Tim Altom

After having a cell phone for several years now, I’m asking myself if they’re worth having in the car. Ever since I saw that the ultra-cool Mike Connors had one in his convertible in the TV show “Mannix,” I’ve been besotted with the desire to look similarly cool as I call my secretary back at the office. There’s a sense of power and control with having a phone in the car. There’s also a residual tint of elitist clout, too….

After having a cell phone for several years now, I’m asking myself if they’re worth having in the car. Ever since I saw that the ultra-cool Mike Connors had one in his convertible in the TV show “Mannix,” I’ve been besotted with the desire to look similarly cool as I call my secretary back at the office. There’s a sense of power and control with having a phone in the car. There’s also a residual tint of elitist clout, too….

It’s amazed me for a long time how we create technology that shapes our world, then it returns the compliment by reshaping us. Steam power gave the business world the factory, which put a premium on people who could maintain and run factories, and made ordinary people servants to the clock. Modern computers have made the technogeek a valuable commodity and created a vast new business expense in hardware, software and upkeep. We think we are creating a new world,…

A Forbes magazine cover story has set the techie world ablaze with indignation (www.forbes.com). Forbes, perhaps most famous for its list of the world’s wealthiest people, in its Nov. 14 issue ran a piece by Daniel Lyons portraying Internet blogs as nothing short of terrorist weapons targeting American businesses. In “Attack of the Blogs,” Lyons lists people and companies that were humiliated, brought low, had their share values demolished, or were otherwise savaged by vindictive bloggers. For the uninitiated, “blog”…

Many years ago, when I worked for a machine-tool dealership, I learned a lesson about technology and employees. As I was watching an employee run a part, I noticed he was doing something I knew hadn’t been in the engineering setup requirements. When I asked about it, he replied that he knew his decision hadn’t been sanctioned by the “idiots with slide rules,” but if he had done it the approved way, it wouldn’t work. Further, if he had notified…

At a meeting the other day, an acquaintance shared a story about getting a “Webinar” together for his organization. A Webinar is like a seminar, only performed entirely online. The presenter is usually seen in a small, jerky video, but often there’s not even that much visual stimulation. In many cases, it’s just a series of slides and a voice. Most Webinars are no more interesting than inperson seminars, but at least you don’t feel as noticeable if you have…

It’s often hard to tell what’s a gimmick, and what’s a real business tool. As I sit staring thoughtfully at Google’s stripped-down, Zenlike home page, I can’t decide whether it’s another Clippy (the annoying animated paperclip character introduced in Microsoft Word 97), or another paperclip (which is so ubiquitous and essential in business that we don’t even think of it as technology anymore). It could be either, or even both. Google has left the desktop in Microsoft’s grasp, but staked…

The bane of the Information Age is information. At least when my father went to work in the factory he ably kept running for many years, he knew the aisles would still be in the same places, the machinery still exhibiting the same behaviors, and that the number of unknowns in his life would be manageable. I’m better situated in life than he was, but I pay for it with uncertainty. The content of my job isn’t machinery, but information,…

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about wireless lately. You know, WiFi, the magical connection between laptop and Internet, the key to actually working at Starbucks? The questions vary from, “Why does my laptop just disconnect sometimes?” to, “How can I get wireless out by the pool?” I tried to scrunch the answers down into a single column, but they kept bulging out of the seams. So I decided to split them into three consecutive columns. I wouldn’t ordinarily…

RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY Laptop batteries: Here’s how to maximize stamina The laptop computer has made battery groupies of us all. For something so humble and unobtrusive, the laptop battery commands outsized attention. We calculate whether we need to bring AC power adapters to meetings, based on how long a battery will last. We figure how much work we can get done on planes, based on how long the battery will last. Then, when we can’t charge them up anymore, the…

I’ve discovered something really unexpected on my desk lately: a surface. After years of having monitors the size of packing crates looming over my desk, I now have two flatpanel monitors that actually take up less surface space together than one of the old CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors. The new LCD (liquid crystal display) flat panels are sleek, black, digital and much brighter than the old putty-colored CRTs that now seem so dreadfully old-fashioned. A flat-panel 19-inch monitor can…