Many seemingly complex technology topics or issues can actually be summed up fairly concisely and without requiring much technical background, in order to provide at least 90% of what's essential for most purposes. That's what this series of short essays aims to do, providing straight talk on a particular topic, so that you can be better informed about when and what else you need to know.

That's kind of simple, straight talk isn't always possible, but but I find that it usually applis to any topic or issue in which technology creates real value outside of the purely technical sphere - or at least demonstrates some real innovation that is of real interest to non-technologists, even if the ultimate value isn't well understood yet. Those are the topics I focus on in this series, and particularly (though not exclusively) topics or issues in security technology, where I hope to cut through some fuzzy thinking or obscure lingo and offer some insight into the essence of the problem and/or whether a claimed solution has real value.

Latest Updates At present (March 2007) I am just returning to this series from a 4 year haitus in start-up-land. I am re-working and updating some articles from the previous series, and planning topics for new articles. I welcome suggestions and requests!

	From the "Straight Talk on ..." series, I am updating articles on some of the basics of security, e.g. firewalls, anti-virus, malious software, in short the security-geek stuff that has gone mainstream in the past 5 years to touch practically everybody that uses computers even casually.
	I'm currently planning new articles with a "Beyond Security" theme, in which security is a part of a topic or issue with significance beyond just the technology, for example: the recent electronic voting "scandals," the real connection between computing and identity theft (it's not phishing attacks or prevention), and why datacenter "virtual" value may be going mainstream.

If you have suggestions for more, please contact me! I'd be pleased to get your input.

I also provide two kinds of consulting services: information security consulting and technology strategy consulting. There's an overview of me and my practice, a summary of the specific consulting services, and a summary of my experience plus my bio, resume, and publications.