07). The TSA's latest.
- Dismantling gas giants with nanotech (9/21/07) - The first annual conference of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
- The great Passenger Name Record sellout (8/12/07) - The EU should be respecting its own data protection laws. Instead, "let's give the US everything".
- Blog: The romance and mystery of a good hack (8/6/07) - Defcon, days two and three.
- Blog: Hacking for hijinks (8/6/07) - Defcon, day one. When Dateline's careful preparation to infiltrate a hacker conference led them to send... a girl.
- Blog: Fun with passports and paperclips (8/3/07) - Black Hat, day two.
- Blog: Watching the watchers: high tech snooping (8/3/07) - Black Hat, day one.
- The hunt for water on Mars goes nanoscale (7/31/07) - using nanotechnology to expore space. Huh?
- Navigating the mysterious world of nano-medicine (6/27/07) - what can you say, but "Fantastic Voyage"?
- Blog: Who do you think you are? (5/8/07) - CFP, day four.
- Blog: Wiretaps, no-fly lists, and suing AT&T (5/4/07) - CFP, day three.
- Blog: Living on the wrong side of the technology tracks (5/3/07) - CFP, day two.
- Blog: The surveillance arms race (5/2/07) - CFP, day one.
- Boffins working on RFID super-shield (4/8/07) - RFID Guardian.
- Spam: it sucks like a tarpit (4/2/07) - Can 20 smart people in a room at MIT crack the spam problem?
- Why can't a computer be more3 like a brain? (3/29/07) - Jeff Hawkins explains his next big idea at etech.
- EFF's Pioneer Awards: And the winners are... Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier, and Yoachi Benkler. (03/28/07)
- Book review: Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World (03/23/07) - Canadian author Maureen Webb argues that the preemptive model of policing that has taken over since 9/11 makes us all feel less, not more, secure.
- Blindside to mull potholes in road to e-government (3/2/07) - An explanation of what Blindside was set up to do. Update: I did not know when I wrote this that later in the year I would become a paid contributor to Blindside's blog and wiki.
- YouTube rules tennis highlights 'out' (3/1/07) - How dumb can the tennis authorities get?
- IWF reforms could pave way for UK net censorship (12/29/06) - I am against child abuse. I am for ensuring that anyone filtering the nation's Internet feeds should be accountable for what they filter out.
- Europe's banks target payment upgrades (10/17/06)
- Guardian blushes red in tech quiz challenge (6/29/06) - Yeah, we lost, OK? If the rest of the team had told me they only used Macs...
- Museum unscrambles secret agency's past (5/9/06) - A visit to the NSA museum
(Note:: Book reviews for ZDNet UK have their own page)
- Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook P7010 (8/16/04). Review. Fixes everything that's wrong with the P2020, the one I actually own...
- Travelling light: replacing your notebook with a Palm (3/19/04) How practical is it really?
- Take control of your email (5/2/03) Comparative reviews of mail transfer agents Mailgate, CommuniGate and VPOP3.
- Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 (3/24/03) Review.
- IRCXpro Server (3/24/03) Review.
- Voice over IP services (2/7/01) Comparative reviews of Net2Phone, MediaRing, iConnectHere and Callserve.
- Psion WaveFinder (10/00) Review.
- The Spam Wars (11/03) - How should the Internet deal with junk mail?
- Amy Frazier - interview (10/31/03)
- Are British bobbies reading your e-mail? (8/23/00) - yet another complaint about RIP.
- Britain's first software billionaire (7/10/00) - interview with Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy.
- Wireless Warrior (5/15/00) - interview with Colly Myers, CEO of Symbian.
- Top Ten New Jobs for 2002 (1/5/98) - humor.
- Underground Fiction (3/20/97) - profile of Canadian science fiction writer Geoff Ryman and his Web novel, 253.
- Peter Cochrane (in the Wired 25) (11/98)
- alt.scientology.war (12/95) Letters.
