Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Its all fun and games with insurance here.

In the last couple of weeks we have had 3 separate insurance issues to deal with.

First, we had a computer breakdown. We have a policy that covers this specifically, so we had emergency repairs to do and then wait for the cheque to come. that took 3 weeks and we were out of pocket $3500 while we were waiting.

Then we had the car that we had sold but not swapped over (short by two days) hit by hail and a lot of damage to panels. The car yard no longer wants to give us our agreed trade price and the insurers assessor has assessed the damage as repairs only. However there is a secondary cost and that is to the market value of the vehicle. The car yard have declared even if it is repaired they wont give us the same price, and without repairs the trade in is way less than what the insurance would pay out. I am in "negotiations" with the insurance company to honour their commitment to repair to original market value.

Steve Richards has written an interesting article debating whether improved collaboration will involve culture change. He starts with citing Michael's work that "we hide behind the need for culture change on many collaboration projects....if a team can run a project in email then they can run one in a collaboration tool. They don't need a change in "culture" to make the transition, they need a change in "work practice". Steve however disagrees. Read the rest of Steve's article on whether improved collaboration will involve culture change.

There is a huge public discussion on internet pornography. Whether we realise it or not, porn is a very large (read profitable) part of the internet. Censorship is being considered and lots of organisations are calling for governments to variously protect children, filter porn, provide regulation etc.
Worthwhile organisations like the Australian Family Association have posted articles calling for an urgent mandatory filtering of pornography at a national ISP level and make statements like this Every Australian has a fundamental right to access the internet free from pornography and extreme violence.
While I completely agree with the intention behind these statements, they fall short in a number of areas.
The first area where these ideas fall down is the actual concept of censorship and responsibility.

Donovan Lange, a Microsoft OneNote Software Design Engineer has written a Top Ten reasons for using OneNote. Seeing as he only put up 9 reasons, I would add to his list the awesome screen capture and text searching in screen capture images features.

Heres some of his reasons:

• OneNote allows me to put all of my little bits of information into a single place, organize them how I like, and always be able to find them instantly.
• It’s page surface allows me to outline, brainstorm, and collect rich forms of data better than any other tool out there.
• Outlook Integration, Outlook Integration, Outlook Integration.

Read the rest of Donovan's Top Ten Reasons for using OneNote list and all the details on his blog.