Sneak keeps hearing about an imaginative approach to workplace ergonomics coming out of the US, called work-walking, or walk-working, or walk-and-work. As the names suggest, this is basically working while walking - which in short involves replacing the ordinary office desk with an ordinary office desk on stilts, and replacing the normal office chair with a gym-style treadmill. The main motivation for this seems to be to attack the growing plague of obesity, worsened by jobs that involve no exercise beyond hauling a mouse across a mat.

Sneak thinks the proponents of the combined desk and gym are missing a trick, however. The average corporate laptop drains a battery at a rate of about 15 watts, whereas walking on a treadmill burns up about 100 kilocalories per hour, or 116 watts. It seems enough energy is going spare to power a laptop if the treadmill is hooked to a dynamo, with suitable audio/visual prompts (or perhaps physical prods) to go faster as required.

Go green, get fit. What could go wrong? Other than all the lawsuits for sprained ankles. Plus, of course, your office will smell like a locker room...

May 29, 2007 Top tips | Permalink | Comments (1)

Way back when Sneak was at college, studying Engineering and Applied Science (EAP), the students used to complain of “EAP syndrome”. This was a psycho-social malady caused by the insane profusion of three-letter acronyms that pocked the coursework.

The major symptom was crossed mental wires. Where arts students might think an invitation to “punt on the Cam” involved a jolly afternoon in a boat, an EAP-infected student would wonder why anyone would place a bet on computer-aided manufacturing. (Not that Sneak went to Cambridge - delusions of grandeur were another side effect.)

The affliction was never fully cured, because Sneak still suffers from mental misfires when presented with acronyms. For example, the Retail Solutions 2007 show starts shortly and Sneak is inundated with press releases about PoS printers, PoS solutions and PoS software.

“Point of sale” is a common enough term in retail, but not to Sneak’s addled brain, which keeps leaping to an alternative expansion of PoS. So Sneak keeps involuntarily reading about piece of sh*t printers, piece of sh*t solutions, and thoroughly crappy software. Not quite what was intended, presumably.

May 23, 2007 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

History is littered with odd couples: Anthony and Cleopatra; Ant and Dec; DEC and Compaq. However, none have ever made a more arresting pair than geriatric rockers The Rolling Stones and Research in Motion, purveyor of email devices to the work-life unbalanced. The two had planned to team up to produce a special edition BlackBerry – presumably one with a big red tongue on it, or perhaps with extra-large keys for the elderly – but the tie-up unravelled before the product launched and wound up in court. Then again, maybe the pairing wasn’t so odd. What could be more appropriate for the highly addictive CrackBerry than the band’s most famous lyric: “If you start me up, I’ll never stop”.

Of course we’ve had a U2 iPod and The Rolling Stones were co-opted to launch Windows 95, so Sneak has unilaterally decided to pair up other worn-out rockers with their tech complements. Google should be forced to play The Damned’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - “I’m normal outside, he’s evil inside” - when users sign up for its “free” services. The long-awaited Windows Server 2008 (nee Longhorn) must arrive to the tune of Take That’s Patience. Oracle’s perplexing Fusion project should employ Toyah Wilcox to warble, “It’s a mystery, I’m still searching for a clue.” And Microsoft, fresh from asserting that Linux infringes all its US patents, will have to wheel out Adam Ant singing, “Stand and deliver, your money or your life!”

May 17, 2007 Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple of weeks ago Sneak pondered the Office 2007-liveried taxis plying London’s streets, offering free rides to a lucky few. Sneak had carefully avoided hackneyed gags about Windows-powered vehicles, instead suggesting that an open-source-sponsored cab might require passengers to get out and push. This irked a few Linux lovers, including Alan D Smith: “We all know that a Microsoft cab is almost certain to crash or at the very least stop for no apparent reason. An open source cab is more likely to be free, if it breaks down will be repaired by a complete stranger, and by travelling in one at least you will have some credibility among your peers.”

So if we must travel this road, Sneak points out that for many, a Linux cab can’t carry the necessary baggage.

Next: if Mac OS X was a dog, what sort of pink-collared handbag-rat would it be?

May 14, 2007 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good news for hoarders: HP is looking for firms running old HP servers and will award a new rx2660 server plus support to the owner of the UK's oldest installed HP-UX system. The earliest eligible systems are therefore HP Series 9000s from about 1983.

The rules stipulate that the wizened computer must be in daily use, and that age will relate “to the date of purchase, not of installation”. Servers that have seen nothing but a store cupboard for decades are therefore eligible, providing you can get them up and running without igniting their dusty innards for long enough to grab the prize.

And sadly cheats can forget dumpster-diving or car-boot sales: secondhand systems are ineligible.

May 10, 2007 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a change from trudging round dreary IT trade shows, Sneak yesterday attended the glittering PPA Magazines 2007 conference, disguised as a real journalist. OK, it turned out to be just as dreary, the only fun on offer being the “fun-sized” Mars bars served with coffee, which are of course no fun at all.

Despite a gathering of the industries most expensively stuffed shirts and ballooned egos, surprisingly even the gaffes were few. The highlight was Incisive Media CEO Tim Weller’s observation about the universal perils of leadership. “When you’re a monkey at the top of the tree, and you look down, all you see are happy, smiling, little monkey faces,” he told the throng of sozzled publishers and hacks. “But when you’re at they bottom of the tree and you look up, all you see are arseholes.”

[Disclosure: IT Week is an Incisive Media publication and therefore Tim Weller is, from Sneak’s viewpoint, top bumhole]

May 9, 2007 Top tips | Permalink | Comments (0)

The humble office shredder, so busy in these post-Enron days, has a key role to play in promoting environmental responsibility. Sneak will be modifying the office shredders in line with the thinking of artist Thorsten Streichardt, whose Rasen shredder cuts paper into strips at exactly the same pace at which grass grows. About 1cm per day, in fact. When it takes a month to get rid of one sheet of incriminating A4, people will think twice before printing out anything they don’t really, really need.

May 4, 2007 Top tips | Permalink | Comments (1)

Alas Sneak wasn’t able to make it to Las Vegas for this week’s Microsoft Mix 07 event, where the world’s biggest and squarest software company tried to come over all street and give respect to the big Web 2.0 thing. Man.

Anyway, Sneak was keen to hear what keynote speaker Ray Ozzie had to say about Silverlight, Microsoft’s new rival to Adobe’s Flash. Ozzie, the inventor of Lotus Notes, was one of the pioneers of online collaboration and ought to be miles ahead of the Web 2.0 game. So Sneak zipped over to Ozzie’s blog on the Windows Live Spaces site to read his feed. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been updated since 1 April. And we’re not talking about last month, either: the last post (out of a grand total of 12) was submitted on 1 April 2006.

Yes, Sneak is reassured, Ozzie does indeed have a very clear idea of the future of Web 2.0. It obviously doesn’t include blogs on Windows Live Spaces.

May 1, 2007 Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)