Good
Office manager for this small rail-freight company calls IT to complain that she hears voices over the newly installed wireless network. IT knows that's impossible, so he just power-cycles the access point and tells her to call if it happens again. "Two hours later, she called," says IT. "Sure enough, in her office I heard a voice say, 'Switching is complete, we can roll." I looked out and saw a train stopped next to the building. The rail crew's radio was being picked up by the cheap speakers on her PC."
Nonprofit environmental organization Greenpeace has rated mobile phone giant Nokia highly for its eco-friendly policies, but gave low marks to Lenovo Group, Motorola and Apple Computer, among others. Greenpeace, which publishes the Green Electronics Guide every three months, scores companies on their use of hazardous chemicals, recycling and take-back policies. Nokia scored highly for eliminating its use of polyvinyl chlorides, which are widely used but difficult-to-recycle plastics that cause the release of dioxin, another toxin, when manufactured. The Finnish company plans to stop using brominated flame retardants by the start of 2007, Greenpeace said.
Bad
IT manager's phone rings late at night. It's a user who is on annual leave in Ireland requesting tech support. "He rang me at 10.30pm asking how to play a pirated, Harry Potter DVD on the company notebook to his daughter. He called from the company mobile, incurring roaming charges." Could this be any worse? "I guess he could have asked for help resetting his porn Web site password that he paid for using his company credit card..."
Ugly
Run, run for your lives, the sky is falling! That's what it felt like last week when IT Minister Senator Helen Coonan said mobile phones are capable of morphing into a 'pipeline for perversion'. The comment came after a schoolboy was suspended for showing other students pornographic content on his mobile phone. Remember when the Internet was evil? Looks like the mobile phone is the next target.