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Rowan Puttergill: Columnist

Rowan Puttergill is a technology evangelist and software engineer with a long career working in enterprise environments. He brings with him the experience of being the Technical Editor at SA Computer magazine, and a career history as a technical author. He is a huge advocate of open-source technologies, and is a huge fan of debian-based linux operating systems.

RECENT POSTS

• Google’s privacy policy: ‘This stuff matters’

  Google's new privacy policy is probably pretty old news to you by now. After all, for every search that you do, you get a nice notification from Google that its privacy policy is changing and that "This stuff matters...". If you've bothered to read it, you will know that Google intends to amalgamate all of the data that they collect about you into a single account profile. Unsurprisingly, the new policy has divided reception across the internet.Google fans can't see ...

• How much online influence do you have?

  A number of years back, I read Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point which presents his thesis on why things "go viral". Its a very powerful book, even if it has received some interesting criticism. Bells started ringing for me as soon as I started reading a recent publication from a group of students at Oxford University titled The Dynamics of Protest Recruitment through an Online Network. The paper is a bold attempt to monitor the spread of information about ...

• Why you should be excited about the single-atom transistor

  According to Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, the size of our transistors will need to have shrunk to a single atom by 2020. In a massive leap into the future, researchers at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne have created a controllable transistor engineered from a single phosphorus atom. This is not only important for the future ...

• Why being a Linux geek could make you more employable

  I love Linux and I have been fortunate enough to have been able to use it as my base operating system in all of the different companies that I've worked for the last ten years or so. But, I know that unless you're a systems administrator, most fans of the OS find themselves battling against corporate IT if they even try to run a non-Windows system at work.Just recently, I noticed a post on Slashdot where a user was ...

• E-Waste and the underbelly of the tech industry

  Last year, the EU updated its directives for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), in an effort to step up recycling and the safe disposal of outdated and malfunctioning equipment. In the US, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act was introduced as a bill in June last year. India is also taking governmental steps to control how E-Waste is handled.That sounds like good news; after all, old electronics goods are full of good things that can often be re-used. And, ...

• Google ScreenWise pays you for your data

  You're the product! I hear this over and over on all of the geeky sites that I tend to frequent. It's a direct response to every article that comes out describing how yet another "free" online service is gathering every last shred of data on its users, in order to gain access to some of that precious advertising revenue. Now, Google is finally acknowledging that your data is worth a lot of money. In fact, it's willing to pay you ...

• The battle for Brazil’s tech market is heating up

  Brazil is going through an economic boom. In December, it overtook the UK as the world's sixth largest economy.Much of Brazil's success has come through changes within its agricultural sector where, over the past 40 years, it has focussed on the Soya trade. But Brazil's success does not rest on agriculture alone.Brazil has access to huge mineral resources and has recently struck oil. Its industrial sector has been picking up pace, and China has been taking notice.Last ...

• Getting to know you — how internet security is changing

  In my predictions for security in 2012, I pointed out that hand-in-hand with an increase in governmental control over the internet will come a spate of attacks from those that oppose such control.I also harboured some concern over the industrial systems that control infrastructure such as water, sewage, electrical grid, public transport and so on. The year has actually started with a lot of tension around exactly such problems. Towards the end of 2011, Anonymous targeted US Government sites ...

• You wouldn’t download a car… or would you?

  I recently came across an interesting blog post which states that the Pirate Bay (by the way, if you support the kind of thinking behind SOPA you shouldn't click on that link, it takes you to a site that encourages copyright infringement) has created a new download category -- 'Physibles'.According to the Pirate Bay, physibles are digital objects that can be converted into tangible physical objects. Huh? It took me a few seconds to work out what the hell ...

• 4 non-mobile tech trends to look out for in 2012

  Everybody is talking about mobiles. If the trends in 2011 were anything to go by, 2012 will revolve around mobile phones and tablet computing. So making predictions and talking about what there is to look forward to is pretty easy if you just want to stick to safe topics. Of course, with Solar Maximum all set for 2012, major solar storms could make it a tricky year for the mobile. So I've decided to take a look at non-mobile related ...

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