Visitors to my blog tend now to be a few curious clients of my business and more frequently, people referred by Google searches to (hopefully) relevant articles. As I am no longer blogging regularly, there is little point in return visits generally and this is reflected in the traffic levels to the site.
Welcome to Twitter?
Whilst I don’t intend to drop my subscription to Typepad and I strongly suspect I will start writing again at some point, for now, my public comments and observations are happening on http://twitter.com/danmitch I have included a feed ‘widget’ for this on the right of this page.
Twitter allows me to make quick observations as things happen, without having to take the time to write entire articles, though looking back there are a few to elaborate on:
Interesting analysis of RAND Corporation's "Trusted Traveler" Working Paper by @Bruce_Schneier http://is.gd/bZXIln about 15 hours ago via web
The ‘Trusted Traveler’ concept is an interesting one, built around the concept of focussing the scarce security resource at airports around those travellers deemed to be higher risk. In fact as this article and the comments that follow state, in reality this scheme at best allows a small minority to process through a bit more rapidly. It does raise interesting thoughts on profiling of travellers however and some of the concepts, while difficult to implement would surely improve airline security.
Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional For Four Hours http://t.co/kHrk7FO via @techcrunch 1 day ago via Tweet Button
I use Dropbox to keep a small number of photos and documents that I am working on in sync between my Macs and occasionally for sharing documents with friends and colleagues. I never use it for anything remotely sensitive so the security scare didn’t impact me personally. Having said that, it was pretty serious and will dent confidence in cloud based document storage generally. Simple advice would be to encrypt any documents that are sensitive regardless of where they are stored.
Rory Story Cubes - new to the site - new, award winning game for imaginative storytellers http://fb.me/D8QWP1Mz 9:48 PM Jun 18th via Facebook Retweeted by you
A retweet of an update posted by my wife Amanda who has set up a great new business selling pre-wrapped travel toys for kids - perfect for busy jetsetting families!
Would love @Gladwell to start tweeting again ... 7:42 PM Jun 18th via web
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of Outliers and Blink, among other books - brilliant writer and thinker and threatened to be an interesting Tweeter too!
Great lunch at http://www.therustygun.co.uk in Hitchin today - highly recommended! 7:26 PM Jun 18th via Seesmic for BlackBerry
No further explanation required!
Shadow Chancellor calls for temporary VAT cut - not convinced and would be an admin nightmare for small business - http://bbc.in/mbn6mV 5:17 PM Jun 16th via BBC Website
I will resist a long rant! In fact it was the change to VAT in November 2008 that got me blogging in the first place. At the time I pointed out the considerable administrative cost to small business of tampering with VAT, and subsequent changes have been no easier to implement. This is not the tax to be playing with in my opinion.
Other Tweets have included Curb, my work with Graduate Fashion Week, cycling and risk analysis of alien invasions in Nottinghamshire - I could never write a blog article on that!
I’ll finish with a brilliant article from the superb ISN resource and invite you to follow me at http://twitter.com/danmitch if you have found these of interest:
Must read - Bin Laden and the Perils of Liberal Assassination - http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/ISN-Insights/Detail?id=129124 2:17 PM May 19th via web