- Make it accessible (Mar/Apr 04) - How to make your website more usable by people with disabilities.
- At Virtual Technology Show, A Harsh Reality: Not Enough Computing Power (4/24/07) - a virtual technology show in Second Life.
- Decoding Bees' Wild Waggle Dance (5/13/05) - we read about this as kids; now they've proved the connection to the satisfaction of most people - though not of Adrian Wenner, who continues to believe that odor is the factor that guides bees to the food sources they've found.
- British ID Card Gains Ground (1/4/05) - ID Cards Bill passes its second reading in the House of Commons.
- 3G Phone Rival Calling Collect (11/30/04) - Cambridge Silicon Radio creates a single chip holding Wi-Fi and 3G.
- IndyMedia Gets Its Servers Back (10/14/04) - and still no one quite knows what happened.
- New Tack Wins Prisoner's Dilemma (10/13/04) - I still think they cheated. So did some people on Slashdot.
- Nations Plan for Net's Future (10/11/04) - trying to make sense of WSIS.
- EU Wary of Microsoft DRM Purchase (10/6/04) - the EC investigation of Microsoft's and Time-Warner's acquisition of ContentGuard.
- UK iTunes Prices Questioned (9/17/04) - somehow everything always costs more in the UK.
- Europe Warned About Warming (9/8/04) - move to Norway and grow tomatoes, that's the best idea.
- Broadcast Treaty Battle Rages On (8/28/04) - broadcasters want rights. Doesn't everyone?
- UK's Royal Mail Does E-Commerce (3/16/99)
- UK May Loosen Crypto Rules (3/11/99) The consultation period for Britain's new electronic-commerce bill closes April 1, 1999.
- Europe Survives Euro Test (1/13/99)
- Latest Portal Pickup: Domains (8/10/98)
- Hackers to Shake Down Takedown (7/15/98) Hackers protest over Mitnick movie.
- Rules, Britannia (7/7/98) - British export controls on cryptography to be extended to transmission by intangible means.
- Euro VCs Begin to Mimic Silicon Valley Cousins (10/3/97)
- Europe Readies Net Content Ratings (7/7/97 18:03 PDT)
- Microsoft Buys into Cambridge R&D Lab (6/17/97 12:03 PDT)
- BT Eyes Network Computers - Cautiously (6/11/97 15:04 PDT)
- Demon Puts 49 Percent Share on the Block (4/30/97 15:08 PDT)
- ID System Makes Your Mug to Go (4/30/97 15:08 PDT)
- Britain Wants Tight Rein on Crypto Keys (4/9/97 5:00 PDT)
- So Long, Delphi UK - Hello, LineOne (3/12/97 18:14 PST)
- Database Aims to Send Mad Cow Disease Packing (3/10/97 14:47 PST)
- Europe Has Big, Vague Plans to Police Net (2/17/97 8:57 PST)
- Britain Launches Net Smut Hotline (12/13/96 20:00 PST)
- PC Vendor Fights ISP Credit-Card Trap (12/5/96 20:00 PST)
- Tracking Cows - (1/23/03) The future of beef includes chips.
- Pictures: Worth a Thousand Words? - (12/9/02) MMS and the transparent society.
- Mobile Messaging - (10/8/02) MMS - not ready for prime time.
- Personalizing Your Service - (2/5/02) What does 'personalization' really mean?
- Diminishing Mobile Portals (10/10/01) Mobile portals not working out.
- Conflicting Issues: Security and Privacy (8/27/01) Speaks for itself, really....
- Mobile Payment - A Hard Nut to Crack (7/30/01) Failed schemes litter the Net...
- Usability is a sleeping giant (6/11/01) Designing usable WAP sites.
- The Tale of MVNOs (5/3/01) Mobile virtual network operators - a growing trend.
- 3G Pricing Woes (4/3/01) More pricing problems for operators...
- Is 3p the Right Solution? (3/12/01) SMS billing strategies.
