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The world has watched in amazement at the happenings in North Africa and the Middle East these last months. So much has happened since that day in December 2010 when Muhammad Bouazizi, a graduate who could not find a job, had his tiny, unlicensed, fruit and vegetable stall kicked over by officious town employees in the main square of Sidi Bouzid, in the middle of nowhere 350 km Southwest of Tunis. (The main street through the town has been renamed in his honor.) His resulting self-immolation in protest at his treatment set off firestorms in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, The Yemen, and Bahrain, with pushes for change still ominous for the rulers in the likes of Saudi and Jordan. The West has looked on as governments toppled and were threatened. But the only seeming effect on the western states has been the loss of oil shipments from Libya. The over-reaction in prices at the loss of a tiny percentage of the world’s production – despite Saudi’s guarantees that their output would be increased to make ...

Every year the National Sleep Foundation releases a poll on the whys, hows and whens of American sleep. This year that poll and its subsequent study focused on the role that communications technology is playing in the way people get their rest, or lack of it. Not unusually in these reports the Foundation has identified that a significant number of Americans are not getting the sleep they really need with 43% between the ages of 13 and 64 reporting that they rarely get a decent night’s sleep during the work week, and 60% complaining of a nightly sleep problem: not feeling refreshed in the morning, waking during the night or waking too early, and snoring… One of the links that the Foundation has made with such poor sleep is the use of technology before attempting to sleep, with 95% of those surveyed reporting using a cellphone, computer, television, or even a video game in their last hour on at least a few nights of the week. (For some reason the age brackets of humans is now being broken down i...

I am not the owner of an iPhone, nor an iPad, nor an i-anything, but there are a few such devices around in my immediate family so I am at least familiar with the Apple Store and the ability to download music, ring tones, and apps. The concept of downloading things to do on a phone, in particular, is still somewhat of a strange notion for me, locked as my mind is to the notion that a phone is for, well, phoning. The apps route has been followed by Apple’s competitors, of course, and it always good to see that Cupertino products are being challenged by others – with devices, it seems to me, which are more feature and quality packed rather than simply ‘branded’ into the market, as Apple products seem to be. When Google bought the Android software operation in 2005 there was little known in the public sphere of what the founders were up to, although their combined business history yelled out that they were attacking wireless markets with intelligent solutions. That purchase was a good in...