I like Joel. Well, I’ve never actually met him, of course. I mean I like his writing. I’ve read much of his website, I subscribe to his RSS feed so that I can see his new pieces as soon as they’re “published” and I’ve bought his other books even though they’re just rehashes of stuff that’s already on the net. That may seem a little crazy, as though I have more money than sense, but some things are much easier to read on paper than on LCD. And his writing is easy, humorous and engaging, making it worth dipping into occasionally.

Am I getting old? Perhaps. I’ve been using email since 1992 when I first went to university so I just find it second nature now. It’s got to the point where I organise my whole life using it and I get quite frustrated when I actually have to call someone to get something done that could more easily be done asynchronously¹. But that’s not how many people think according to ZDNet.co.uk.

In this article in MacUser Howard Oakley notes that a number of schools have recently banned the use of wireless networks due to the unknown effects of the radio waves used. He then connects this with the declining number of people taking science subjects at those same schools and their ability to understand the likely risks of said networks.

It’s an interesting piece, but what I find interesting is that as the general populations understanding of how the world works dwindles, so our reliance on high technology increases¹.

In the fifth part of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker trilogy, Arthur Dent makes his living among a group of stone-age settlers by utilising the one skill he had that was relevant to that world: sandwich making.

I guess we all have a special skill. But my point in this article is that if you’re a software professional, your special skill (unless you’re stranded on a stone-age planet) should be making software tools.

The sky is falling! EMI have announced that they are to allow distribution of their content without DRM. From next month, you’ll be able to buy albums from iTunes without the digital rights management chains of Apple’s FairPlay and in higher quality (twice the bit-rate). This is clearly good news, and EMIs move can’t help but encourage the other major labels to follow.

Back in November I wrote about my then-new Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. At the time I was fairly pleased with the concept but less so with the actual implementation.

The phone’s hardware was fine. The unit as a whole was reasonably solid. The buttons were a bit wobbly and the screen was smaller than you might initially think, but there was nothing to complain about too much.

Reading this article by David Pogue reminded me of my own search for a reliable and easy backup solution. I came to a rather different answer so I thought it might be worth detailing a little history, the options I considered and the one I eventually chose.

Ancient History

In the olden days — i.e., going back a couple of years — I split the files into four categories:

Talking about Google’s old and new hiring practices seems to be all the rage at the moment, so I thought that I would get in on the act.

I got through two phone interviews for a technical consultant role here in the UK before being rejected. My second interviewer told me that he’d had fourteen interviews before being hired. That’s just an absurd number. How much holiday and sick leave can you take at short notice without arousing suspicion?! (They were both long enough or required Internet access that I couldn’t do them at work.)

The problem is this. To get ADSL you need to have a BT phone line. Yet, except for calling my parents, I don’t really use a land-line phone. This has made using ADSL broadband more expensive than I’d have liked as I had to pay £11 a month for a phone line I don’t make calls with¹. Fast forward to last month, when I find that I can get cable broadband without phone or digital TV service.

The premise

I have become increasingly disaffected by Apple’s .Mac service, so much so that when I recently got an email congratulating me for subscribing for another year I immediately went to the website and cancelled.

The background

But before we start going into all the details, what is .Mac? Basically it’s Apple’s on-line services that are geared for Mac users but are also usable by those stuck in the Microsoft world. When I first got my iBook back in 2001 it was called iTools. It had a more limited set of features back then, but that included a something@mac.com email address.