NevilleHobson.com

Last month, IT industry analysts Gartner published their 2008 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.
Here’s what it looks like:

What I find especially interesting is where on the hype cycle some of these technologies are, especially seeing their current and predicted positions along the Technology Trigger and cresting the Peak of Inflated Expectations.
What will languish in [...]

Reading about CO2Stats (via TechCrunch), a company who says it monitors your website’s environmental footprint and purchases renewable energy to neutralize it:
[...] The carbon footprint of air and automobile transportation is widely known, but few people are aware that the electricity generation required for information and communication technologies (ICT) is now responsible for 2% [...]

One handy web service I’ve been using for the past seven months or so is Dopplr.
Dopplr lets you share your travel plans with others you know. The service then lets you know if any of your friends will be where you’ll be when you travel, and vice versa.
I’ve found Dopplr a pleasure to use [...]

Last week while on a guilt-free shopping trip, I bought a pair of Timberland loafers.
Factory outlet pricing (about a third less than you’d normally pay), so I was quite pleased with my bargain.
What intrigued me, though, was a large label on the box, pictured above, with information about the environmental and community impacts involved [...]

In The Economist this week, there’s a fascinating feature about China and the country’s development of its infrastructure - roads, railways, airports, etc.
As with much of the writing in The Economist, it’s a well-written and compelling piece that draws you into the story.
And what a story.

With almost every paragraph, I felt bombarded, smacked in [...]

Did you have a great Christmas? We did in our family, a time of year when everyone gets together - parents, children, siblings, cousins - to simply enjoy each others’ company in a relaxed atmosphere.
Plenty to eat and drink, lots of great conversations, and the pleasure of giving and receiving gifts.
There is a dark side, [...]

An interesting discovery: Phil Woolas, the Minister for Climate Change - I never knew we had someone with this portfolio - writes a blog called Bali Diary.
He started it in mid November.
Woolas works at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the same government department where Foreign Secretary David Milliband started blogging. [...]

Going in to Marks and Spencers‘ store in Sandhurst on Sunday, I couldn’t help but see this large wall poster at the store entrance:

It wasn’t so much the statement that caught my attention but more the web address - www.marksandspencer.com/PlanA.
I like a company who says they have a Plan A for any purpose. It [...]

The City of Manchester football stadium - home to Manchester City FC - will soon be the first football ground in the world to be powered by sustainable energy when an 85-metre-high 3-megawatt wind turbine comes online next year.
When it’s fully operational, it will supply enough energy to meet the stadium’s power needs as well [...]

One public affairs campaign that I’ve been paying attention to for the past year is willyoujoinus.com, the campaign sponsored by Chevron Oil that’s about drawing attention to energy conservation and climate change and which I first heard about in February 2006.
Much of what I see about this campaign is advertising in business journals. Now that [...]