Big Brother tracking your travel by mobile phone

So Nokia have signed a deal to use mobile phones as oyster cards.  For those of you who don’t live in London, Oyster cards are cards which are pre-loaded with money and can be used on the london transportation system so you don’t need to buy your ticket.

We all carry mobile phones – so I think that the idea of using your phone as cash is a great idea – I mean you can already pay for parking using your mobile phone – and also use it to pay for the congestion charge – so what’s the problem?

Dean thinks its a bit big brother – but I’m cool about this.  In the UK we enjoy the luxury of having more webcams per capita than any other country in the world.  We’re tracked wherever we go – and I feel quite safe knowing this.

So what do you think?

Technorati Tags: oyster cards,transport for london

Getting that confidence you need

When you get to know people you often find that a lot of us suffer from low self esteem or lack of confidence. We often doubt our own abilities and this is reflected in our work.    But to the person looking in from the outside – we appear to be totally different people.  So I’ve found some really useful articles dealing with this very thing.  One is about being self conscious in public, looking a fool and dealing with too much self criticism which leads to you always seeking approval due to your lack of self confidence.  Both are worth a read.

So stop seeing the kitty in the mirror and start to grow that lion instead…

Technorati Tags: self confidence,self esteem

Secret diary of an On Call girl

 

The title caught my eye – and the content made me smile.

Thank you Judith for this post that is certainly worth passing on to a wider audience.

and so true too…

Is social networking as pervasive as we think it is?

Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed about all of the different social networking tools out there – there are so many with new sites for me to subscribe to all the time.  I feel such a luddite from time to time.

But I’m not alone, apparently.

According to this article by Adam from Mashable, I’m in a minority.  and I wonder how many of the 42% of those in the know just use the mainstream sites like Facebook.  I bet that adding a third section – those that use social networking extensively would give you a tiny slice of the pie chart – 2% perhaps?

So maybe I’m not so far behind the curve…

Technorati Tags: social networking,web 2.0

IM bot translator

Now this is a really cool idea – I can now have Instant message conversations with people in different languages and there’s an IM translator bot that will translate for me. Read all about it on the blog…

 

 

 

 

All you have to do is add mtbot@hotmail.com to your list of contacts and that’s it…

 

Thanks to Arlindo for the heads up

Technorati Tags: IM bot,translator bot,messenger translator bot

OCS 2007 – now on a BlackBerry

I just noticed this over on Johann’s blog.  We’ve released the OCS 2007 client for BlackBerry the other day.  Here’s the feature list:

Enjoy Familiar Features Wirelessly

Enjoy a desktop-like experience on your BlackBerry smartphone, with features and functionality you’re already familiar with from Microsoft Office Communicator. There’s no need to compromise just because you are away from your computer.

• Initiate and manage group chat sessions of three or more participants from your smartphone
• View the presence status of contacts, such as online, busy, do not disturb, be right back, away or appear offline and set your own status to inform others of your availability
• Enjoy a synchronized contact list, with the same contacts available on your BlackBerry smartphone and your computer
• Find contacts quickly with the quick find function and picture association
• Receive alerts when team members become available
• Communicate more effectively with emoticons
• And more

Integrates with other BlackBerry Smartphone Applications

You will also enjoy tight integration with other applications on your BlackBerry smartphone:

• Set your presence status from your home screen icon
• View the presence status of contacts directly from your address book
• Check your spelling and edit autotext on your instant messages
• Initiate phone calls or browser sessions directly from phone numbers or URLs embedded in instant messages
• Voice integration with ‘Click to Call’

Technorati Tags: blackberry,smartphone,OCS 2007

Stop wasting your time

I saw this brilliant article over on the dumb little man blog about eliminating waste – that’s time wasting stuff by the way and had to share it.

Number 10 really strikes a chord:

Say NO!
The most lasting way to eliminate waste is to learn to say no. Say no to buying new stuff you don’t need, say no to tasks you don’t want to do, say no to your habits that kill your time! Practice saying no to things you are comfortable eliminating and work to expand that no to other areas. If you can say no to anything that complicates and adds waste in your life, you can keep time available on the things that matter to you and to keep eliminating waste you already have. You certainly don’t need to eliminate one area of waste and just replace it with a new one. You must be able to say NO when its wasteful to you.

