The basic text-editor which comes with Windows sports a, maybe little known, feature which can be put to good use. My daily routine of doing thick participation online involves the creation of a flat text-file for every day’s fieldnotes and -diary. The editor can do a bit of the documentation work for you. Open up “editor” and write “.LOG” as the first line. Now write into your text-file, save and close. If you reopen the file you will find a timestamp in the line beneath what you have written. Now write something more, save, close, reopen, and hey presto, another … Continue reading →

There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm’s length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns-all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff. Hiro has been thinking that in a few years, if he does really well in the intel biz, maybe he will … Continue reading →