Let’s talk about fraud prevention

Debit cards are amazing inventions. Wherever I am in the world, I can get access to the cash in my bank account through an international banking network (for a small fee). The name ‘Visa’, originally applied to credit cards and now increasingly found on debit cards, was adopted as a symbol of this worldwide acceptance. Well, that’s how it should work, anyway. Unfortunately, the modern prevalence of identity theft has caused my bank and many others to introduce a cumbersome fraud prevention system on top of this freedom. I first encountered this in force on a business trip in September – I tried to take money out of a cash machine in Taoyuan Airport, Taiwan without first contacting my bank to say I was going out there. Reasonably enough, it...

Posted by on Oct 27, 2011 in Thoughts | 3 comments

Office icon colours: an unusual Microsoft legacy

Office icon colours: an unusual Microsoft legacy

Here’s an interesting thought: When you think of word processors, spreadsheets, and overhead presentations, what colours come to mind? Blue, green and red respectively, right? As far as I can tell, this branding exercise was a Microsoft invention, added in early versions of Microsoft Office to associate the components of Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) with the existing four-colour Windows logo (with yellow representing Outlook Express), but it’s persisted much further than that. Google Docs, OpenOffice and LibreOffice all use the same colour scheme. Even Lotus Symphony has broken out of the Lotus standard colour scheme with its 2.0 icons. I’m fascinated by subtle corporate branding that makes its way into the common consciousness without being...

Posted by on Oct 10, 2011 in Tech | 5 comments