- Lie Spy (6/02) - could text mining detect lies?
- I'm Not Dead Yet (8/01) - reports of the death of e-commerce are exaggerated.
- Generic Names Lose Their Luster (4/01) - how much is business.com really worth?
- Losing the Company Keys (2/01) - how the UK's RIP Act affects US businesses.
- Labor Pains (1/01) - high-tech labor unions?
- Food Futures (12/00) - someday soon, junk food may be good for you.
- Go Global (10/00) - taking a US business international.
- Shell Game (9/00) - creative accounting among the dot-coms.
- The Outsiders (7/00) - how frustrating it is to click on checkout only to find that the Web site doesn't accept foreign addresses...
- Language is a Virus (3/00) - the world is not as English as we think.
- Offline: Election 2000 E-vasive (11/27/00) - we're out there debating politics with new intensity, but where are the politicians?
The magazine changed its format at the beginning of August, which ended this column. Alas.
- Would You Pay $1 for This Article? (7/27/00) Stephen King's new experiment in publishing.
- The Sovereign State of Sealand? (6/22/00) - a data haven sets up on an abandoned military platform that claims sovereignty.
- I Want My Napster! (6/1/00) - new survey by Webnoize shows that college students listen to music via Napster but mostly don't keep copies. (5/31/02 - Webnoize seems to've gone under.)
- Another Casualty in the Race to E-millions (5/25/00) - bye-bye Boo, Boo.
- Recapturing the Spirit of the Internet (4/27/00) - CFP2000.
- Free to Be You and Me (3/16/00) - why free ISPs have taken the UK by storm.
- A Denial of Action (2/17/00) - the distributed denial of service attacks and why they should not usher in a new era of Net regulation.
- Dangerous Liaisons (1/20/00) - where will the AOL/Time-Warner matchup lead?
- The Information Age: More to Come (12/23/99) - thoughts on Vannevar Bush's seminal essay, As We May Think, originally published in 1945 and widely held to be the first visionary glimmerings of today's Web.
- Whose Rights Are They? (12/2/99) - the European debate over caching.
- Surfing Blind on AOL (11/11/99) - suit by the National Federation of the Blind against AOL.
- The Freelance Writer's Web (10/14/99) - the decision in the appeal in the case Jonathan Tasini v. The New York Times et. al.
- To Your Health (9/16/99) - medical information online, good or bad?
- Romancing the Hacker (8/26/99) - Kevin Mitnick's continued imprisonment without a bail hearing.
- Community Uprising (7/22/99) Online communities depend on more than a common web address.
- Guerrilla Journalism (6/24/99) - what is journalism, anyway?
- Is Encryption Protected By the First Amendment? (5/27/99) - the Bernstein case.
- This is a recording... (4/22/99) - the music industry against MP3.
- Liability and the Internet (4/8/99) - the case of Lawrence Godfrey vs. Demon Internet.
- The Battle for Control of .coms (3/11/99) - should domain names be linked to international trademarks?
- Microsoft on the World Scene (2/4/99) - Microsoft versus the DoJ looks a little different from overseas.
- The Decency Battle, Round II (12/24/98) COPA temporarily restrained again.
- Regional code disenchantment (4/01) News analysis. Hacking DVD players.
- Web retail role reversal (4/01) News analysis. Tesco.com doing better than Amazon.com.
- Online share dealing (12/00) Part of a series on personal finance.
- Fix-It Utilities 99 (8/99) Review of Mijenix’ utilities suite.
- Street Planner 99 (6/99) Review of Psion 5 map database.
- Page Keeper Standard (12/98) Review of Caere’s scanning image and document management suite.
- Global Writer 98 Professional (12/98) Review of Lingua’s typing software for foreign characters.
- Pagis Pro 2.0 (9/98) Review of Xerox’ scanning image and document management suite.
- Samsung SyncMaster 900p (9/98) Review of Samsung's 19" monitor.
