What to do when presented with questionable texts to translate? Arms trade literature, fundamental religious positions on personal freedoms, attacks on science and reason, etc. can all pose the translator a minor problem in making what is essentially a business decision – do I do it? <awfulanalogy>As translators, we drive vehicles filled with ideas. We [...]

Having recently made the transition from Sole Trader to Limited Company, I was looking for some way to document all business transactions smoothly and hassle-free over a few different currencies. This is my FreeAgent review. Remembering the Freeagent demo I tried a few years previously, but opted out of because of a lack of multi-currency [...]

With my previous laptop having finally succumbed to old age, it was time to find another tool to allow me to work remotely. At home, a self-built desktop PC serves me well in my comfortable chair, but on sunny days when the garden calls, or when travelling anywhere else for any reason, the smartphone doesn’t [...]

Fredrik Härén spoke in 2007 on Sweden’s knowledge day (kunskapens dag). This engaging speaker stood and explained his views on the value of knowledge in the global economy. Video in Swedish. He spoke of how the very meaning of the term “developed country” has lead to complacency, and that “developing countries” are taking advantage of new [...]

What is it? As far as I understand it, the “Semantic Web”, heralded by Tim Berners-Lee as the coming of Web 3.0, is about labelling everything. Because apparently the web as it stands is a big mess that somebody needs to clean up. All data on the global network will be tagged in a variety of ways, [...]

With so much talk of failure being a positive thing for business success in recent times, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and try to add my $0.02 What is fail/failure? The business community seem to have appropriated the internet-meme of using real-life situational failure pictures as entertainment (titling the images with [...]

Un petit billet en français pour dire aux gens qui cherchent des solutions de VoIP – j’en ai trouvé de bon. Avec mon appareil Snom M3 (DECT, sans-fil), et mon fournisseur de VoIP anglais, j’ai pu créer un système téléphonique aux numéros internationales à un prix très raisonnable. J’ai la possbilité de selectionner mes horaires [...]

Motivation – the battery purge cycle system Is work starting to feel like a demolition ball swinging in to hit you every morning? Then stop doing it! At least for a short period of time. I have a small system that I’m happy to share with you, if you are in this situation from time [...]

Welcome to a new series of articles on the tech scene in France. They will cover the usual range of tech subjects such as internet news, start-ups and new business models, gadgets and so on and so forth. To kick things off, who better to start with than French Silicon-Valley rockstar Loïc Le Meur. In [...]

It has been 4 weeks since I last jotted anything down in my paper diary. I have been trialling the supposedly advanced features of my smartphone (Nokia N900) which syncs my phone diary to my online account. The results are mixed. I’m now very tempted to go back to paper. The perceived added benefits of [...]