I’d always thought that people who worked with computers would have excellent communication skills. Computer programmers have to work with syntax, after all. And syntax is basically grammar for computer languages. As a matter of fact, syntax is much more unforgiving. Unlike humans, who can still get the gist of the phrase “Who did you met yesterday?”, computers require perfect syntax to be able to process your code. (Yes, they’re stupid that way.) Back during college, computer science majors could hold their own in writing contests. Also, teachers from the computer department had excellent speaking skills. It all made perfect sense to me.

Of course, at some point after leaving college I realized that computer skills and communication skills didn’t always go hand in hand. At least, not English skills anyway. (After all, just because you aren’t good at speaking or writing English, it didn’t mean you have bad communication skills — English probably just isn’t your first language.) I did notice, though, that most I.T. professionals were quite articulate. However, I did wonder: was it so important that they have good English skills too? Read more

So I woke up today to some rather annoying news: No more SMS updates for Twitter users outside the U.K.

Buggerit. Half the fun of using Twitter was getting tweets on my cellphone at no cost. The other half was being able to update via SMS at regular local rates, courtesy of Phtwitters.com. Now I have to go back to using WAP, which isn’t very reliable (thanks a lot, Globe), to read updates.

I’ll probably stay with Twitter, but with this recent development, Twitter doesn’t have much over other microblogging sites like Plurk anymore. Considering how much prettier the Plurk website is compared to Twitter, people who are looking for a microblogging site are now more likely to choose Plurk. Read more

(Via Lifehacker.)

ChowsChina has produced a rather interesting USB gadget: a coffee warmer that plugs right into your computer.

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(Via Slashdot)
Internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee now has a blog. So far, there’s been one entry — and around 169 comments.
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Here’s one for the math books.

A Filipino has won the Paul Erdos Award for 2006, an honor bestowed by the World Federation of National Mathematics Competitions. Read more

The guys behind what I suppose is that Nigerian e-mail scam everyone knows and loves have finally gone to jail. They were found guilty of defrauding a Brazilian bank of $242 million (gah), and have agreed to return $121.5 million in assets to their victims.

This is good news, I guess. I wonder how well the international community is doing to stop all other internet scams. Really, the best way is for people to be more vigilant, and less gullible and, well, greedy. If an offer is too good to be true (for instance, if someone is offering you thousands of dollars to help them move money), it probably is.

Federico Sevilla III has taken over Miguel Paraz’s Pinoy Tech Scene website. When I am able to update this blog regularly, maybe I’ll ask to be added