One of the digital tools that I have encouraged use of at work is CoverItLive. It consists of two elements: a dashboard and an embeddable module which is compatible with many media company content management systems to share content and engage in conversations. So live blogging of an event (we’ve used it for the UK [...]
I was doing an upgrade on the on the WordPress software and thankfully everything went ok. Whilst I was poking around the new interface, I checked in the Akismet spam blocker statistics for the first time in ages. Now this isn’t scientific, but it looks like blog spam was most prolific in 2009 and has [...]
I got an email about 40 minutes ago announcing that STRATFOR were looking into a breach of their servers and email. I’ve always found their analysis on international issues informative and insightful which has helped in my work thinking about international projects with NGOs and in my writing here on this blog. It is one [...]
I was listening to David Kilcullen on the C-SPAN After Words podcast, where he was interviewed about his book Counterinsurgency. One interesting concept struck me from the interview which Kilcullen called the Metz Threshold. Kilcullen described it as the amount of time that a country’s population will tolerate their government prosecuting a war. It is [...]
Back when I was growing up in Liverpool my Dad used to tell me that ‘if something was too good to be true, it’s because it was‘. Its one of those fantastic Irish logical conundrums but it hid a basic truth: it is a lot harder to be conned if you have few expectations of [...]
In my kitchen hangs a calendar from Swift Abrasives Limited, courtesy of my Dad who works in the plant hire industry. It features nice photography and inspirational quotes from the likes of Helen Keller and Henry Ford. So what does a calendar look like for say someone involved in the war on terror. Well we [...]
If you’ve seen the recent Mac vs PC adverts you’ll have probably noticed the spot about viruses (or should that be viri?). Basically due to its popularity and fundemental flaws in the design of the Windows platform, it is under threat from thousands of different malware applications. McAfee and Symantec have issued warnings about the [...]
Corsaire have published a downloadable white paper on making Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) more secure. Whilst Tiger is the most secure OS that you can get on default settings, there is more scope to prevent less risk. Corsaire’s white paper covers everything from setting password policies to securing the firmware and is a valuable [...]
The Economist has an interesting article about the pitfalls of modern ‘smart passports’ filled with biometric data. They highlighted a number of deficiencies: The data on the passports is unencrypted Passports can be read remotely with cheap easy to acquire equipment, making it easier for terrorists to target Americans Tests have shown that a significant [...]
Interesting article on The Register. Apparently some Clash lyrics sent to a tribute band singer who had forgot his lines triggered the state security apparatus into action. Experts claim that it is proof that GCHQ monitor all SMS and voice traffic in the UK (and perhaps further afield as well). A case of “I fought [...]
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