A balm after the storm

It sounds corny, but every time I see a rainbow these days it always makes me think of my parents trying to tell me not to forget them, to show me that there is still part of them left, and to remind me that there is sudden, expected beauty everywhere – you need only look up.

My latest rainbow

Cybercrime: A global epidemic nobody’s really talking about

By Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Your credit card information is likely sitting on a hard drive somewhere in eastern Europe, and criminals may choose to use it at any time. At least, that is what Joseph Menn’s research suggests. Menn, a Los Angeles-based journalist and author of the non-fiction book Fatal System Error, gave a sobering keynote at the mesh conference held in Toronto earlier this year. His message: cybercrime is a global epidemic and it’s a war we probably will not win.

Cherry blossoms

In the springtime in High Park something strange and wonderful happens. People drift in ever widening groups like moths to a flame. The flames in this case are cherry trees, but I must admit they look much more like snow squalls than fire.

3 a.m. insomnia

Sometimes the night becomes so muffled that it wakes you…

Fog is like a balm to me. I can breathe much deeper.

Sometimes the night is so muffled that it wakes you.

Tweet risk

Twitter’s potential potholes and 3 ways to avoid them
By: Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Using Twitter as a business tool may be all the rage right now, but before your company jumps headfirst, it pays to take a step back and assess the potential risks. One large financial services firm did just that, and discovered that the main danger lay in the fact that they were thinking about Twitter differently than other Web content. This may be due to its potential for immediacy.

Cloud computing for your company?

By: Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Consider clouds, just for a moment. They are light and intangible. They can come out of nowhere, and can bend and morph their shape in the blink of an eye.

A lot of what makes up the description of a traditional cloud also applies to cloud computing. And that’s largely its appeal.

For the last few years, individuals have completed a lot of their work in a browser window, while accessing and storing their data online. But until fairly recently, cloud computing was not considered a viable large-scale business solution. This is changing, even though challenges still exist.

City of light

The famous tower takes on an eerie glow as it lights up in blue. I took this on a clear October evening, using my new digital SLR (a Nikon D60).