Hoboken vs. the robot ... Suffering from cyberchondria ... The dark side of mobility

WHAT'S WHIRLING

Feature: Hoboken vs. the robot
Look at this: The real Internet
Weird news: Fired by text message
Out of it: Do you suffer from cyberchondria?
Geek comic of the week: Goats


SHE'S A 10

This week: A tribute to summer...

- Top 10 ballparks
- Top 10 wines for barbecues
- 10 best beaches
- Best chips ever
- Top 10 ice cream makers in the U.S.

See all the 10s


WHAT YOU SAID

What's the best thing about working in the summer?

54.9% - Free air conditioning
9.8% - Less traffic; shorter commute
11.8% - Goofing off when the boss is out
5.9% - Wearing shorts and sandals
5.9% - Avoid visiting family with 'I have to work' excuse
7.8% - Not having to watch bad daytime TV
3.9% - Reduced risk of skin cancer

Answer another poll


YOUR 2 CENTS

When you're on vacation do you...

- Work part of every day
- Check e-mail or voicemail at least once a day
- Leave your cell phone on so the office can reach you
- Turn it all off

Answer this poll

Farewell, my analog friend

For the first time in my life, except for that brief flirtation with ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) in the late '90s, I'm about to be without an analog telephone in the house. From next week, mine will be part of a growing number of homes whose telephone service comes across a broadband Internet connection.

Read the full article here

IT laughs at itself

A British TV show has taken the best and worst of IT administrator stereotypes and packed them into a clever, side-splitting comedy.

'The IT Crowd' features Jen, who has been appointed as a supervisor in her company's IT department but knows nothing about computers. When asked during her job interview what she knows about IT, she says, "You know, e-mail. Sending e-mail. Receiving e-mail. Deleting e-mail. Um, I could go on."

But Jen's social skills are sorely needed to raise the profiles of Moss and Roy, two hopelessly geeky IT administrators banished to a dingy basement office strewn with hardware detritus. Roy arrogantly advises computer-challenged employees who call him with a problem to turn their computers off and on again, which usually allows him to go back to reading his comic books.

Read the full article here

The Dark Side of Mobility

By Dan Blacharski

Before cell phones, BlackBerries and laptops, taking a day off meant taking a day off. You couldn't be reached. If you really had to make contact, you had to find a pay phone and call the office, but they couldn't call you.

The work world is a little different today. According to a survey conducted by Info-Tech Research Group, 81 percent of employees feel obligated to one degree or another to be available to the office 24 hours a day. Only 19 percent of the people surveyed felt no obligation at all to stay connected around the clock. This is of course, the dark side to all the spiffy connectivity technology that's come out lately.

So what are employers doing about it? Not much, in terms of discouraging the practice.

Read the full article here

August's coolest gadgets

By Martyn Williams

After an unusally long rainy season, the skies are now blue in Japan and summer has arrived. Everyone is looking forward to several weeks of unbroken sunshine and hot temperatures but some people are already thinking about the fall and the back-to-school season. Not the kids of course. I'm talking about the product planners at companies like Sony Corp. and Canon Inc., who are busy preparing to put new camcorders on sale in time for the end of the holidays.

Why not earlier when the kids are on holiday and people are taking their vacations? I learnt from Sony a couple of weeks ago that the big camcorder selling period in Japan is in the approach to September and the school sports days that are held nationwide. Sales during this period are three to four times normal and way ahead of any other period in the year.

Television has already made the move to high-definition, and home movies are on the way there. Consumer electronics companies are now pushing parents to splash out for HD camcorders to capture little Taro or Megumi running as fast as their legs can carry them to victory on the track. At least that's the image we're likely to see on TV commercials that will soon be starting to push such sales.

In the next few months we're likely to see more and more HD camcorders, especially if Sony is to succeed in its goal: making half of all camcorder sales HD models by the end of this year.

Click here to read the full article and see all the gadgets