Daily

First they laughed then they fought and now they joined

Open Source has come a long way

Remember there was a time Microsoft called Linux and the GPL license cancer? Mainstream technology media would write large editorials on how GPL could “infect” your software and how you should manage (read avoid) that. It was all so ridiculous. Microsoft obviously fight back. Any company whose business model is attacked does that. It’s more […]

Hands off please

Personal data ownership as a fundamental right

The biggest conundrum about privacy is data ownership. Who owns the data and especially if it’s about yourself. EU’s GPDR puts responsibilities in place on collecting data, informing users about which data is collected and the data can be only used for the disclosed purpose. It also gives rights to users to remove and change […]

A love letter

Path

Dearest Path, I was in shock when you told you were leaving me. It’s been a few weeks, but I’ve yet come to grips with it. Time heals all wounds and I know it’ll become easier over time. Today, I say goodbye with a heavy heart. You’ve been an integral part of my life for […]

We love to be entertained

Smartphones: The Dark Side

The BBC made this great documentary called “Smartphones: The Dark Side”. Obviously the smartphone and its apps are made to draw you in and entice you to spend more time on them. The ecosystem financial rewards are driven by you using it. It’s pretty much the same reasoning we used to have about TV. The […]

She has an identity crisis

Confused Alexa

I’ve 3 echo’s around the house, but I’ve a love and hate relationship with Alexa. I love it because I can bark orders and she’ll obey diligently by turning on or off the lights or telling me about the weather. She’s reasonably smart but for instance, recently she couldn’t tell me how many Dalai Lama’s […]

Censorship & ethics

Last week a presentation of Google research called “The Good Censor” was leaked. It’s a good summary of the burden on we put on tech companies to “police” the internet. Often times the examples we see in the media are overly simplified cases. The devil is in the details – especially for multinational companies. Slide […]

It should never be a valid excuse

When IT is in the way at corporates

The most prevalent excuse I’ve heard in the last 5 years not to do a deal, project or product is because corporate IT isn’t able to support it (in a timely manner). Still today, I hear this excuse often and this is where corporates start to loose. You’ve to be able to be agile and […]

Laptop and traveling

I find technology and how it influences and changes human behavior very interesting to observe. I’ve been doing some heavy traveling lately and I noticed that I’m actually not using my laptop as much as I used to do. My laptop and me used to be tied to the hip, but nowadays I sometimes notice […]

10,000ft captchas

Every time I use Gogo inflight, I’m puzzled by their use of captchas. Are hackers bored enough on flights to try to circumvent their authentication system? There are gazillion other and more consumer-friendly ways to solve that problem like introducing progressive increasing cool-off periods after failed login attempts. They even let you solve a captchas […]

Cold emails

Yesterday, Hunter Walk wrote about cold emails and that they can be better than a luke warm email. It reminded something a friend told me a while ago. We were talking about cold emails from various SaaS companies offering their services. I told him I routinely just deleted them. He had a different strategy. He […]