- LapLink for Windows 95/NT (9/97) Review.
- Tierra Highlights 2 (7/97) Review.
- WinFax Pro 8.0 (7/97) Review.
- Never, ever, call them geeks (5/2/02) How to work with your technical staff.
- Bill Gates unplugged (12/13/01) Take a wild guess....
- Doing the Jobs (10/4/01) Steve Jobs, of course....
- The long and winding road (6/1/01) How to survive when you're laid off.
- The stupidest thing you can do is try to discipline them - Feb 22, 2001. How to (try and) manage programmers.
- Age of experience (2/8/01) Dotcom collapse leads to more job opportunities for experienced older workers.
- CEO - does the E stand for Ego? (1/11/01) CEOs and the cult of personality.
- An IT director by any other name (11/2/00) CIOs, CTOs - when did IT directors start changing their title?
- Security law raises costs (4/24/00) Briefing paper
- Security law raises costs (4/20/00) News.
- Virus defences must change (2/28/00) Briefing paper.
- Keep an eye on biometrics (11/15/99) Briefing paper.
- Encryption for business (6/21/99) Briefing paper.
- PC Direct guide to buying Internet Service Providers (12/99)
- PC Direct guide to buying PIMs and contact management software (10/99)
- Personal services (11/98) Guide and reviews of PIMs.
- English lesson: Global network (9/27-29/96) Clumsy crackdown on child porn.
- Missing The Big Time (5/93) - interview with Acorn and ATM founder Hermann Hauser. A shorter version of this interview appears in Remembering the Future.
- Something for Everyone at World Skeptics Congress (September/October 1996 Vol. 20, No. 5)
- * IBM's Olympic systems (6/96)
- Will Government Regulation Change E-commerce in Britain? (3/31/99) DTI releases consultation document.
- Community relations (2/98) Building branded communities.
- Beat the Budget: All you need for £1500 (9/97)
- Backpage (10/96) - who needs network computers?
- Honey, I Shrunk the World! (9-10/99) - microelectromechanical systems and other pieces of a small world.
- Lights, Computers, ACTION! (9-10/97) - special effects in the age of computer animation.
- All I want for Christmas (Winter 1997) - Reviews of The Dilbert Future, Microserfs,Dave Barry in Cyberspace, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, and Bots.
- Surfing for Beginners (September/October 1997)
- Easy Reader (Summer 1997) - reviews of High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, Deeper, The World Wide Web Unleashed, Complete Idiots Guide to HTML, Instant HTML, Sizzling Web Site Design, designing web graphics.2, Wired Style, Net Chick, and Wired Women.
This page maintained by wendyg at skeptic.demon.co.uk. Unsolicited commercial email unwelcome. Back to front
- Mini Rough Guide to Designing Your Future (PDF, 5MB) (12/06)
- Co-writer, report on statistical analysis of human rights violations in Sierra Leone with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (in progress, 3/06).
- Copy editor, No Lobbyists As Such, by Florian Mueller (2005).
- Identifying Risks: National Identity Cards (PDF) (3/05) - a brief history of British proposals for national identity cards and the justifications for them. Published in SCRIPT-ed, the journal of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law.
- Technological Visions, ed. Marita Sturken, Douglas Thomas and Sandra Ball-Rokeach- contributor (5/04)
- Silenced: an International Report on Censorship and Control of the Internet - contributor (9/03)
- A Report of Research on Privacy for Electronic Government - contributor (3/03)
- Review of Online Journalism Awards 1999 (7/99; what WELL T-shirt?)
- Critique of British electronic commerce proposals (4/16/99)
- CSICOP World Congress 1998 (7/98)
- Freedom Forum meeting on Internet regulation (2/25/98)
- Posting re papers on European regulation from Nettime (2/22/97)
- Critical analysis of London Observer article on child porn on the Net (8/28/96)
- A couple of articles from PC Support Advisor (various dates)
