Tim Altom

I’m not big on those classification schemes that put people into categories. You know what I mean, schemes such as, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who classify others, and those who don’t.” I’m not sold on Myers-Briggs, for example. I consider it a parlor game with no significant predictive value. All classification schemes leak around the edges, so I avoid them for the most part. However, there is one categorization to which I now subscribe:…

I’d like to put in a kind word for one of the most underused tools in business. It lets you stay in contact with lots of others online, send and receive files, make phone calls, keep in touch with things at home, and even hold Web videoconferences, after a fashion. It’s known generically as “instant messaging,” but you may know it under any number of trade names: MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM and many others. I use both MSN…

Is Google making us stupid? No, but it’s contributing to the problem. It’s well-known that, although we shape our tools, we are in turn shaped by them. Look no further than the hollowed-out cities of the middle 20th century, when the automobile gave us the mobility to build bedroom suburbs. Mobility killed off neighborhood social clubs, eliminated multi-generational families living together, and stretched town infrastructure like roads and sewers to the breaking point. Sleepy outlying school systems suddenly had both…

I’ve seen a lot of computer oddities in my career, but a piece of sushi sticking out of the computer case was admittedly a new one. And then there was the squid, the Lego block, and the strawberry. They were all flash drives from a Japanese company called SolidAlliance (www.solidalliance.com). You can go to its site, but don’t expect to read it unless you’re fluent in Kanji. “Flash drive” is just one name for the little devices you plug into…

There it was, by golly. I’m a tourist as much as the next guy, so of course one of the first things I did was look up my own house on Google Street View. And there it was. Sometime in the past several months, a car with a Google cameraman in it drove through my neighborhood taking shots every few yards. I could “fly” through the whole area, albeit rather jerkily. All the overhead shots on Google, all the satellite…

As I write this, I’m learning to use my new Microsoft Office 2007. I’m finding out that having Office 2007 is kind of like being the first guy in town with a fax machine; it’s shiny, exciting, hard to use, and it can’t be shared with anybody else. There are several problems with Office 2007, but one of the most irritating is the new file format. Word documents, for example, used to have a .doc extension, and most sentient beings…

The computer and information technology department where I teach part time has been experiencing dropping enrollment for a long time now, ever since the dotbomb. It’s hardly alone, though, as just about every computer science and technology school in the country has seen enrollment leak away. Our students have supposedly been frightened off by myths about offshoring and employment gluts. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the anguished moans from IT managers nationwide as they hunt in vain for employees. Gartner (www….

As I watched someone write an actual paper check in a checkout line one day, I saw one reason why a lot of companies have turnover problems. I pay for almost everything with cash or with plastic. Both are very fast, so when somebody is methodically writing out a check, it gives me just enough time to stew over how slow he is. When I use my card, I can swipe it with a practiced flick, tap a few keys,…

This month, a 17-year-old boy in the Netherlands was arrested and charged with stealing furniture that doesn’t really exist, from a hotel that can’t be visited. He perpetrated his crime completely online, in a social networking Web site known as “Habbo Hotel.” By scamming other residents of Habbo Hotel, he obtained passwords that let him lift the virtual furniture out of others’ rooms, and into his own. In Habbo Hotel, you have to buy furniture with real money, so the…

Regular readers know I’m rabid about numbers. It dates back to my childhood, actually. Although I was math-phobic, I was numerically minded, if that makes any sense. I’m still enchanted with business numbers. I’m convinced that Lean and Six Sigma are sweeping across American organizations for a good reason. And I say unto you that if you’re not quantifying what’s going on in your Web site, you’re losing what could be your most valuable business data. Today’s Web analytics are…

As you probably know, early this year Microsoft released its new operating system, known as “Vista.” I first wrote about it in March 2006. I got my initial look at it when it was code-named “Longhorn” in 2005, and I wasn’t impressed. It hasn’t improved with age. You’d think that, after creating operating systems since 1985, Microsoft would know what it’s doing. You’d think wrong. Reading the articles, blogs and other commentary about Vista is like cracking open the door…