Unions need to find a way to cut through that noise and reach their members. Members need an alternative to the spam-filled, overflowing inbox. Everyone needs messages to be brief and to the point.

Twitter may offer a solution.

In looking over my reviews, I see that I posted a one sentence review of Microsoft Excel a year ago. Here's what I wrote:

"Why would anyone pay over £170 for a piece of software which does nothing more than Open Office.org does -- and OpenOffice.org is completely free of charge?"

Nearly a year later, someone posted a comment on my review (I didn't realize you could do this). It's worth repeating here:

"This is so true - I dowloaded openoffice on reading this and it is very good. converts all your old word or .xls files and is easy to use with the same functionality of office. plus I am quids in as was about to spend £180 on Excel. Major mistake if I had done that! Great post Eric."

One more convert to free software -- won over by a review on Amazon. I wonder what else we can use Amazon reviews for?

After all, when we think about dictatorships in the world today and the struggle for democracy, we usually think of political and spiritual leaders, writers, intellectuals and others before we think of the workers. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama have become household names. For some of the larger and better known human rights organizations, workers' rights have long been seen as a bit of a footnote -- though there is some evidence that this is now changing.

While most of us will be vaguely familiar with key international human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), most human rights campaigners will have difficulty naming the eight core conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) which lay out what are universally recognized workers' rights -- such as the right to form and join a trade union and to bargain collectively.

Everyone remembers the central role played by independent trade unions in bringing down Communist rule in Poland and triggering the collapse of the entire Soviet empire in the process. But my guess is that few are aware of the key role being played by trade unions today -- unions which find themselves on the front lines of what amounts to a fight to the death with dictatorships. Those dictatorships are often far more severe in their repression than the Polish Stalinists ever were.

When I began, I wrote a number of updates for my blog with titles like 'Linux: the first nine days' or 'Day Eleven: The experiment continues'. I think I was amazed that it could go on like that, day after day.

There were probably two reasons for my own surprise at how well it has gone.

First, I'd had a bad experience using Linux in 2002. And second, I hardly knew anyone who used Linux on their desktops. (I still don't know of a single trade union anywhere that has moved over to open source -- unfortunately.)

After one year using Linux, I can say with confidence that I'm never going back to Windows.

Keep reading ...

I'm speaking about ultra-portable, ultra-light laptop computers.

A year ago, if you wanted to buy a truly portable computer, you'd be looking at a Sony Vaio, for example, weighing in at a couple of pounds. And it would have cost you something like $3,000. Even Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air, costs $1,800 in its cheapest configuration.

But in the last six months a new breed of tiny, powerful laptops has become available for $400.

A 90% drop in the price of a tool that can be so useful to unions is something that should make us sit up and take notice.

It's the morning after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. It now seems pretty clear to everyone that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. The question now is -- what can we do to ensure that he defeats John McCain in November. And not only defeats McCain, but defeats him decisively.

We need more than a Democratic victory in November -- we need a landslide. We need huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. We can only achieve that if we have the kind of unbeatable team at the top that unites the party and the nation.

It's obvious that Hillary Clinton is not going to be Obama's running mate. Obama has to choose from among many outstanding Democrats, including some who ran against him in the early primaries, to find a great Vice Presidential choice. But one man stands head and shoulders above all the others as the obvious choice: John Edwards.

John Edwards set the agenda for all the candidates in the early stages of the primary battles. He came up with the first and best comprehensive health care plan. He raised the issue of poverty as no leading politician has done for 40 years. His charisma, his abilities and his appeal to those voters Obama must win in November are beyond dispute.

An Obama-Edwards ticket in November is the Democratic party's best chance of winning a resounding victory. If you agree, please visit http://www.ericlee.info/edwards4veep and sign the form there. (That address will soon be http://www.edwards4veep.org.)

We'll make sure that Obama gets this message loud and clear from the many Democrats who we're sure agree with us.

But for the last ten years, I've been working on PCs (until a year ago, Windows-based PCs) and have no experience with programming them. I did learn Perl, which I use to write short programs (scripts) on Linux servers for websites. But I've found no easy way to write a useable program on my PC.

I've long thought it would be wonderful if I could use a language I know (Perl) on a platform I use (the PC) and get back to the stage where I was a decade ago, writing programs to meet my needs.

As of yesterday, that problem is solved. I have just written my first application (a small group of programs) -- a powerful task list (to-do list) manager. I am now using this instead of the various programs I have used in the past, such as the Gnome To Do list, KDE Kalendar, and web-based lists such as Remember the Milk, TaDa List and so on.

Gosh, you read an article like that and it makes you want to vote for Obama.

Bill's Dad -- himself a graduate of the Trotskyist Left of the 1930s -- should take his son aside for a quiet talk. Or should have done so many years ago.

I've been using web-based tools for years to do several tasks which many of us probably still do with pen and paper – or on desktop PCs.

As with most things, after a while it became more work than I had time for, so I asked one of our senior correspondents, Derek Blackadder from Canada, to take on the job of ensuring that we had fresh photos on our front page, at least once every week.

Little did I know that Derek would turn this little project into what may be the largest collection of union photos on the web.

A glance at how those unions are using the Internet in support of the day of action reveals just how far we have come in a few short years.

Robbie is a Roomba household robot, a product of the iRobot corporation, and something I've wanted to own for a long time. It costs about the same as a decent vacuum cleaner, so I thought -- what the hell.

I bought Robbie home on Friday and charged it (him?) overnight. Yesterday, I set Robbie loose in my carpeted bedroom, went out to do errands, came home and found the robot had shut itself off -- and the floor clean. Wow.