It’s time to get ready for Santa Claus and there is so many “stuff” out there that people think we should buy. Personally I have no affection to consumption binge, but Christmas time is also a season where we have some more time to devote to the things we wanted to do all the rest of the year — including, maybe, updating our software library, organizing our workspace, and reading books. Here are five suggestions what you could put onto your wish list: … (more)

Another article this week that caught my attention: The New York Times writes about the “Too much news” phenomenon, which hits many people hard especially in these troubled times.

This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. They find themselves taking breaks at work every 15 minutes to check the latest updates, and at the end of the day, taking laptops to bed. Then they pad through darkened homes in the predawn to check on the Asian markets. (more)

When Mac OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ came out, it broke our scanner support based on the system’s Image Capture framework. We had been in exchanges with the Developer Technical Support and their Image Capture team at that time to find out why our capture function worked on Mac OS X 10.4.x but not on 10.5. To no avail. After a frustrating six months we moved on and licensed ExactScan Capture which is now embedded into every copy of DEVONthink Pro Office. This works with all TWAIN scanners but breaks with some scanners that are only compatible to Image Capture, not TWAIN. (more)

In The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr writes about the inpact that media of any kind has on the way we think, from the invention of the printing press to the Internet. Being four (!) pages long, the article puts itself clearly into the opposite position to what it defines as how the Internet distributes information: ‘in a swiftly moving stream of particles’. Definitely worth reading. (more)

Even though DEVONthink and DEVONagent do a good job in managing the information overload, sometimes it’s the simplest solution that makes the day :-)

After staying a few days more-or-less in bed with a bad cold, I just needed to go out again and add some joy to my morning routine of replying to customer email. Olivier, one of the numerous Italian ice coffee shops here in town now also offers free WIFI with its excellent coffee — so it was time to give it a try. I like it. And it always lightens up my mind to have a good coffee, see the pedestrians passing by, and enjoy the sun.

Global warming and climate change affect all of us. If you don’t just want to wait for it to happen, you can at least show that you care:

Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming. This simple act has captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world. As a result, at 8pm on the 29 March, 2008 millions of people in some of the world’s major capital cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tel Aviv and Manila will unite and switch off for Earth Hour. (more)

For me as a studied librarian yesterdays announcement made by the Brockhaus publishers was the news of the day: The Brockhaus, Germany’s best-known encyclopedia, will no longer be published on paper but go online only. In addition, the new business model will be solely based on advertising. This move ends the over 200 year old Brockhaus old tradition of a printed high-end encyclopedia — but may also be solution to counter the decreasing sales of the printed edition. As Brockhaus directly competes with the Wikipedia, the differentiating factor needs to be quality and reliabilty, which will be tough though. (more)

May be you have heard about it: ARD and ZDF, the two public TV stations in Germany, Europe, have halted their coverage of the Tour de France after T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz had been tested positive for doping. Yeah! Everyone feels that all riders are doping. It’s just the dexterity of their doctors that keeps them from being tested positive. And if this practise doesn’t stop, well, then simply stop covering them in the news instead. This is where it hurts them hardest. With all thes doping scandals, the Tour de France was no real fun to watch anyway.

For most people who are like us, being without a computer and Internet access, is unthinkable. We are already getting very uneasy when our DSL line is dead for one, two hours. Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer? To be honest, I think I can. And so I have just signed up for Shutdown Day. Can you, too?