In last week's exciting installment of Gearhead I mentioned PhraseExpress published by Bartels Media GmbH and I need to correct something I wrote.

To refresh your memory, PhraseExpress is a Windows utility that, while its basic functionality is to store and organize frequently used text snippets and expand abbreviations as you type, it also runs macros for text manipulation and a range of system operations, launches programs, autocorrects, launches Web searches, closes HTML tags, can lock the CAPSLOCK key for you (prevents you from accidentally hitting the Caps Lock key which is annoying and something I do with monotonous regularity) … it's a sort of a Swiss Army knife for the Windows user interface that's linked to your keyboard.

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We are, apparently, just not safe enough and we need more warning labels. It's only reasonable. We have warning labels on food, cigarettes, airbags in cars, gas cans, water heaters, children's toys, you name it. But there are some notable, and very worrying, areas where warnings don't exist yet. If we're going to be really responsible and cautious and do everything we can to protect everyone as much as possible, then we need to go that little bit further.

To this end, I think we need legislation to require PC manufacturers to put warning labels on their products along the lines of "Dropping this product on your foot from any significant height may result in injury." Or what about warning labels for Wi-Fi antennas that would read: "Poking this into your eye may result in eye injury"? Or how about for CDs and DVDs: "Using this product as a substitute for a Frisbee may result in injury or death."

[digression] To riff on an old story , we probably need warning labels on toy poodles: "Do not attempt to dry in a microwave."

What got me thinking about this under-recognized and pressing need for more warning labels were recent reports that Maine State Representative Andrea M. Boland (D-Sanford) is putting forward a bill that would make Maine the first state to require cell phone manufacturers to put health warnings on cell phone packaging. [more ]

There are two ways that you can commit a sin. The first is a sin of commission.

For example, according to a report on Boston's most excellent Universal Hub (disclosure: UH is run by a good friend of mine), a genius by the name of Brian Hopkins got snockered while barhopping one night in 2006 and, for reasons that aren't clear, decided, when he got to Boston's South Station, that he needed to climb on top of an Acela high-speed train.

Now, the Acela trains are electrically powered so when Mr. Einstein reached up he was "promptly zapped with 27,000 or so volts, leading to serious burns and injuries, including the loss of his left arm."

[legal digression] Of course, you can guess what comes next: Yep, Hopkins is suing Amtrak "for gross negligence, because it failed to do enough to keep idiots from climbing on top of trains and grabbing hold of electrical wires." Sigh.

I'm sure Hopkins will be a candidate for the next Darwin Awards , but what matters here is that what Hopkins did was a sin of commission, a willful act that had grave consequences.

The other way you can commit a sin is by omission, by not doing something. What brought all this type of sinning to mind was an e-mail I received a few hours ago from the Institute for Liberty (IFL) which argued that "the FCC should acknowledge that network neutrality regulations are a solution in search of a problem." [more ]

If you plan to make any serious use of Twitter for business purposes you're probably always on the look out for a better way to manage your presence. It's not that the likes of Tweetdeck or whatever you currently use aren't great, it's just that the whole world of social media is so new we have no idea what's the best tool for the job.

One area where there's been no choice until recently is the facility for multiple users to effectively share a single Twitter account; what you might call "collaborative tweeting".

A new online service, TweetFunnel published by Cloud10Apps, delivers just that with a number of features that support multiuser tweeting wrapped in a simple, managed publishing system.

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Welcome to the New Year!

"So," my esteemed editor asked. "What's on the horizon for the next 12 months?" Hmmm, quite the question. After considerable cogitation, charging and discharging of the flux capacitors, and examining more chicken entrails than a man should ever have to, I have come up with the following predictions.

Generally, this will be the year of recovery, the year of realigning that which needs aligning, along with cleaning up what's dirty, polishing up what's tarnished, primping up what's, er, unprimped, and pimping up that which is unpimped. In short, generally getting ourselves out of the morass of negativity and gloom that was 2009.

All the signs are there that the general economy will slowly gather momentum over 2010 but confidence is going to be erratic. On the other hand, this will most likely be a good year for IT because, as I am wont to point out, all business is now information technology. Those organizations that have responsive and effective IT organizations will be competitive in 2010. Those that don't will risk becoming historical footnotes.

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