Patrick Lambe over at Green Chameleon has an interesting post about the holy trinity of people, process and technology that is a response to Dave Snowden’s suggestion that the three have become a pointless reductionist categorization.

I think Patrick’s point here is an important one — both IT and non-IT folks need a remember now and then that technology is not going to solve all their problems. While it may seem obvious that all three of these factors need to be considered in any technology rollout, it’s surprising how often only the ‘technology’ part really gets considered.

So while I agree that lumping these three things together has certainly become clichéd, there still exists a decent reason for putting them together, as Patrick has suggested in his post.

It’s also worth remembering here that unwilling people and poorly-conceived processes can break even the best technology, and that conversely, even inferior technologies sometimes take hold because of a dedicated group of a people.

I’ve been on the lookout for a place to find free blog pictures, and it looks like I may have found something that works for me. While I’ve found other services that offer blog pictures, every other service I’ve found has had some kind of fee or restriction.

Acobox allows you to choose from a wide variety of images (there are lots of images, but I would still like to see more added to certain categories, especially the abstract and technology categories).

Acobox also takes care of the licensing and other unsavoury issues so that all you need to do is select an image, copy the code, and paste it into your post. You don’t even need to host the image yourself, Acobox hosts the image for you.

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I came across a post over at ClappingTrees this morning that pointed out the rise in content creation among young people on the web, as well as an increase in their use of social networking tools.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey (in .pdf) found that 93% of teens use the internet, and that teens tend to post and view more videos and pictures than adults (interestingly, they also tend to limit access to their photos and videos more than adults).

Email, in the eyes of teens, has dropped to the bottom of the list in terms of the preferred way to contact friends. Take a look at the technologies they prefer to use in order of most preferred to least preferred:

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There was a time (which seems like many years ago now), where I thought wasteful publications (and I think you can guess what I mean by that: flyers, catalogues and other things you get, but never asked for) would become extinct.

So I was rather dismayed by an announcement made by the City of Toronto (where I live) that they are going to publish a new publication, called Our Toronto, up to four times a year, which would incorporate ‘newsletters’ that would go out to city residents about things like crime, garbage and taxes. The publication is going to cost about $800 000 per year.

While those familiar with Toronto might already know that the city is almost 3 billion dollars in debt — and wonder why close to a million dollars is being spent on this publication — something else came to mind as I read this story.

Most Canadians, like most people around the world, are relying more and more on the internet for information and transactions — so why is the city trying to turn back the clock and publish a newsletter that will almost certainly end up going straight in the recycling bins of most city residents?

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