 

David has some good tips on how to say no when you need to – and how saying yes can lead to stress.

“Over the years I have met many people who would automatically say “yes”, thinking that it would help them make friends and be liked. But, just saying “yes” means you get used and abused.”how true is that?

 

I’m not too sure about time wasting activities though – I like cooking for friends and family and I really enjoy mowing the lawn – it’s a good walk around the garden!

All these are waste – According to Mike:

• Driving to/from work
• Paying bills
• Doing dishes and cleaning the house
• Mowing the lawn and other yard work
• Preparing meals and shopping / buying living essentials

Most people would agree with those areas that they don’t have any real lasting value. More debatable areas of waste are often in our pastimes:

• Watching TV
• Surfing the web
• Sleeping more than we need
• Line ups and delays for simple things like coffee and lunch
• Work

I actually think that watching TV and web surfing when you’re at home can be really destructive time wasters and should be on the top list instead.

 

So what are my tips to stop wasting time?

1. Action an email immediately – when you’ve responded to a mail, then delete the inbound mail – you’ll never have to process it again.
2. Use Unified communications wherever you can.  Perhaps you can just IM the person instead of that email – or even phone them, cutting out a heck of a lot of too-ing and fro-ing.
3. Cut arguments short.  Sometimes you’ll just have to agree to disagree (I’d never be a politician eh?)
4. Vendettas and Grudges.  Cut them out of your life – they’re destructive and waste your time and energy.
5. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with every new project – others in the past may have had some really great ideas you could borrow and enhance saving you lots of time.
6. Cross stitch.  Why does ANYONE spend so much time doing this hobby?  I really don’t get it!
7. Stop trying to think of 10 tips for every series you write – I’m sure this has something to do with the 80:20 rule – but once again I’m stuck on 7 tips so won’t waste my time trying to think of any more.

 

So what’s your best tip to stop wasting time?

Technorati Tags: life tips,wasting time,little man blog

Signs a geek girl likes you

 

Dimi sent me a link to the 21 signs a Geek Girl likes you post and it made me smile so I thought I’d include it here for a bit of Friday fun.  I especially like:

14. She gives you lots of link love.

17. She always tags you for memes.

 

And one from me:

She likes your latest device – even though her device is smaller (and has more features) than yours…

 

Can you think of any more??

Technorati Tags: Women in IT,Girl Geek

It’s always nice to get a thank you

i was forwarded this mail after Steve helped Wagner to get his TechNet subscription.  I’m copying this in full as it’s so rare we get thanked like this and i wanted  everyone to know that when we get mails like this, they really make our day.

Just a quick note to say thank you very much for your help.

Clive called me yesterday and I placed the order for my Tech Net subscription WITH the 30% offer. That was a very kind gesture from your team to allow me the privilege of signing up to your services at the reduced price that Steve mentioned on his Blog.

Although I run a very small company, and you working for such a large company, I still had the feeling that you cared and took special interest in addressing my request. Even if you had come back and said “sorry, we can’t offer you the discount”, I would still feel that Steve, Clive and you had a pleasant personal touch addressing me by first name and replying to emails and phone calls almost immediately.

To be perfectly honest with you, I thought that my original email to Steve would have had an automated reply and that it would be the end of the story. Happy to know that although Microsoft is such a large business, people don’t hide behind their anonymity to avoid helping others.

You three (and no doubt thousands of others) are a prized asset to your Compay.

 

Yes, we’re just ordinary and real people doing our jobs as best as we can – and a little thank you from time goes a very long way…

How do you change the default font size in a new Outlook message.

Wang Li had a problem with Outlook:

When I compose a email in Outlook 2003, the default font size is very small. I have to change it before writting the message. It sometime will some how change itself back to the default size while writting the message.

I tried to modify the mail.oft template, but the font size button in the form is fixed to size 10.

Could you help? Thanks very much!

This setting is hidden away in the configuration under Tools – Options – Stationery and Fonts button (at the bottom here):

Then you need to click on the New mail messages button here – and format the font to whatever you want.

Nothing too garish though – you need something that’s easy on the eye and easy to read.  Purple prose (in Purple font) isn’t

 

Technorati Tags: outlook font size